Coming in hot off a stunning victory over Man City, Liverpool managed to lose against the Premier League’s bottom side in their very next outing, falling to a 1-0 defeat at Swansea City on Monday night.
Carlos Carvalhal came with a game plan to stifle Jurgen Klopp’s high-energy approach and a suitably pithy quote to encapsulate it:
I did an analogy with my players. Liverpool are a top team but they are a Formula 1 car. If you put a Formula 1 car in London traffic at 4pm, the Formula 1 car will not run very fast.
And that’s pretty much exactly how it panned out, with the Swans clogging up the Liverpudlian attacking arteries and defending for their very lives.
What’s more, they even managed to nick a goal shortly before half-time when Alfie Mawson hit one on the spin after an over-hit corner fell loose inside the Reds box…
Liverpool had two-thirds of the possession and roughly four times the efforts on goal that Swansea mustered (12 shots to three) but to no avail, as the home side held firm.
That said, both Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana were gifted chances to equalise in the dying seconds of injury time, only for both players to spurn their quickfire opportunities…
After the final whistle, Carvalhal summed up Swansea’s perilous predicament with yet another snappy little quip:
We’re still in the hospital, but now we are able to take visitors!
They remain bottom of the league, but are now level on points with 19th-placed West Brom and only three points from safety.
Liverpool missed the chance to strengthen their position inside the top four, squatting, as they continue to do, just two points above Tottenham in fifth.