A BITTERLY cold night at Anfield saw the home side’s performance do little to warm the hearts of the watching Kopites as Liverpool were left having to fight back from a goal down to rescue a point following a gutsy away performance from visiting side Sunderland.

The match ended 1-1 after deflected goal from Chemsdine Talbi and a late unfortunate own goal accredited to Sunderland defender Nordi Mukiele spared Arne Slot’s blushes, although questions were still being asked about another seemingly disjointed and abject performance from the men in red.

 

The Sunderland manager was upbeat during the post match press conference.

“I am feeling positive to be fair. We did have an opportunity to score the second goal near the end, but it was a positive result for both teams.”

The opportunity that he spoke of had fallen to Wilson Isidor who had come off the bench in the 62nd minute and had a 93rd minute opportunity to wrap up all 3 points for the Mackems.

Another failed Liverpool attack ended up in the hands of Sunderland goalkeeper Robin Roefs who spotted the French striker all alone just inside his own half and drilled a volleyed pass out of his hands straight into the unmarked Sunderland striker’s path.

Isidor had a long run-in on goal with only goalkeeper Alisson Becker to beat and Liverpool’s Federico Chiesa struggling to catch up from behind.

The Reds keeper forced Isidor wide, and although he was still able to round the keeper and get his shot off from the angle, Liverpool’s Italian forward, only off the bench 7 minutes prior, was able to get back to block the Sunderland striker’s shot, which was on target and would have guaranteed all 3 points for the away side.

Arne Slot praised his substitute for his application in that moment.

“He [Chiesa] could have thought he was too far behind to help the situation and given up, but he kept sprinting and Ali forced the player wide which allowed Fede to get back and clear the ball off the line. It was the minimum his efforts deserved.”

After a frustrating first half for the home fans which saw Liverpool struggle to create clearcut openings, the beginning of the second half saw an increase in tempo, suggesting that Slot’s men were finally warming up to the task, but it was the away side that took the lead in the 67th minute.

Black Cats wide-man Talbi was given the freedom of Anfield 25 yards out and hit a speculative 25 yarder towards the Liverpool goal which deflected off the back of Virgil van Dijk and looped wide of Alisson’s dive in the Liverpool goal to shock the crowd into silence.

Liverpool’s equaliser came courtesy of Curtis Jones’s creativity, coming off the bench in the 65th minute.

The lad from Toxteth threaded a cute ball into the feet of Florian Wirtz from the edge of the box. With the German showing great composure and skill in a packed penalty box, to work a shooting opportunity for himself onto his left foot which took a huge deflection off Mukiele before flying past Roefs in the Sunderland goal.

Liverpool’s German summer signing celebrated like it was his first goal for the club, but the goal was eventually recorded as an own goal.

In game where Sunderland had more shots on target than Liverpool, Slot suggested that he knew it would be a difficult task to create chances against the boys from the North East.

“They [Sunderland] have only conceded more than 1 goal four times in 14 games this season, so we knew that they would be a hard team to score against.”