It’s interesting that Arne Slot’s commitment to bringing “joy” to the masses – a virtue he extolled before his side stunk the place out in their defeat to Wolves on Tuesday – doesn’t extend much beyond fielding a very exciting teenager.
Slot was “almost annoyed” in his pre-match press conference when it was suggested he might take a more attacking approach in a second game against Wolves in four days.
“We don’t approach the game by saying, ‘OK, in the first 70 minutes, we don’t want to have the ball or we don’t want to attack.’ No, we do. That it doesn’t lead to anything, that we completely agree on.”
In search of reasons for the malaise which has been the feature of so many of Liverpool’s games this season Slot proposed “the opponent being fitter at the start of the game than the end” or perhaps an increase in “urgency” from his side.
Neither reason will have placated Liverpool fans watching another horrible first half of football at Molineux. The slow side-to-side passing made for painful viewing; a 17-year-old was the only source of relief from the melancholy.
“He has to start Ngumoha now,” Steven Gerrard said after the teenager’s midweek cameo. “He has to start him because he’s coming on and he’s doing more in a short cameo in a short space of time than Gakpo’s doing in 65, 70 minutes.”
After planting a seed of uncertainty in the mind of Jackson Tchatchoua early on, Ngumoha had the Wolves wing-back precisely where he wanted him for the rest of the evening, backing off into his box, not knowing whether his opponent would be going left or right and typically failing to stop the Liverpool star no matter his decision.
The difference in confidence, speed and – most notably – the aura of Ngumoha compared to Mohamed Salah was marked. While Salah is now an almost comically easy winger to defend as if you get touch tight he does nothing, opposition players dare not risk getting close to Ngumoha for fear of being utterly embarrassed by him.
“He’s been so, so poor tonight,” Stephen Warnock said in whatever the opposite of a commentator’s curse is, roughly a minute before Salah did well to hold the ball up on the counter-attack before Andy Robertson’s stunning striker broke the deadlock, and no more than three minutes ahead of Salah scoring himself from a brilliant Robertson cross.
Warnock attempted to qualify his previous Salah slight before his game-changing impact by then insisting “he’s a moments player”, and it’s for those moments that the Liverpool legend still just about merits a place in this team, though the lack of a suitable alternative is another big factor.
Whether because of Trent Alexander-Arnold’s departure, a changeable and unreliable midfield, a loss of legs or a sulking undercurrent still present after he threw his toys out of the pram in November, Salah is nowhere close to his previous level.
To the extent that Liverpool fans watching Salah and Ngumoha both being subbed off in the 70th minute may be at least as keen for that move to signal the teenager’s legs being saved as his eminent teammate.
The combination of being the purveyor of Liverpool “joy” and not being Cody Gakpo – one of the main scapegoats for the Reds’ inert attacking displays this season – means the clamour will be deafening for Ngumoha’s inclusion, particularly if he plays ahead of Robertson again as the full-back’s quality and experience gave rise the sort of left-sided chemistry Liverpool have rarely seen, if at all, this season.
The Ngumoha clamourers were proved right in this game and were also offered a huge boost for the future through strong hints that Salah’s aura hasn’t left Anfield altogether but has been absorbed by a teenager running down the opposite wing, Ngumoha oha-oha-oha-oha-haaa.
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