LOGIC DICTATED THAT Liverpool would win this FA Cup tie and so Old Trafford rightly routed any semblance of sense.
Sheer mind-bending, blood-pumping, soul-stirring nonsense: this was the only way to do it.
Let’s face it, Football, Bloody Hell is the only creed worth living by when you’re 3-2 down with eight minutes to go and held together by gaffer tape and desperation; when you’re centre-back is a hobbling Bruno Fernandes and your left-back is yesthatisactuallyAntony.
And yet United triumphed in a Cup game that will never be forgotten and offers Erik ten Hag a redemptive chance. Mark Robins’ Coventry City is now all that separates them from a return to the FA Cup final. Amad Diallo might have played the Robins role for ten Hag today.
Liverpool, meanwhile, must sift through the bewildering wreckage and hope this game does not leave a scar for the season run-in, because Jurgen Klopp’s patented mentality monsters collapsed at Old Trafford. Twice they had the game won, but twice they let it slip. Penalties seemed a prospect so awful for them that they lost the game instead.
Like all wild, slugging classics, the drama came from the sides’ weaknesses as much as their strengths. United have some great individuals but their structure is rickety and unreliable, and while Liverpool’s collective is their great strength, their forwards lack the ruthless streak of their predecessors.
It cost them in the league game against United, it cost them against City last week, and it cost them again today.
Liverpool have lost in every which way but one at Old Trafford over the years, but today they completed the set: this was the first time a defeat away to their greatest rivals felt entirely unnecessary.
United started with intensity and zeal, roared on by a roiling Old Trafford. They pressed Liverpool hard and might have scored before they did, Scott McTominay pouncing when Kelleher half-blocked Garnacho’s shot.
Liverpool groped a way back into the game, eventually exposing United’s oddly strapped-together approach. While their back four drop off, United’s midfield and forwards press man-to-man, and so Liverpool found a way around it by simply finding another man. Joe Gomez inverted from right-back and soon United were chasing shadows in midfield.
With Aaron Wan-Bissaka picked at left-back and instructed to glue himself to Mohamed Salah, Jarrell Quansah strode forward and spotted a gap created by Salah’s width, slipping through a powderpuff Marcus Rashford challenge. Alex MacAllister then rifled in an equaliser, via the first of the day’s determining deflections.
Liverpool led at the break, exposing United’s enduring problems at playing out from the back. Klopp’s side laid the trap and Andre Onana walked gormlessly into it, passing the ball to Wan-Bissaka, who was pinned into the touchline by Salah and MacAllister. Gomez won the ball, and Salah rattled the ball in off the post after Onana clawed away a shot.
If United had a second-half tactic, it seemed to be an ambition to lull Liverpool into a false sense of security. And hey, it worked.
United were overwhelmed for long periods of the second-half, but Liverpool never found a third goal to kill the game. It wasn’t the case that they missed a hatful of chances, but that they didn’t create them. Their final pass was either rushed or too unhurried; other passes were sloppy and wayward.
Salah was the guiltiest of them all, inexplicably passing up shooting opportunities to play poorly-judged passes. He was off the pitch for the waste that most infuriated Klopp, as Cody Gakpo ruined a five-on-two break by playing the ball behind Harvey Elliot. Gakpo is a strangely feeble player: he calls to mind Pat Gilroy’s deathless line about startled earwigs.
Salah had made way in a double substitution prior to that, and if there was one moment that turned this tie – a rare instance of cause and effect – it was Klopp’s decision to move Gomez to left-back while replacing Robertson for Bradley.
The move was an instance of excessive meddling; one brick too many removed from the Jenga tower.
With Gomez’ position tweaked, Liverpool lost their control, and Antony – whose official Christian name appears to be Much-Maligned - spun a late equaliser into the corner. From a place of almost unbelievable comfort, Liverpool ended the game clinging on, relieved that Rashford didn’t send the VAR for their protractor in firing wide at the death.
Diallo had been introduced for Varane at that point, meaning United’s starting XI looked as if they had been assembled by means of a raffle draw. Antony and Garnacho ended up at wing-back from the restart and it seemed as if Liverpool would reassert some logic having made it to extra-time.
Logic’s first picture was Elliott leaping into Klopp’s arms having put Liverpool ahead via another deflected strike. United concede so many of them it has strayed beyond luck to illuminate something more fundamental.
But United importantly never lost sight of the utterly mental. It is in these hot and dizzy environments that Darwin Nunez becomes a kind of each-way bet: he might deliver for you or he might deliver for the opponent. United cashed in today. He played a desperate square pass that wss cut out by the outstanding McTominay, whose popped pass to Rashford was flashed in so quickly that Kelleher didn’t have time to move.
These two sides have never contested a penalty shootout and Diallo is the reason the stat still stands.
If Liverpool got in their own way in a psychological sense today, they did so literally in the endgame. Endo distracted Elliot when he collected McTominay’s clearance from Liverpool’s late corner, which allowed Diallo to pounce. Garnacho and Diallo then stared down Bradley, with Bradley retreating and retreating and retreating before ever-so-slightly stumbling in switching attention to Diallo when he took the ball from Antony.
Diallo took the shot perfectly, in that he took it in scrappily, ruggedly: scuffing the ball past Kelleher and in off the post.
The words used to describe that shot could be applied to United, with McTominay and Fernandes endless work ultimately forcing a ludicrously improbable victory.
Jurgen Klopp’s sides have been steeled against these kinds of implosions for years, so the international break comes at a convenient time. They must somehow slough off the memory of this game, but that may be impossible given their next away game in the Premier League is at Old Trafford.
United, meanwhile, remain deeply flawed, but those kinds of things don’t matter on days that seem to run contrary to the laws of nature.
