Why the Reds Couldn’t Find a Way Through a Well Drilled Fulham
Three games in eight days will find a squad out eventually, and for Liverpool at Anfield on Saturday, the reckoning arrived in the least dramatic way possible. Not a defeat, but a goalless stalemate against a Fulham side that looked considerably fresher and hungrier than the hosts for long stretches of the afternoon. Our take watching this one back is simple enough. This was a Liverpool team short on ideas as much as short on legs, and Andoni Iraola will have plenty to chew over before the next fixture comes around.
A Warning Liverpool Were Fortunate to Survive
The alarm bell rang just past the ten minute mark. A short pass from Alisson under pressure from Sander Berge and Joshua King broke loose in a dangerous area, and Gonzalo Garcia nipped in, rounded the goalkeeper and looked certain to open the scoring, only for a last ditch recovery run from Jacquet to hack the ball away. It was the kind of moment that, on a different afternoon, changes the entire complexion of a match, and Liverpool were fortunate it did not. For large parts of the half that followed, Fulham looked the more purposeful of the two sides.
There were flashes from the hosts. Bradley Barcola released Alexander Isak for an angled effort that drifted just wide, and Victor Munoz crashed a header against the crossbar from a Dominik Szoboszlai corner. But chances at the other end kept arriving too, with Oscar Bobb and King both spurning presentable openings of their own. Whatever the underlying numbers made of the contest, the eye test suggested a game Liverpool were fortunate to still be level in by half time.
Fresh Legs, Same Old Problems
Iraola turned to his bench for answers, and for a while it looked like it might work. Isak had already given Bernd Leno something to think about with a driven effort after some neat footwork on the edge of the box, and Szoboszlai later tested the Fulham goalkeeper again after combining with Alexis Mac Allister. Jeremie Frimpong’s introduction in particular injected some much needed directness down the right, and his low cutback picked out Cody Gakpo in a promising area. The finish never arrived. Gakpo could not bring the ball under control, and the chance was gone as quickly as it had appeared. That single passage of play summed up an afternoon in which Liverpool kept manufacturing the position without ever finding the composure to finish the job.
Fulham, credit to them, never simply sat back and admired their own defending. Alisson had to be alert to keep out a King effort after a purposeful run through midfield, and substitute Rodrigo Muniz somehow failed to make clean contact with a gilt edged chance at the far post when left completely unmarked.
A Fatigue Question Liverpool Cannot Keep Dodging
Even in stoppage time, with Liverpool throwing everything forward in search of a winner, there was a nervous edge to proceedings, Milos Kerkez required to head away a dangerous ball into the box before Fulham could test the home defence’s concentration one final time. At the other end, Isak had one last sight of goal from a Szoboszlai corner but could only steer his effort wide of the far post.
None of this amounts to a crisis, but it is a pattern worth watching closely. A congested September schedule is starting to show in the legs of players who were still recovering from a taxing summer, and performances like this one, short on sharpness and conviction in the final third, tend to multiply rather than disappear on their own. Iraola has options on the bench capable of changing games, as today proved in flashes, but rotation alone will not solve a problem that squad depth needs to answer.
A point at home to a well organised Fulham side is not a disaster in isolation. It is, however, a result that should sharpen minds inside Anfield about squad management heading into a run of fixtures that shows no sign of easing up any time soon.