Ben Zalin

Oh sure, not directly comparing their merits (Inter are top echelon in Serie A and at least plausible contenders for late stage CL, Frankfurt mercurial and not challenging for much) more wondering how much you can judge when the opposition don’t seem to play v well.

Bit like our recent discussion about how much you could gauge from the win at Frankfurt (obvs v different style), thought Inter were a bit disappointing and not sure how much that was us defending well v them not being that impressive.

Certainly creditable though.

My son asked me what I thought and I admitted that I didn’t really understand the rules any more!

Fair and of course you can defend v well and still find you give up a goal, so you need a bit more than that going forward, ideally but it’s still a good effort to have kept Inter to v little away.

Depends how decent you think a draw would have been, I suppose. We’ve certainly been v solid and did have a plausible enough set piece goal chalked off. Would have liked Wirtz a lot earlier (all game, really) and a bit more enterprise generally but can’t say it’s been bad.

Also, massive xG win now

Was a bit generous. No complains from me though.

Clearly Wirtz made a lot of it and probably wasn’t much impeded by the shirt pull but I’ve not got vast sympathy with the defender there.

Ekitike has been pretty good. Can’t think of anyone else who’s been better than par. Jones *perhaps* but he’s not played all that much.

Valid to say that’s an extraordinary hypothesis given his career and would need stronger evidence than we have to be at all confident but you don’t necessarily get to collect enough evidence in football.

A little hard to know which way round this is. I’m sure service to Salah has been worse but Ekitike is a long way off a Haaland like spearhead and Salah and Gakpo have worked well together before.

Or to put it another way, how would it look different if Salah were just … not good this season?

I think that’s part of it. Clearly it’s odd that he’s dropped off so dramatically from last season and suspect there are several other elements, including age, pace and probably grief.

How many good games has Salah had this season? I can only really thing of Athletico and at a push Real Madrid. You could say the side as a whole has had very few good games and I’d not argue but I think it’s v hard to look at Salah this season and think he’s improved the team when he’s played.

Liverpool were ~ fine against Galatasaray; got done in with a ridiculous penalty award and, similar to the Sunderland game, weren’t any better once Salah came on.

Clearly my position isn’t that Liverpool have been great without Salah, which would be BS! I just think slightly better.

It’s by no means the same as us being very good.

Given AFCON and what’s happened with Salah’s interview, I think we may well not get any other data with Salah in the team.

They’ve not been good in CL and not great, although far from terrible in BL. I mean, I don’t disagree that they looked v fragile against any kind of transition and it’s how much credit you give us for that, given clearly at least partly them being bad, yes.

I have us slightly better without salah.

You could make the argument that Salah looked decent in the other 2 good CL games and only played 30m against Galatasaray, so perhaps a bit unfair to include the one he played 15m as a mark against him and I wouldn’t *disagree* with that but ofc, he also played in the bad CL defeat.

I think the case for us being rather better without Salah is strengthened a lot by the strolling away win against Frankfurt, which is one of the about four or five really good games we’ve had so far this season (three of them in CL).

Don’t at all think we’ve been great but if we’d beaten Leeds, which obvs were v close to doing, 7 points from the 3 games would look fairly decent. Even West Ham aren’t a total bye now and 2 of the games were away. Yes, we only won xG against Leeds fairly narrowly but results drive narrative.

I don’t think he’s improving the side; we will have to move on without him soon, even if he does come back from AFCON in good form and fitness and most importantly, great though he’s been, he’s not bigger than the club and that was an I’m bigger than the club interview.

As for Salah’s interview, I’m still going to love what he’s done for the club and always think of him as an amazing footballer who lit up some v good sides but I don’t think he’s coming back to us after AFCON and I don’t now want him to, no matter how sad this is as an ending.

I think it’s a bit eccentric to suggest we’ve not missed Trent: we’ve not made up for his cheat code rapid progression or assists. We knew before the season started it might be an issue and it’s … been an issue.

Were we great without him overall in those 4 games? Clearly not but imv overall better than we’ve been with him.

I have concerns about Gakpo but he’s actually produced a fair amount this season and it’s not like it’s been impossible to play him and Salah together in the past.

Hmm, Salah had started every EPL and CL game up to the last 3, apart from our excellent demolition of Frankfurt. That’s a lot of game time for a 33 year old winger. In the 3 games he missed, we did pretty well at WH, he did v little when he came on against Sunderland and we should have beaten Leeds.

Do you not think that’s what we tried up to last few games? I’m sure there are team playing worse and quality passes to him happening less, esp from RB, effects. Still, he’s played RW with a single striker who drops deep and he’s just … largely not been good. LBs have kept him quiet for whole games.

Having had a thorough grump at the carefree slogging, ignoring the set best batsman in the world at the other end batting Atkinson and Carse were guilty of, obvs loved that Archer seems to have played in the exact same way but with success rather than failure.

We did win that test. He made it close though.

Tend to think most of it is just statistical noise around fairly hard to determine means, although Root is one of the players to have played enough to have a fair bit of statistical certainty around how good he is. Obvs the answer is at worst v good indeed.

That’s a bit easier, although depends on whether you think his recent century rate predicts better than career rate.

Would honestly not have had @sturdyalex.bsky.social down as even v nerdy, let alone as the apex nerd.

I say this as someone who was enough of a Napoleonic era navy and games nerd as a boy to create a Napoleonic era naval board game of my own.

This is a perfect description.

I mean, if they glared at him, tripped or kicked him, I’d let them off.