Glory Of The Football Manager System

The second half was the greatest forty-five minutes of football that Crystal Palace had ever played.

In the fifty-second minute, Palace equalised. A corner. KB-29. The same routine that had produced Dann’s goal at the Emirates. Short corner, Zaha to Townsend (who had come on for Navas at half-time), Townsend back to Zaha, the delivery to the back post.

Dann, who had replaced Konaté at half-time because the eighteen-year-old was carrying a knock and because Dann was free on the back post at corners and the match demanded set-piece presence, rose above Lovren and headed it into the net.

Liverpool 2-2 Crystal Palace. Dann. 52 minutes.

The captain. Again. The man who had headed Palace into the cup final at the Emirates. The man who had been at the club for seven years. Heading the equaliser at Anfield from the same set-piece routine, in the same week, against the same odds. He ran to the corner. Not the Holmesdale this time. The away end at Anfield. Two thousand people losing their minds.

Lorraine was standing on her seat. Malcolm, whose hip prevented him from standing on seats, was standing on his seat. Sharon was crying. The twelve passengers from Peckham, who had driven across England in a hired minibus with a sellotaped badge, were producing a noise that should have been physically impossible for twelve people to produce.

The match entered a phase that television pundits would later call "the fifteen minutes."

The period between the fifty-fifth and the seventieth minute when both teams attacked with the abandon of sides that had accepted the draw was not enough and that only a win would satisfy.

Salah hit the post again. Fifty-eighth minute. Pope beaten, the ball striking the woodwork and bouncing away. Kovačić hit the bar. Sixty-first minute. A shot from twenty-five yards that the wind caught and lifted and that Karius watched sail over him with the helpless expression of a goalkeeper who had been beaten by physics.

Firmino had a goal disallowed for offside. Sixty-third. The Brazilian a yard beyond the last defender, the linesman’s flag late, the Kop’s roar dying mid-crescendo.

Rodríguez played a pass in the sixty-fifth that was so beautiful, so perfectly conceived, so exquisitely executed that the Liverpool defenders stopped defending and simply watched it travel.

The ball moved forty yards, from the centre circle to Zaha’s feet on the left touchline, the trajectory bending around Van Dijk’s cover position and arriving at the winger’s boot with the weight of a whisper.

Zaha controlled it, drove at Alexander-Arnold, and crossed for Benteke, whose header was saved by Karius at full stretch. The save was brilliant. The passage of play was better.

In the seventy-third minute, Liverpool scored the goal that should have won the match.

Salah again. His second of the night, his twenty-fourth of the season. A counter-attack that started with a Palace corner. Karius caught the corner, threw it to Robertson, Robertson played it long to Firmino, Firmino laid it off to Salah, who was already running, already past Dann, already through on goal with the pace that made him the most feared forward in Europe.

He rounded Pope. He scored. He slid on his knees towards the Kop, his arms outstretched, the Egyptian king, the goal machine, the man who was rewriting Liverpool’s record books with every match.

Liverpool 3-2 Crystal Palace. Salah. 73 minutes.

The Kop was delirious. The banner swayed. "WALSH CAME ONCE. HE WON’T WIN TWICE." Three-two. The same scoreline as last time, but reversed. Liverpool ahead with seventeen minutes remaining. The winning streak over. The narrative flipping.

On the touchline, I made one change. Blake for Navas’s replacement Townsend. The eighteen-year-old striker, who had scored against Chelsea and against Forest and who had been told that morning that his playing time was increasing because Abraham was gone. Fresh legs. Fresh hunger. The academy’s answer to the crisis.

And then, in the eighty-seventh minute, Palace scored the goal that would be replayed on every highlight show for the rest of the season.

Neves won the ball on the halfway line. A tackle on Henderson that was pure commitment, his body sliding across the Anfield turf, the ball breaking free. Kovačić collected. He looked up. The pitch was open.

Liverpool had committed seven players forward. Three Palace players were ahead of the ball. The counter-attack was a three-versus-three, the kind of transition that Sarah had identified at half-time, the spaces behind Robertson and Alexander-Arnold enormous because both full-backs were in the Palace half.

Kovačić carried the ball ten yards. Van Dijk came to meet him. The Dutchman, the most expensive defender in history, who had not been dribbled past all season, who treated opposing forwards the way a lighthouse treated waves, stepped forward to close.

Kovačić didn’t try to beat him. He played a pass. A simple, square, ten-yard pass to Neves, who had recovered from his tackle and was running beside him. Neves took one touch. Looked up. Saw Zaha on the left, sprinting, Robertson ten yards behind him. Saw Blake on the right, running in behind Alexander-Arnold, the eighteen-year-old’s pace carrying him past the twenty-year-old.

Neves chose Blake.

The pass was perfect. Over the top. Behind Alexander-Arnold. Into the space. Blake collected it on his chest, the ball dropping to his feet, Karius coming out. Eighteen years old. At Anfield. Eighty-seventh minute.

One-on-one with the goalkeeper. The Palace fans in the away end holding their breath. Lorraine standing on her seat. Malcolm standing on his seat with his bad hip screaming. Sharon with both hands over her mouth.

Blake didn’t think. Blake didn’t calculate. Blake did what Danny Walsh had taught him at under-eighteens, what he had drilled on the training pitches at Beckenham when he was fifteen years old and the senior team was someone else’s problem: he put his foot through it.

Right foot. Low. Hard. Past Karius. Into the bottom corner. The net rippled. The sound of the ball hitting the net was swallowed by the sound of two thousand Palace fans at Anfield producing a noise that shook the foundations of the Anfield Road end.

Liverpool 3-3 Crystal Palace. Blake. 87 minutes.

Connor Blake. Eighteen years old. Anfield. The eighty-seventh minute. The goal that saved the unbeaten run. The boy that Danny Walsh coached at under-eighteens, that Danny Walsh promoted to the senior squad in August, that Danny Walsh refused to replace with a January signing because "the system doesn’t depend on one position, it depends on the identity."

Blake ran to the away end. He ran the way teenagers run when they have scored the most important goal of their lives: with no plan, no destination, no choreography, just the raw, explosive, uncomplicated joy of a boy who had put a football in a net at Anfield and who could not contain what that meant.

His teammates caught him. Sakho first, because Sakho was always first, the big man vaulting the advertising boards the way he had vaulted them at the Emirates, wrapping Blake in an embrace that lifted the boy off the ground.

Dann arrived. Then Neves. Then Kovačić, who had played the pass that started the counter-attack, and who was smiling the unguarded, unperformed smile of a man who had played at the San Siro and the Bernabéu and who was now experiencing something he had not experienced at either: joy.

On the touchline, Klopp stood with his hands on his head. The universal gesture of a manager who has just watched a lead disappear. But Klopp’s hands-on-head was different from other managers’ hands-on-head. It lasted three seconds.

Then he dropped his hands, straightened his glasses, and nodded. The nod of a man who recognised quality and who did not begrudge the opposition their moment. Klopp had been beaten by Danny Walsh before. He understood the feeling. He respected the man who had inflicted it.

I stood on the touchline. I did not celebrate. I did not pump my fist. I did not run. The villain stood still and felt the weight of what had just happened settle into his chest like a stone.

The winning streak was over. Eleven consecutive Premier League wins. Ended at Anfield. By Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané and a Liverpool side that was one of the best in Europe.

But the unbeaten run continued. Twenty-three matches. Across four competitions. And the draw, the 3-3, the six-goal, breathless, extraordinary, utterly insane match at Anfield, was not a defeat. It was a declaration.

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Thank you to Sir nameyelus for the Super Gift.