Liverpool match verdict after the Premier League clash with Nottingham Forest at the City Ground which saw Darwin Nunez score a 99th minute winner.
Liverpool aren’t exactly strolling their way to this Premier League title, but my word are they fighting for it every step of the way.
One of the most hard-fought games of the campaign here at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground – for a side without as many as nine first-team players – looked like it was about to yield little more than an unloved point that might have been so damaging.
The performance of champions? For those whose glasses are half full, you are very much free to make that argument.
And after a week of dreams being made reality, youngsters revelling in the spotlight and something approaching a football miracle at Wembley, it appeared for all the world as though the supply of stardust had finally evaporated for Jurgen Klopp.
That was until Darwin Nunez popped up with his 14th and most important goal of the season in the ninth – yes, ninth – minute of stoppage time. In all actuality, it was No.9’s most important goal across his entire Reds career to date. How vital might it be in the grand scheme of things as this incredible campaign rolls on?
By now it is water off a duck’s back for Liverpool supporters and the man himself but the faint sense of ridicule that seems to follow Nunez from outside the Anfield bubble needs to end now. His seven goals and four assists since Boxing Day have been integral to this rise and he has been instrumental for a club that is charging on towards an unlikely quadruple at the beginning of March.
If the primary reason for Klopp’s imminent departure are his depleting energy reserves, the ongoing injury updates from the Liverpool boss have probably been enough to tip them to empty lately.
Not content with offering a less-than-positive bulletin on Alisson Becker on Friday, the Reds manager was even moved to label the crisis as his worst across a near 25-year career in management.
But after taking one too many unwanted calls from his medical department over the last few weeks, Klopp was at least able to offer a tonic on Saturday as Nunez, Dominik Szoboszlai and Wataru Endo all returned to the squad to play important parts in another pulsating victory in the second period.
And those who are fit enough to declare for action are doing a hell of a job of injecting Klopp and the supporters with the sort of impetus that could yet carry them all the way.
“We shall not be moved!” roared the away end at full time, merely moments after Nunez had tried to gazump his own wild celebrations of Wembley last week by jumping the hoardings at the City Ground to savour the moment with the travelling Kop.
Having Nunez, Szoboszlai and Endo ready for selection once more was vital here but the Reds could use a few more positive developments from the treatment room over the coming week. This sort of battling through adversity won’t last forever while so many gifted operators remain sidelined. That might prove even beyond Klopp.
In an otherwise ordinary game, there was virtually nothing left to play on the watch of referee Paul Tierney when Alexis Mac Allister, once more outstanding, shifted it on to his left foot before a precise clip into the penalty area. It was a difficult chance for Nunez, but he got enough on it to divert it past Mats Selz and set up what, for most clubs, would have been the moment of the season.
For Liverpool, it wasn’t even the moment of their week. These supporters are being spoiled rotten right now and how they must be dreading the final embers of Klopp’s time with them. Fortunately, the manager and his players are doing their utmost to ensure there is too much to look forward to to fret about what comes when it is all over. Kick it down the road, the Reds are marching on.
The first half was played out virtually incident free aside from an excellent save from Caoimhin Kelleher, who denied Anthony Elanga after the Forest winger had sprung the offside trap. The flag stayed down but it would have been an interesting replay had the Forest man stuck the chance away.
Liverpool struggled to make any real in-roads after the break either as effects of a long, emotional six days started to look like it was taking its toll on those who have been made to go to the well time and again lately.
Never was that more obvious than Mac Allister, who, having been excellent for 80 minutes, began to tire noticeably as the game ticked into its dying embers. The Argentina World Cup winner has been superb in recent months and a major reason this squad have been able to stay on the straight and narrow in pursuit of all four trophies but he was running on fumes late on, even if he maintained his intelligent use of the ball right through to the final knockings.
The awareness to swivel away from his man and loft the ball to the back post for a priceless assist was simply sensational given it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have recycled it wide to Joe Gomez, who, by the 99th minute was operating in his third position of the day having started as a holding midfielder before shifting to left-back and then moving to the opposite flank.
