It’s been a very good week for Antonin Kinsky, who was outstanding along with two of his Tottenham teammates, but a bad week for Liverpool. Are those cracks we see?
It was telling that as the game neared the break the greatest point of intrigue was a not all that engrossing battle between the Liverpool right-back and the Tottenham left-back. Djed Spence (37) and Conor Bradley (28) had enjoyed the most touches of any player on the pitch by the 40th minute while Liverpool’s front three had a combined total of 27, with Mohamed Salah the lowest of anyone with just six. It was a tough watch.
As Kostas Tsimikas became the fifth Liverpool player to overhit a pass out for a goal kick in a first half that was punishingly extended by 11 minutes thanks to the concerning injuries to Rodrigo Bentancur and Jarell Quansah, this member of the Football365 team was cursing another who reported on the 6-3 between these very teams less than three weeks ago. What the hell happened to you guys?
Bentancur going down unchallenged in the box and having to be stretchered off won’t have helped, and neither Tottenham nor Liverpool seemed able to get going after the lengthy delay so early in the game, with Jarell Quansah’s unexplained problem further contributing to the game’s lack of flow.
Spurs’ new goalkeeper did his best to entertain us. Waiting for the ball to bounce into his penalty area before doing an entirely superfluous kick-up with Diogo Jota less than a yard away from him before grabbing the ball is exactly what we expect and want to see from a Tottenham goalkeeper, and Antonin Kinsky further endeared himself to those of us baying for Spurs-nanigans by aiming for Djed Spence on the wing two minutes later and instead nailing his pass straight at Archie Gray in his six-yard box.
He did look very accomplished on the ball besides though, and instead it was Alisson who made the goalkeeping gaffe of the evening. He only just got away with the dummy as Lucas Bergvall bust a gut to close him down, and then dawdled on the ball with unwarranted confidence to allow the Swede time to get up and nick the ball off his toe, only for Spurs to spurn two great opportunities to open the scoring.
Liverpool flexed their muscles on the hour mark, bringing Darwin Nunez, Luis Diaz and Trent Alexander-Arnold off the bench, which turned the game firmly in their favour. Nunez raced onto a perfectly weighted through ball by Salah but Kinsky spread himself well to block the shot, a fizzing Alexander-Arnold shot from a tight angle was blocked on the line by Radu Dragusin and Kinsky made another great save from a Nunez flick.
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Dominic Solanke thought he had given Spurs the lead after slotting the ball under Alisson only to be denied by VAR and the our first taste of NFL-style referee announcing – “After a review Dominic Solanke was in an offside position; my final decision is offside” Stuart Atwell declared – to much head-shaking from staunch football purist Ange Postecoglou. But Arne Slot took The Angry Manager biscuit ten minutes later as he fumed over Bergvall still being on the pitch to score the winner.
There was less than three minutes between Bergvall’s yellow card that probably shouldn’t have been a yellow card and his second foul which definitely should have been. Having given the first it made no sense that Atwell didn’t give the second and Slot quite reasonably lost the plot as Bergvall then scored while Tsimikas – the guy he nailed in the challenge – was off the pitch.
It was a brilliant finish as he swept the ball inside the near post having been superbly set up by Solanke, and it was a wonderful all-round display from the Spurs striker, who charged in behind Liverpool to get on the end of a hopeful Pedro Porro punt, muscled the not insignificant figure of Ibrahima Konate aside, before turning, looking up and laying the ball on a plate for Bergvall.
It’s exactly what you want from your centre-forward and it felt just that two of Tottenham’s three best players on the pitch combined to score while the other kept Liverpool at bay at the other end. Kinsky’s sister was in tears as he hugged her at the end of the game. What a week for him.
Not a good one for Liverpool though. They looked tired, short of ideas and cracks that appeared on Sunday against Manchester United widened here, with the injury to Quansah a real problem with Joe Gomez already “out for a few weeks” and Konate looking less than sharp on his return.
A setback for him or – God forbid – an injury to Virgil van Dijk would bring about the sort of crisis we’ve all been waiting to impede a Liverpool side that’s looked unshakeable but has now shown vulnerability for two games on the bounce, against a Manchester United team that had lost five of their previous six games in the Premier League and a bare bones Tottenham that they destroyed 17 days ago.
