Liverpool sprung some surprises in the line-up to face Fulham, and Marco Silva has admitted they changed things. He’s also taken aim at the officials.
Just about everyone was surprised when the Liverpool line-up came out. It seems Fulham boss Marco Silva was no exception.
Jürgen Klopp chose to omit Mohamed Salah from the front line, while also resting the likes of Alexis Mac Allister and Ibrahima Konaté. That comes amid a brutal sequence of away fixtures for Liverpool (albeit the midweek trip is only as far as Goodison Park).
It was undoubtedly a gamble, with Liverpool needing a win to stay alive in the title race. But perhaps it would have been just as much of a risk to keep things the same, after four games where the ‘highlight’ was an uninspiring 1-0 win over Atalanta that only served to confirm a 3-1 aggregate defeat.
Salah has been disappointing over that sequence of results, and while Klopp could legitimately point to fixture congestion to explain his decision at Craven Cottage, it was significant that the Egyptian was vulnerable to the sort of rotation that has usually happened around him. It would be a huge shock if he did not return against Everton, but Silva has heavily hinted that the forward’s absence made certain things more complicated for Fulham.
“Of course when you see the line-up, the players in their attacking line work more off the ball than the players they usually start more,” said Silva, via the BBC. “Of course this was a decision for Jürgen, but you can see they were much more compact some moments in a good way.”
Sure enough, it was notable how Liverpool managed to restrict Fulham to a handful of chances. Clean sheets remain elusive after a momentary lapse before the half-time interval, but Klopp’s side managed to retake the lead quite efficiently — through another change to the line-up, Ryan Gravenberch — and then never really looked like losing it.
Salah, for all his qualities, is to a certain extent exempted from defensive work. In his place on the right, Luis Díaz did a bit more, and any hopes of getting in down Trent Alexander-Arnold’s flank duly came to very little for Fulham.
Silva acknowledged that his side did not do enough, especially in the second half. But he also took aim at some of the refereeing decisions.
“Our second half was not good. Nothing really [bad from the referee], not penalties, not something special,” Silva explained to Sky Sports. “Overall the performance from the referee was not to the standard. Many decisions were difficult to understand.”
It’s hard to grasp what Silva is getting at here. If anything, Fulham was lucky not to have João Palhinha sent off for two bookable offenses, and otherwise, the officiating was pretty much unremarkable.
Silva’s account of the game only underlines how well Klopp did with his selection. Not only did he rest certain key players, but he did so in a way that unsettled Fulham’s game plan and actually made it harder for the host.
Salah’s defensive contributions are yet another factor in the complex picture of what he does and does not bring to the team. In his usual form, that side of things can be overlooked, but it’s less cut-and-dried when the goals aren’t flowing quite as freely.
Maybe Klopp has a big decision to make at Everton, but you’d back the 31-year-old to come back and show Liverpool what it was missing.
