A SLOT OF BOTHER (AND THEN SOME)<\/p>\n
While the good news for Liverpool is that they get to play Paris Saint-Germain again next week, the bad news is that they get to play Paris Saint-Germain again next week. Having spent much of his time in England bemoaning the cowardice of opposition teams who sit deep against his side, there was a certain irony in seeing Liverpool\u2019s head coach embrace the negative tactics he has so often pooh-poohed during his side\u2019s 2-0 evisceration<\/a> at the hands of the reigning Bigger Cup holders in Paris. On a night when Liverpool had just 28% possession, registered zero shots on target and hoped for the best at a couple of Joe Gomez long throws, Arne Slot was at least treated to a masterclass on how best to overcome the kind of \u201canti-football\u201d he has long lamented.<\/p>\n After two consecutive thrashings that suggested any residual heavy-metal football from the J\u00fcrgen Klopp era has now made way for its elevator-music equivalent, Slot offered up no excuses<\/a> and admitted he had flown in the face of his own purist philosophy in an attempt to keep the tie alive for the second leg. While a faint pulse remains, its presence is down to a combination of the heroics of the game\u2019s second-best Georgian, some generous refereeing and some really quite atrocious PSG finishing rather than anything achieved by Liverpool\u2019s snake-belly low block. \u201cThey ripped us apart at times,\u201d wailed Slot in a series of sombre post-match debriefs. \u201cEvery tactic has been tried over here, but the result is always the same, with Paris Saint-Germain blowing the opponent away. They have so many weapons and it makes them so difficult to play against. We were in survival mode, but they kept us alive by missing their chances.\u201d<\/p>\n The mighty Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. Photograph: St\u00e9phanie Lecocq\/Reuters<\/p>\n Of course, it is not unprecedented for Liverpool to pull off near miraculous Bigger Cup comebacks at Anfield against teams featuring forwards in full-on barn door-banjo mode. But Wednesday night\u2019s events suggest that despite the failure of Ballon d\u2019Or-winner Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 and assorted teammates to finish off their visitors, the current incarnation of PSG ought to have very little to worry about next Tuesday. In the aftermath of this humbling, PSG\u2019s metronomic midfield maestro Vitinha patiently waited pitchside for Liverpool substitute Trey Nyoni to finish his post-match warm-down so the duo could exchange shirts. It was the nearest any player in red had got to the diminutive Portuguese all night.<\/p>\n Despite being outclassed, Liverpool remain in this tie and for the return leg on Merseyside, Virgil van Dijk has called upon fans to do their best to make it one of those cliched Anfield nights. \u201cI\u2019ve been through many special evenings at Anfield,\u201d he reminisced<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m very lucky and privileged. And our fans, that\u2019s the backbone of the club and hopefully they can be there for us again.\u201d While it is likely to take more than a stirring rendition of a Carousel closing number sung by already disgruntled fans to get their team back in this tie, the evidence thus far suggests Liverpool\u2019s players will need all the help they can get to turn things around. Whatever the outcome next week \u2013 and Football Daily can see only one<\/a> \u2013 it seems little more than a matter of time before the club hierarchy pull the plug on this malfunctioning Slot machine.<\/p>\n LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE<\/p>\n Join Taha Hashim from 8pm BST for hot Bigger Vase quarter-final, first-leg action from Bologna 1-1 Aston Villa, while Will Unwin will be on deck at the same time for Porto 2-1 Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n QUOTE OF THE DAY<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the club that invented football and I don\u2019t think that story has been told adequately or correctly. I didn\u2019t even know the club was a thing until I was about 18 years old and I\u2019m a football fan. It\u2019s been a historic problem for the city of Sheffield that we don\u2019t shout about ourselves or tell our own fables in the way the Mancs do or scousers do\u201d \u2013 Reverend and the Makers frontman Jon McClure gets his chat on<\/a> about becoming the new chair of Sheffield FC.<\/p>\n Jon McClure in the stands of the Home of Football Ground \u2026 in Dronfield, Derbyshire. Photograph: Rob Nicholson\/Pedalo<\/p>\n double quotation markThis is a great, great PSG side. But take it first hand from me, the Championship Manager 97-98 squad of Patrice Loco, Rai et Florian Maurice was (and remains) a joy to coach \u2013 simply a winning machine in attacking 4-4-2. Fitting to see a team with such rich history continuing to dominate\u201d \u2013 Alexander McMillan.<\/p>\n double quotation markEnjoyed your celebration of Michael Olise\u2019s \u2018unstoppable one-man insurgency\u2019 against Real Madrid (yesterday\u2019s Football Daily<\/a>) \u2013 he really is quite good. But why does he have to be \u2018the former Crystal Palace winger\u2019 rather than, say, \u2018the Reading academy discovery\u2019. Olise\u2019s estimable talents may go on to achieve many things (including quite plausibly Bigger Cup and the Geopolitics World Cup this year), but the most consequential is surely saving one of England\u2019s oldest clubs through the sell-on clause to Bayern Munich\u201d \u2013 David Gilbert.<\/p>\n double quotation markI wouldn\u2019t call Nike\u2019s problems with the shoulder seams on the GWC shirts uncharacteristic (yesterday\u2019s Football Daily letters<\/a>). When they took over MLB uniforms in 2024, the new designs\u2019 pants became transparent<\/a> after a couple innings\u2019 sweat and shredded on the first slide, which, to be fair, is only something baseball players have done for 150 years\u201d \u2013 Josh Crockett.<\/p>\n If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com<\/a>. Today\u2019s prizeless letter o\u2019 the day winner is \u2026 David Gilbert. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n RECOMMENDED LISTENING<\/p>\n Football Weekly Extra is here, here, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n RECOMMENDED VIEWING<\/p>\n And you can watch the pod crew here<\/a> too.<\/p>\n RECOMMENDED DONATING<\/p>\n Barry is running the London Landmarks Half-Marathon on Sunday to raise money for the Great Ormond Street hospital children\u2019s charity. He\u2019s already more than quadrupled his original target of \u00a313,100 but would be grateful for any more donations in the last few days before the race because, well, it\u2019s a brilliant cause and here at Football Daily Towers we think he needs every bit of motivation he can get. If you can, donate here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A SLOT OF BOTHER (AND THEN SOME) While the good news for Liverpool is that they get to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-595914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}