Manchester United 2-1 Liverpool: 5 Key Takeaways From The Big Game

#2 Liverpool’s Plan B is still invisible

Quite often this season we have seen Liverpool absolutely rampage past their opposition with such relative ease that we fail to acknowledge the glitches in their attacking department. However, as Liverpool failed to regularly counter properly, United took away the biggest strength from this Liverpool side.

The directness and speed of Sadio Mane and Mo Salah, along with the finesse of Roberto Firmino makes the Reds a dangerous exponent while countering with pace. Because United played a pragmatic approach, Liverpool were restricted to very few counter attacks.

The intelligent positioning by Matic and McTominay cut down their attacks and hence Liverpool struggled to churn out space near the box.

Most of the teams shift to putting in crosses from the flanks but Robertson and TAA hardly ever did that and were quite narrow in their attack. The incapability in improvising during attacking hampered Liverpool’s chances of finding an equaliser.

#1 Mourinho shows Klopp why he is a better overall manager

A battle between the Portuguese pragmatist against a German football romantic; this is how the game was hyped up before the kickoff. Quite simply put, Jose Mourinho and Jürgen Klopp highlight the two extremes of modern football.

Klopp has earned a lot of praise in recent months due to his man-management and development of some fringe players. However, Jose Mourinho’s contribution to Manchester United has always been talked down about due to the negative criticism that the gaffer attracts from various sections of the media.

When these two sides met in the game, it was clear that the style of football from both the sides were going to be completely different. The manner in which Jose dealt with Klopp’s geggenpress effectively says that the former Real Madrid manager’s tactical nous is second to none. By constantly using the long ball technique, United neutralised Liverpool’s high-press and then capitalised on some defensive lapses to find two goals in less than 24 minutes.

Mourinho’s man-management needs to be praised too as Ashley Young kept Mo Salah quite throughout the game after delivering an underwhelming performance last week. Scott McTominay stuck to his job and earned the plaudits again as Marouane Fellaini came on the pitch late on to add more defensive cover.

Meanwhile, Klopp’s faith in Lovren once again came back to bite him as he was partly responsible for the second goal.