Online Reporter
ARNE SLOT’s 100th Liverpool match ended in the pain of Champions League “Hell” on earth.
But at least the damage from a dreadful night was not fatal.
Blown off course by a hurricane of ceaseless sound from every corner of RAMS Park, Liverpool are lucky to be flying home on Wednesday with a chance of putting the record straight at Anfield next week.
Yet with Mo Salah anonymous once more before he was hooked before the hour mark and Ibrahima Konate an accident waiting to happen, Liverpool could have been down and out.
Mario Lemina’s seventh minute header saw the Istanbul amp go up to 11, with Slot’s men rocking at the back all evening and fortunate they were not more heavily punished.
Giorgi Mamardashvili made two huge first half saves before BOTH sides had goals disallowed in a frantic second half played out to that astonishing backdrop of constant bedlam.
Yet while redemption can come back on Merseyside Liverpool look nothing like potential champions of Europe.
Slot will know that, too while the Salah issue is one that will not go away, the Egyptian utterly unable to influence proceedings at all before his night was cut short.
Along with the now familiar banners, with the warning “The world met Hell here, welcome to Hell”, Slot had also highlighted the wall of sound he expected his men to encounter.
He was not wrong. From the start the joint was jumping – quite literally.
It was relentless, incessant, ear-piercing – and initially seemed to induce the heebie-geebies in their OWN side, who were a mess under any sort of hustle.
Florian Wirtz, could, arguably should, have silenced the baying hordes inside two minutes, when Dominik Szoboszlai pressured Lucas Torreira into an error.
The German, operating on the left, had a gaping target with keeper Ugurcan Cakir out of position but dragged wastefully wide from 25 yards.
A miss punished as Liverpool’s season-long frailties at the back resurfaced.
Noa Lang ran at Joe Gomez – chosen on the right – to win a corner, which Gabriel Sara arrowed to the far post.
Masked marauder Victor Osimhen rose above three green shirts to nod back and there was Lemina, the former Fulham and Southampton midfielder, whose diving header from close range gave Mamardashvili no chance.
Osimhen was close to a second as he headed wide after getting in between Virgil van Dijk and Milos Kerkez before Wirtz squandered the chance to make amends, firing straight at Cakir when he was found by Alexis Mac Allister.
Defensively, though, now Liverpool were all over the place with Mamardashvili’s saves critical for the Reds. – The Sun
