Ninety minutes at Anfield, and one shot worth remembering
Nine minutes in, Bradley Barcola got to the byline and cut it back. Alexander Isak swung at it. Wide. That was as close as Liverpool came all afternoon.
It finished 0-0 on Premier League matchday 4. Two points gone at home, and a week that had been building nicely ends flat.
The opening quarter of an hour suggested something else entirely. Virgil van Dijk cut out a Fulham move in the 5th minute and the tempo held for a while. Then it drained away. The two sides cancelled each other out and the game settled into a rut neither could pull it out of. Liverpool arrived off a 2-0 win at Ipswich and a scrappy 2-1 over Atletico Madrid in the Champions League. A third win in a week was there for the taking. Not today.
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Three out, one doubtful, and still nobody to finish
Conor Bradley, Hugo Ekitike and Federico Chiesa all sat this one out. Cody Gakpo was a question mark right up to kick-off.
Alisson started in goal behind Ronald Araujo, Van Dijk, Jeremy Jacquet and Kostas Tsimikas. Gravenberch, Szoboszlai and Victor Munoz held the middle. Barcola, Isak and Florian Wirtz led the line.
Read that front three again, then look at the scoreline. The gap between the two has followed Liverpool around since August. Isak scored twice at Ipswich eight days ago. Today he could not hit the target once.
Fulham’s first return from the road this season
For Fulham the point is worth more than the table lets on. They had taken nothing from their away trips all season. They came to Anfield off a 3-2 home defeat to Crystal Palace, a game they had actually led.
Bernd Leno and the back four held. Josh King, who has two of the club’s four league goals, never got a sight of goal worth the name. That was never really the plan today.
“We create enough chances to win matches, but we do not win matches. Both statements are true,” Arbeloa said before kick-off. “We know why we are not winning and what we need to change.”
A point at Anfield does not fix that. It stops the bleeding.
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