Liverpool 4 Bayer Leverkusen 0: Match review

Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 4 Bayer Leverkusen 0 in the group stage of the 2024-2025 Champions League…

HALF the time – reserved. Closely. Two good sides.

Full time – Liverpool shines. Leverkusen discouraged. An excellent site. A few bums.

Some bums are so tough. Leverkusen is a good team, a very good team. But they don’t look as fit, smart and smart as the Reds when the clock strikes and Liverpool can then stretch their legs.

And how. The start is a fantastic goal, a fantastic ball, a glorious finish. It’s one of those goals that feels like it should count double, but that’s okay because the double goal is on the way.

A truism from the Anfield Wrap shared with us by Sean Rogers is that most goals come from one player doing something brilliant, two players doing something very good, or a mistake.

The two goals that shatter Leverkusen’s dreams and make it 2-0 are the result of two players doing something between very good and brilliant.

Curtis Jones to Luis Diaz.
Mo Salah to Cody Gakpo.

All four of these players deserve praise for their part in those goals and that night. All four are excellent.

Diaz scores a beautiful hat-trick, a sloppy hat-trick (his second and Liverpool’s third is the epitome of a mistake, but I’d argue it’s also due to exhaustion) and his song is sung from the rafters. He is in the midst of an excellent season, just like the Reds themselves.

It is the second home game in a row where the Liverpool crowd and Liverpool team find synergy in the second half, the second time the Reds have been at home. It’s great to be involved and we’ve got a big Saturday night ahead of us to see Liverpool be the best performing team on the continent in the first quarter of the season.

Everything is built on the rock that is the central defenders. That was the case under the previous manager, but the question was always where that stone was positioned and what was around it.

Right now, these two brilliant centre-backs who were able to defend 50 meters from their own goal with no support are now 30 meters from their goal with a lot of support.

Everything is at a distance until the game is 3-0 and over, and even then Leverkusen can’t really get into it. Everything happens on Liverpool terms.

And that’s exactly what it’s all about at the moment. Everything almost always happens on Liverpool’s terms. And that’s the credit of the manager who stood out here and acted as if things were always going to be that way, that they would always be that way.

He showed a minimum of excitement – that seems to be the standard and it was exactly what I wanted. Liverpool is a super club. They have super club sales and pay super club salaries. They are a European giant.

I don’t like the idea of ​​super clubs, but we are one and this city needs Liverpool FC to be one. This city needs the beacon that is the football club. It is an export industry and we should be proud of everyone involved and the wider civic enterprise that embraces all of this.

We shouldn’t go backwards and neither did the manager. We weren’t supposed to apologize and neither did the manager. We weren’t supposed to live up to expectations and neither did the manager.

We should move forward together and win 14 of the first 16 games like that’s exactly what we’re doing. Because that’s exactly what we do. What super clubs do. What Liverpool is doing.

It’s the way we approach games like this and that’s a huge credit to the coach and his players. They want to play like the best, like the great team they are.

This is what it means to be on the rise and be real. There is no one more real right now.

Long may it continue like this.

Neil

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