MATCH REACTION
Conor Gallagher just ended the goal drought at Anfield, and that is the headline
Liverpool won at Anfield in the Carabao Cup. Fine. Write that headline, it is accurate. But bury the fact that Conor Gallagher put the ball in the net at Anfield and ended a goal drought that had been following this squad around for weeks, and you have written a dishonest story.
Let me say the honest part first, because I always do. We lost. A rotated side went to one of the hardest away grounds in the country and came up short on the night. I am not going to pretend that did not happen. What I am not going to do is let that be the only sentence anyone remembers about last night. Because that is the plan. A goal by us at Anfield is inconvenient to everybody who has spent a month selling the drought, so it goes in paragraph nine, if it goes in at all.
For weeks the story around this squad has been about the ball not going in. That story ended at Anfield, of all places, against a side that has made a habit of shutting teams out this season. Gallagher did not pick a soft night to find that goal. He picked the hardest one available and did it anyway.
Why the venue actually matters here
Anyone can score against a team that is not trying. Scoring your way out of a drought away at Anfield, in a competition De Zerbi has already said he wants to take seriously, tells you something real about a squad that plenty of people had already written off for the month. That is not a moral victory dressed up as a real one. That is an actual data point, and it points the right way.
They can have the three points and the clean scoreline. We got the goal that mattered more than the result, and I noticed exactly who scored it.
What happens now
A cup exit stings for an evening and is forgotten by the weekend. A squad remembering how to score does not disappear the same way. That is the version of last night I am carrying into the next match, whatever anyone else decides to remember instead. I have since written about la scintilla, and why one goal is all a stuck side needs.