Mount’s stunning strike sinks Reds
Midfielder condemns Liverpool to historic fifth home defeat in a row
The question at full-time that hung over an empty Anfield echoing to the whoops and shrieks of celebrating Chelsea players is whether a home defeat any longer counts as a shock for the team still known as defending champions by convention alone.
Currently they are defending nothing of what they won last season – beaten again, for the seventh time in 13 league games, and this the unprecedented fifth in a row at home. A game that was lost to a Thomas Tuchel team that is resurgent under their new German manager, while in the other technical area the greatest German manager that the English game has known seemed to be running out of options.
His team looks crushed. They cannot dominate opponents as they once did and the goals that once rained in from the Premier League’s most dangerous forward line feel like a faint memory.
Sadio Mane missed a first-half bouncing ball in front of Chelsea’s goal by such a considerable margin that it was hard to call it a shot. Mohamed Salah was replaced with barely an hour played and his team desperate for a goal. The club’s top goalscorer of the last three seasons performed his frustration for the cameras that followed him back to his seat.
Klopp later said that he had sensed that Salah was no longer “fresh”. “I could’ve changed a lot of players,” he said. “In the moment he felt the intensity and I didn’t want to risk him.” Liverpool have scored once in these five defeats, from the penalty spot. In the meantime this was the stage for the biggest win of Tuchel’s Chelsea nascent career.
Ten games so far and no defeats yet, with this one sealed by a moment of exceptional skill at the end of the first half by Mason Mount, the most effective player on the pitch. Tuchel still has his problems, primarily the frazzled confidence of Timo Werner, but the team is back.
“Super-happy” was how the coach described his response to his first 10 games in charge. “This is a brave team”, Tuchel said, “and in big games they show up.”
Chelsea did not take all their chances, but they took the one they needed to and the system, incorporating three centre-halves once again felt solid in the face of a desperate last push from Liverpool in the game’s closing stages. It was a spectacular effort from the likes of Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen. Chelsea are up to fourth at the expense of Liverpool in seventh, who are now four points behind.
Still, as Tuchel has managed to lift Chelsea back into top four contention, is it hard to drag the gaze away from Liverpool – now on course to be the worst defending champions since the Manchester United team that saw David Moyes ousted in 2013-2014.
There was pressure on Chelsea, especially in the desperate closing stages, and yet there was so little danger. In attack, Liverpool feel like the kettle that never boils. A great expending of energy for so little return.
For a while in the early stages, Klopp’s team had Chelsea pinned back. But once the away side started to escape, the vulnerabilities for Liverpool at the back – in Fabinho and Ozan Kabak – were clear. As for Mount, others saw their moments come and go while the 22-year-old seized upon his.
It was the kind of goal that his team-mate Werner, two years older, could really have benefited from but it just refused to happen for the German. He had one chance on 16 minutes that he lobbed feebly into the arms of Alisson, back in goal for Liverpool, and a later one in which he was ruled offside by Var by the thickness of a cuff.
Klopp said that the game’s big moments had passed his team by. “It is a massive blow,” he said. “I told the boys what I saw tonight. To get these moments back you have to fight and you have to fight on a different level.
“It’s not about tactics, it’s about being resilient and showing heart. It has never [been the case] that we start blaming the circumstances. We had a really good team on the pitch and we played a lot of good football – but in the decisive moments, not good enough.”
Mount’s goal was splendid. A Liverpool attack broke down and N’golo Kante had time in midfield to look up and send a long ball out to the left. Mount was wide but Fabinho and Trent Alexander-arnold were neither tight nor aggressive enough. Mount moved the ball back on his right foot and by the time Fabinho had recognised what was happening, he had spied the opportunity, shaping a shot round Alisson’s left hand.
The striking of the ball against Kante’s right hand in the 47th minute, when Roberto Firmino hit a shot at the Frenchman, precipitated loud appeals. Otherwise it was hard to think of the moment when Klopp’s side should have scored.
At the other end Hakim Ziyech had a chance cleared off the line. It hardly needed saying that this was the first time in 128 years of their history that Liverpool had lost five in a row at home in the league.
Liverpool (4-3-3) Alisson 4; Alexander-arnold 5, Fabinho 4, Kabak 5, Robertson 6; Thiago Alcantara 5 (Milner 80), Wijnaldum 6, Jones 6 (Jota 62); Salah 4 (Oxlade-chamberlain 62), Firmino 4, Mane 4.
Subs Adrian (g), Keita, Shaqiri, Origi, R Williams, N Williams.
Chelsea (3-4-2-1): Mendy 7; Azpilicueta 7, Christensen 8, Rudiger 8; James, Kante 8, Jorginho 7, Chilwell 7; Ziyech 6 (Pulisic 66), Mount 8 (Kovacic 80); Werner 6 (Havertz 90). Subs Arrizabalaga (g), Alonso, Zouma, Giroud, Hudson-odoi, Emerson.
Referee Martin Atkinson (West Yorkshire).
Barcelona and Real Madrid face potentially crippling backdated tax bills after the European Union yesterday upheld a 2016 decision that both clubs have benefited from illegal state aid in Spain for the past 30 years.
The quashing of Barcelona’s appeal against the original decision, made by the European Commission, brought to an end a 12-year legal battle to change a 1990 Spanish law that gave Barcelona and Real Madrid, as well as Osasuna and Athletic Bilbao, the exclusive right to be memberowned.
The decision made by the EU’S court of justice to reject the appeal will now oblige the Kingdom of Spain to claw back taxes the four clubs were previously exempt from in their “not-for-profit” status. The law was passed in 1990, coming into effect in 1992, and obliged all other clubs outside those four to reconstitute as public limited companies – sociedad anonima deportiva.
The special status conferred favourable tax rates upon the four clubs and left rivals at the mercy of unscrupulous private owners. It also gave the four membershipowned clubs the exclusive right to operate professional basketball clubs as part of their structure.
These big budget loss-making basketball operations at Real Madrid and Barcelona, who have dominated the domestic basketball game in Spain at the expense of independent basketball clubs, will now be liable to taxation under the ECJ decision.
Although no figures have yet been proposed for the recovery of unpaid taxes under the illegal state aid law, the basketball clubs could face a €75million tax liability for the past 10 years alone.