Winning ugly forms a big part of any successful national campaign, as many title winners attest.
Liverpool certainly didn’t look like a deserved winner against Leicester in the balance of the game and Trent Alexander-Arnold pointed to a near-fatal lack of intensity as an explanation behind the Reds’ poor early start.
“I think we definitely pride ourselves on our intensity, especially in the first 15 or 20 minutes, and that wasn’t there today to be honest,” the England international told liverpoolfc.com.
“It was a slow and lethargic start to the game, the intensity wasn’t there, that’s what we’re good at and we just didn’t get it done today.
“So it’s one where we need to think about why that happened, but there are no excuses. In the end we got the three points.”
Given how much Pep Lijnders (and Jurgen Klopp) value the power of ‘intensity’ (the title of the Dutchman’s book on the 2021/22 quadruple try, incidentally), it’s an admission the assistant coach won’t be pleased with.
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Still, with most of the points taken from the maximum available since the return of domestic action, we have built ourselves a solid platform of early results.
We have no doubt that defensive solidity will be helped by the return of Fabinho, who was absent against Brendan Rodgers’ men due to the birth of his son, to the No.6 spot, a position Jordan Henderson struggled to fill.
Ultimately, it should highlight the clear need to bring in a new set of legs in January, though it remains to be seen if our recruiting team will act beyond the addition of Cody Gakpo.
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