The highest praise you could offer Liverpool’s performance at White Hart Lane yesterday was that, even while wearing one pink boot and one turquoise on his much heralded return to English football, Mario Balotelli was nothing like the centre of attention.
Brendan Rodgers, already a little piqued by the media fascination with his latest signing, had said beforehand that “it’s not the Mario Balotelli show” and that his team would continue to transcend any individual. That is certainly how it looked yesterday, with the new acquisition from AC Milan appearing to settle quickly into a machine that clicked into gear to inflict another resounding defeat on Tottenham Hotspur.
This was a reality check for Tottenham, who had begun the new season with victories over West Ham United and Queens Park Rangers in the Barclays Premier League and AEL Limassol, twice, in the Europa League.
They had no answer to the speed and fluency of Liverpool’s attacking play and, after goals from the outstanding Raheem Sterling, Steven Gerrard and Alberto Moreno put the visiting team 3-0 up inside an hour, Mauricio Pochettino might just have been grateful that the scoreline did not end up quite so one-sided as on the teams’ two meetings last season.
A 5-0 home defeat in this fixture last December proved the end for André Villas-Boas’s tenure at Tottenham. A 4-0 loss at Anfield in March was followed within days by the news that Tim Sherwood would be replaced in the summer. This, by contrast, will be greeted internally as a mere setback after an encouraging start for Pochettino, who said that his players had been beaten by “a very good team who almost won the Premier League last season and have been building the team for more than two years”.
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The sale of Luis Suárez to Barcelona has represented the greatest challenge in Rodgers’s construction job with Liverpool, but he maintains that his club have invested the proceeds of that deal far more shrewdly than Tottenham did after the departure of Gareth Bale last summer. It is not as easy as it sounds, improving a team after selling a star player for an enormous fee, so at this early stage of the season Rodgers will be delighted by a performance such as this in a difficult-looking game that four of his summer signings — Javier Manquillo, Dejan Lovren, Moreno and Balotelli — started, with Emre Can and Lazar Markovic coming off the bench.
Balotelli should have scored at least once in the first half. Less than three minutes had gone when Sturridge crossed from the left, picking out Balotelli at the far post. The Italian’s first effort, a header, was well saved by Hugo Lloris, but it was less excusable that he scuffed the follow-up wide. Then came another free header, with which he missed the target from Steven Gerrard’s free kick, and, to the delight of the home supporters, a misdirected volley when the ball dropped at his feet 35 yards from an unguarded goal after a poor kick from Hugo Lloris near the end of the first half.
By that stage, Liverpool were 1-0 up through Sterling’s seventh-minute goal, which underlined Rodgers’s point about how the fluency of his team is what really matters. Sturridge dropped towards the right touchline, evaded Jan Vertonghen and played a clever pass into the path of Jordan Henderson, driving forward through the inside-right channel. Henderson’s break from midfield was matched by that from Sterling, arriving on the blind side of the Tottenham defence to score at the far post when the cross arrived.
There were chances at the other end too, but they tended to owe more to poor Liverpool defending than any great ingenuity on Tottenham’s part.
Emmanuel Adebayor should have scored after the visiting defence was carved open by Nabil Bentaleb’s pass over the top, but the forward’s lob landed on the roof of the net. Similarly, when Lovren and Mamadou Sakho were caught out by a routine diagonal ball from Eric Dier, an equaliser looked likely, but Nacer Chadli’s fierce shot was struck too close to Simon Mignolet.
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Errant defending was the only real threat to Liverpool — the Lovren-Sakho partnership needs a lot of work — but Tottenham’s carelessness was on another scale. Early in the second half, Dier inexplicably tugged Joe Allen in the penalty area. Allen’s tumble was theatrical, but that, sadly, is to be expected these days. It was a soft penalty rather than a harsh one. Either way, Gerrard showed no mercy.
Pochettino sent on Mousa Dembélé and Andros Townsend in the hope of seeing something different from his team, but the latter’s first contribution was to be dispossessed by Moreno just inside the Liverpool half. Moreno accelerated away, continued his run and let fly from inside the penalty area, beating Loris to make it 3-0.
Balotelli took his leave soon after and watched from the bench as Sterling sparkled in the final half-hour. One mazy run, in particular, underlined Sterling’s talent, even if the finish did not.
Tottenham never threatened to make a game of it and at times it seemed that a repeat of last season’s 5-0 scoreline might be on the cards.
When Rodgers described afterwards how his diamond formation had meant that Liverpool would never be outnumbered by what he called Tottenham’s “narrow” 4-2-3-1, it all sounded remarkably easy.
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It looks easy, too, when talented players are all pulling in the right direction, enhancing a framework in which they are all comfortable. That challenge has been complicated a little by the arrival of Balotelli, but this was a highly encouraging start.
Ratings
Tottenham Hotspur (4-2-3-1): H Lloris 5 — E Dier 5, Y Kaboul 4, J Vertonghen 4, D Rose 4 (sub: B Davies, 71min) — N Bentaleb 6 (sub: M Dembélé, 59 5), E Capoue 5 — C Eriksen 4 (sub: A Townsend, 59 4), E Lamela 5, N Chadli 5 — E Adebayor 5. Substitutes not used: B Friedel, V Chiriches, L Holtby, H Kane.
Liverpool (4-3-1-2): S Mignolet 7 — J Manquillo 7, D Lovren 6, M Sakho 6, A Moreno 8 — J Henderson 8, S Gerrard 7, J Allen 6 (sub: Emre Can, 61 6) — R Sterling 8 (sub: J Enrique, 85) — M Balotelli 6 (sub: L Markovic, 61 5), D Sturridge 7. Substitutes not used: B Jones, K Touré, R Lambert, P Coutinho. Booked: Manquillo, Moreno, Sterling, Allen.