A seven-game run with the potential to take Liverpool’s early season progress way off course is instead being navigated almost perfectly for Arne Slot after the halfway stage now.
Having followed up victories over Chelsea and RB Leipzig with a draw at Arsenal on Sunday, the Reds edged the first of two clashes with Brighton this week with a 3-2 triumph to move into the last eight of the League Cup for what is now the fourth successive season.
It’s making a mockery of suggestions these games in between October and November’s international breaks would be season-defining for a Reds side who apparently hadn’t been tested yet. In the meantime, the tests do in fact keep coming and they are being cleared in impressive fashion.
And if the second best way to conduct a League Cup campaign is to bow out at the first hurdle, then Slot and his players will feel they now have no choice but to go full pelt towards Plan A of once more winning the thing outright.
Because the supporters who were shuffling out of the away end of the Amex Stadium are clearly already dreaming of going all the way once more in this competition as they crooned about Wembley upon making their exits. Those memories of February against Chelsea are clearly still fresh in the mind.
The Reds booked their place in the last eight courtesy of Cody Gakpo’s second-half brace and Luis Diaz’s strike but they were made to work to the last whistle in a game that saw them lead by two goals twice.
But having now cleared the checkpoint of one of the most tricky ties of the round here, Slot will have few fears about. facing Southampton away in the quarter-finals. And why should he? This was a night where he used his squad to its outer boundaries and found a way to win against the progressive and extremely well-drilled Seagulls, in their own backyard no less.
Eight changes were made in total but it was another victory to make it 12 from his first 14 as head coach in all competitions and the ability to emerge with a win at such a difficult venue after so many alterations bodes well for what this group of players and coaching staff can achieve.
With Darwin Nunez kept in reserve due to the thinning options up top thanks to Diogo Jota’s ongoing rib injury, Slot named Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones as advanced midfielders with license to drift into the
spaces usually reserved for a more orthodox No.9. It was an experiment that was trialled in Pittsburgh over the summer but having had so little time to devote to working out the kinks on the training pitch since July, it failed to yield instant results, with neither player really impacting the game in the final third during the opening 45 minutes.
The Reds’ best two chances of the first half came down the left side when Diaz was denied by Brighton captain Jason Steele before the goalkeeper was also equal to captain Andy Robertson’s near-post strike moments later. Up the other end, full debutant Vitezslav Jaros made an excellent stop to keep it goalless after Tariq Lamptey had caught the backline napping.
