Digging Deeper Into Liverpool’s League Cup Penalty Victory Over Chelsea

Liverpool are through to the next round of the League Cup and have drawn Bournemouth at Anfield in the week of December 14th for the quarter-final. The match they won to get there wasn’t very good and Liverpool won it on penalties. But all we really want to talk about is Joe Gomez so let’s dig into it…

Joe Gomez Game Winning Goal Klaxon (Kinda)

The game ended 1-1 after regulation. Both goals were scored from the penalty spot. Then it went to penalties and Liverpool scored six to Chelsea’s five. And Joe Gomez confidently leathered number six for the Reds. Joe Gomez scored a goal. A game winning goal.

Of course, it won’t go down as such. Penalty shoot-out goals don’t count from that point of view, and officially Gomez is still yet to score a Liverpool goal. But you and I, we know different. We know he stepped up and sealed the win for Liverpool in the League Cup against Chelsea. Joe Gomez, Liverpool goal scorer (kinda).

Winners and Losers

Fans Of Dumb Penalties
It wasn’t the greatest first half you’ll have ever seen, with Liverpool’s youth and fringe players running like they wanted to impress manager Andoni Iraola but rarely to any real effect while the more senior stars in the lineup came across as a touch disinterested—and that was with the Reds still looking mostly the better side.

It wasn’t the greatest second half, either, though the introduction of senior stars like Bradley Barcola and Florian Wirtz did give the Reds a slight—if ultimately unconsequential—boost in the final third.

Mostly, though, the football wasn’t great. Add in a dumb tackle by Ryan Gravenberch to gift Chelsea an opener they didn’t deserve on the run of play and a dumb flailing handball by Wesley Fofana to gift Liverpool the leveller and on sum it was game were some stuff certainly happened but you’d be hard pressed to remember anything particularly good from a players actually playing football point of view.

Fans Of Dull Football
So yeah you’d be forgiven for seeing Liverpool vs. Chelsea under the lights at Anfield on the schedule and expecting a good game of football—or, if not strictly good for any number of reasons, at least interesting and engaging. That would have been dumb of you. Because it’s the League Cup and more often than not, as in the Europa League, these autumn match-ups end up being downright somnambulant.

If ASMR and football that puts you to sleep is your thing, though, we’re not gonna kink shame and are glad you probably had more fun than the rest of us. At least up until Joe Gomez scored a goal (kinda) and won the game. Then we all had fun. But goodness was it a slog getting there.

Joe Gomez
Less sarcastically, even aside from the winning penalty, Gomez again reminded everybody that if he wasn’t made of tissue paper and daydreams he’d likely be rated amongst the best defenders in the world. So. Maybe this time is the time he finally stays fit. Fingers crossed. Forever.

Giorgi Mamardashvili
Meanwhile, Liverpool’s goalkeeper didn’t make any significant errors as a ball stopper, which to be fair is the first job of a goalkeeper. But going from Alisson most weeks to Mamardashvili in the cups can’t help but highlight just how uncomfortable the Georgian remains on the ball and how nervous he seems when called on to push up in his box (never mind leaving it) or collect in the air.

The consensus on the 26-year-old when he signed was that those parts of his game were weak but that he would grow into the well rounded ‘keeper the Reds needed. We’re into his second full season at the club and still waiting to see signs of that, and it’s starting to feel like that’s not a situation benefitting anyone—Mamardashvili perhaps first and foremost. And that, really, is what’s starting to feel most awkward about the situation. It’s year two and seems obvious this is a player who will never be what the Reds need at the position. At this point, the choice not to sell back in the summer feels like the wasting of his career.

How Joe Gomez Reacted

It means everything to play for this club and we know every game, especially here, is massive for us and we want to do our best to represent the shirt. I think we did that tonight.

Obviously it’s a new management team and we want to show that fight, show that grit. It’s mentality and I think that’s what we’re known for and we’re always trying to uphold that standard, and I think we did that tonight. It was important that the lads kept on fighting, kept going until the end and we did that.

It means everything to play for this club and we know every game, especially here, is massive for us and we want to do our best to represent the shirt. I think we did that tonight.

Obviously it’s a new management team and we want to show that fight, show that grit. It’s mentality and I think that’s what we’re known for and we’re always trying to uphold that standard, and I think we did that tonight. It was important that the lads kept on fighting, kept going until the end and we did that.

What Happens Next

Arsenal come to Anfield next on Sunday, and with it a chance for Iraola’s Reds to perhaps better gauge where they are. The Gunners are the best side in the league that aren’t guilty of engaging in £900M of financial doping to get into that position. They’re in the position the Reds were in for the better part of a decade—right up until last season, at least. This is Liverpool’s chance to show, maybe, that last year was an outlier rather than a new normal.