A Wild Night at Anfield Shows Liverpool Still Have Work to Do
Seven goals, two red faces for the Liverpool defence and one outstanding teenager carrying the attack. That is the short version of a Champions League night at Anfield that swung wildly before settling, eventually, in Liverpool’s favour. Andoni Iraola’s side beat Villarreal 4-3 in a game that will be remembered far more for its chaos than its control, and our take is that the result flattered a performance that still has plenty of uncomfortable lessons buried inside it.
It followed a solid away win at Brentford in the league and a comfortable European victory over LASK, so there was no obvious reason to expect this level of jeopardy. Instead, Liverpool stumbled into a seven goal shootout that tested every part of the squad, from the back four to the bench, and left supporters simultaneously thrilled and uneasy by the final whistle.
A Calamitous Start Liverpool Had No Right to Recover From
Four minutes were all Villarreal needed to expose Liverpool’s defensive shape, Georges Mikautadze finishing early to put the visitors ahead before the home crowd had settled into their seats. It got worse in the 29th minute when Sergi Cardona doubled the lead, set up by Nathan-Dylan Saliba, and for half an hour Anfield watched a Liverpool side that looked disorganised, short of ideas and vulnerable in exactly the areas that cost them so dearly last season. Whatever the merits of the eventual comeback, that opening period cannot simply be waved away as a blip. Iraola’s back line, with Ronald Araujo at right back and Jeremy Jacquet alongside Virgil van Dijk in the middle, looked unfamiliar and uneasy against a Villarreal side moving the ball with real purpose.
What turned the night was not a tactical masterstroke but individual brilliance. Rio Ngumoha, still just a teenager, dragged Liverpool back into the contest almost single handedly, setting up Ronald Araujo to pull one back deep into first half stoppage time and then continuing to torment Villarreal’s defence after the break. Alexis Mac Allister’s finish just before that, assisted by Kostas Tsimikas, had already given Liverpool something to cling to at 1-2, and by the time the half ended at 2-2 the entire complexion of the match had changed.
Mac Allister and Wirtz Turn the Game on Its Head
Florian Wirtz came on for Araujo at the break and added a different dimension going forward, while Mac Allister grew into a game management role that looked beyond him at times last season. His second goal, converted in the 65th minute after more good work from Ngumoha, put Liverpool ahead for the first time at 3-2, and Wirtz’s first goal for the club four minutes later, finished off a Cody Gakpo assist, made it 4-2 and seemed to settle the contest.
It did not settle anything of the sort. Villarreal kept probing, kept finding space that a more disciplined Liverpool side would not have offered, and eventually got their third to turn the closing stages into a genuinely nervy watch. Iraola’s changes, Bradley Barcola for Ngumoha and Joe Gomez for Jacquet in the 73rd minute, Alexander Isak on earlier for Lewis Koumas, and James McConnell replacing Trey Nyoni late on, were about managing the game rather than chasing more goals, and even then Liverpool needed the final whistle to arrive before anyone inside Anfield could properly relax.
The Numbers Tell Two Different Stories
Look at the raw totals and Liverpool’s superiority seems obvious enough. Twenty one shots to Villarreal’s 14, seven on target to five, an expected goals reading of 2.37 against 1.58, 53 percent possession and seven corners to two all point to a dominant home performance. Look instead at the goals conceded column, three of them, against a Villarreal side not considered one of Europe’s heavyweights, and a different picture emerges. Liverpool’s attacking quality carried this game, but a sturdier opponent could easily have made those defensive lapses far more costly, and twelve fouls committed in a match this open hints at a side chasing shadows more often than it would like.
Jacquet again looked a composed presence in defence before his withdrawal, and van Dijk’s experience as captain mattered in steering the side through the choppier moments, but the collective structure in front of them wobbled more than once. Ngumoha’s end product, two assists and a direct hand in the turnaround on his developing right wing role, is the kind of individual contribution that can paper over a lot of cracks, and on this occasion it did exactly that. Gravenberch’s presence in the middle of the pitch, alongside Mac Allister, at least gave Liverpool a platform to build from once the early panic subsided.
What Iraola Still Needs to Fix
Rotation was always going to be part of the plan given the physical demands of a packed autumn schedule, and nobody should pretend six changes from the previous league fixture can be made without some cost to cohesion. That is a reasonable explanation for a sluggish start, not an excuse for conceding twice inside half an hour at home to a side Liverpool would expect to beat comfortably on paper. The warning signs were there before Villarreal ever touched the ball in anger, and they resurfaced again in the final ten minutes when a four goal cushion nearly evaporated into something far more uncomfortable.
There is a version of this result where Liverpool simply enjoy the headline, point to Ngumoha’s performance and move on to Brighton with confidence restored. There is a more honest version where the club’s analysts spend the week looking hard at why a makeshift back line kept being pulled out of position, and why a two goal cushion built through brilliant individual play was allowed to become a nervous finish rather than a comfortable one. Both versions are true at once, and that tension between celebrating the result and interrogating the performance is exactly where Liverpool find themselves after this one.
Our Verdict on a Night That Promised More Than It Delivered Defensively
Liverpool will take the three points and the continuation of their perfect start to this season’s Champions League campaign, and rightly so. Comebacks like this build belief, and a teenager announcing himself on a European night is the kind of story that gives a club real energy heading into a congested run of fixtures. But our view is that Iraola cannot afford to treat this as job done. The opening half hour and the nervy finish both point to defensive issues that better organised sides in this competition will look to exploit without needing anywhere near Villarreal’s attacking firepower to do it.
Liverpool scored four and conceded three in a game they were, on paper, expected to win far more comfortably. Next time, the margin for error against craft and set pieces may not be anywhere near as forgiving, and if Iraola wants nights like this to become the exception rather than a pattern, the conversation this week needs to be about what went wrong in the first half hour just as much as what went right afterwards.