On a hazy, dreamy afternoon at Selhurst Park, all soft sun and soft air, Liverpool produced something that seemed to fit the day, an exercise in control and the problems of control. A 1-0 victory means they will stay at the top of the league heading towards the end of October. This is a high‑functioning entity now. They have a good manager, good players, an excellent central midfield and the fewest goals conceded in the league.
At the same time Liverpool also somehow ended up hanging on at times in the second half of a game that was like an expertly staged act of euthanasia where the corpse inexplicably starts waking up after an hour trying to have a chat about things.
First came the anaesthetic. For 45 minutes this was high-grade Coldplay football, a controlled, top-spec stadium experience. Score. Wait. Win. This has been the best of Arne Slot’s developing Liverpool so far. Six of their eight wins have followed that pattern of take the lead, control possession and win.
By half-time Liverpool were 1-0 up, with 73% possession and a sense of pieces being pushed around a board. They weren’t exactly dominant. Dominant suggests some kind of struggle, or at least a secondary element that needs dominating. Instead Liverpool occupied Selhurst Park like a team of peacekeepers.
This was a team in eco mode, regenerative braking football, a game of mature and sensible throttle management. That style also raises its own issues. Palace will be criticised for lacking aggression in the first half, during which they didn’t commit a single foul. But Liverpool also bring this on. They’re basically chloroforming you in those moments. Give in to it. Sleep.
Teams will learn to respond to this, and there was more from Palace in the second half after Jean-Philippe Mateta came on. They might have had a penalty, but didn’t quite meet the bar for holding at a corner. Eberechi Eze failed to finish a good opening after an excellent break. Liverpool become less, not more, incisive as the end loomed. The problem with bringing down the temperature is, can you always bring it back up, crank the lever when you need to? Control is hard. It’s not passive or cold. It’s an act of aggression too.
It is also one that Liverpool are still learning. At the start it was interesting to see the back four constantly talking, shuttling, rearranging each other. Shape not energy is everything now.
The only goal came from a beautifully simple move with eight minutes gone. Kostas Tsimikas played a straight through ball inside the left-back channel as the Palace defence dithered. Cody Gakpo put the cross into the most logical space. Diogo Jota produced a classic poacher’s diagonal run and finished with a cool little poke of the toe.
This was a rational goal, an empirically sensible goal. Palace pressing high with two narrow central midfielders left space on the flank. Trevoh Chalobah in his first start would naturally need to explore the right way to work with his left wing-back. This is a tender point. We will press at it.
For a while after that the game was like a movie where things keep threatening to happen but don’t. Jota should have made it 2-0. Maybe Liverpool would suffer from “not killing the game off”? But they didn’t really. Instead for long periods Palace were just bolted into their own half. Liverpool can play a high line, can keep the ball, can hold that midfield box in possession. They will just strangle you when this works.
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Ryan Gravenberch was excellent again, such a lovely, easy mover, always looking around even as he barrels into the clinches. He touched the ball 40 times in the opening half-hour. It would be a surprise to hear he actually broke a sweat during this. From a distance Gravenberch looked as if he was quietly mowing the lawn or listening to a podcast while incidentally dominating a Premier League midfield.
The most interesting aspect is, of course, how quickly this Liverpool team have got here, the journey from always cranking the throttle and gunning the carbon, led by a beaming petrolhead in a baseball cap, pumping the pedal in his sweat-soaked running shoes, slurping another energy drink, windows down, pomp rock classics on repeat. It is a remarkable thing to switch to the zero emission stuff so effectively, a tribute to Slot’s clarity and persuasiveness. It is also worth remembering that in December 2020 Liverpool came here, won 7-0, went top of the table, then basically fell apart amid an injury crisis and didn’t win at home again until March.
They have a run of games now that will properly test and refine the more measured style. It seems obvious enough this is a team that will try to build those other gears on top, to find aggression out of control. Watching Liverpool win here was at times like sitting though a finely honed piece of music without emotional peaks, just waiting for a Mozart to come along and bash a few trills and swoops into it. But top of the league isn’t a bad place to learn from.
