Chapter 874 - 874: Liverpool

The second half started the way I wanted it to and that lasted 6 minutes.

48 minutes. Rúben Neves stayed where I had put him and Liverpool pressed 5 men who were not there for the second time in a night, and Højbjerg took it off Milner and we had 40 yards of Wembley.

51 minutes. Zaha went at Alexander-Arnold and won a corner and Bray called 6 and Alisson came and caught it above 3 people.

55 minutes. Jordan Henderson stopped pressing.

That is the moment the shape of that match changed and about 4 people in the ground knew it was happening. He stopped, he dropped 8 yards, and he started pointing instead of running.

And 40 yards away Jürgen Klopp had his arms out at nobody and then put them down.

He had seen it before Henderson did. He had seen it at about 51 and I watched him see it, and there is nothing a manager can do about a midfielder who has run 118 per cent of a normal 55 minutes except take him off, and Jordan Henderson is his captain and it was 1-1.

So he changed the other end instead.

"MARCUS. WHAT IS HE DOING."

"Milner has come inside. Salah has gone right and Mané has gone central." Marcus had a screen 4 feet from my elbow. "They have stopped pressing us and started playing through us. That is a different match, boss."

It was a different match, and it was a better one for them, and he made that change from a touchline in about 40 seconds without speaking to anybody.

They had done 55 minutes at 118 per cent and it had cost them. Rebecca said at 24 minutes that they could not hold it and she was right by half an hour, and it did not matter, because the man in the other technical area had already built the next thing.

59 minutes. Jack Grealish came off that bench and warmed up on the far touchline and that whole west side stood up for a man who had not kicked a ball since the 3rd of August, and I did not put him on and I have thought about that since.

62 minutes. Salah hit one from 25 and Krul took it clean.

Then it was 20 minutes of nothing, and then 25 minutes I will remember when I am 70.

66 minutes. Klopp put Shaqiri on for Keïta and pushed Milner out to the right.

69 minutes. I put Ivan Perišić on for Jarrod Bowen.

11 days at this football club. 30 minutes, in writing, from Rebecca. A stadium full of people who have seen him play 0 minutes of football for this club stood up for a man who was at Inter Milan a fortnight ago.

He touched it 4 times in his first 3 minutes and 3 of them were 40 yard switches.

74 minutes.

Firmino got it in the middle with Sakho tight and turned him, and it went through to Salah, and Salah was through.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka is 20 years old. Somebody offered 55 million pounds for him 12 days ago. He has not been beaten 1 against 1 in a league match since December.

He got back. He got all the way back from 15 yards behind, and he got a toe to that ball 30 yards from our goal, and he got the ball.

He got the man 4 tenths of a second later.

Prrp.

Michael Oliver did not run and he did not think about it.

Red.

I did not say a word.

There is a version of me that goes 20 yards onto that pitch and I have seen managers do it and it costs them a touchline ban and it changes nothing.

He got the ball. He also got the man, and he was the last man, and Michael Oliver has given that every week of his career and Jones said so on television on Thursday night.

"OFF. OFF. OFF."

3,000 in that corner, and the rest of that stadium stayed dead quiet, because every single person in it had seen him get the ball.

Aaron went off with his shirt over his face and Michael Steele met him at the tunnel mouth and walked him down it.

16 minutes. 10 men. 1-1. Liverpool.

I had 1 substitution left and 11 men on a bench.

Scott Dann for Ivan Perišić is the correct decision. It is what I would tell any manager in that division to do, and it is what Jürgen Klopp expected, because he moved Shaqiri to the left the second that card came out and he did it before I had turned round.

Here is what Liverpool have got on their bench and what we have got on ours.

They have Fabinho, who cost 40 million in May. They have Wijnaldum. They have Sturridge, who has scored 60 Premier League goals.

We have got a 19-year-old who won a Golden Ball 5 weeks ago, a 16-year-old who scored in a European final, a 20-year-old who has played 11 minutes of senior football, and a 22-year-old who has not kicked a ball since the 3rd of August and is stood 4 feet from me with his boots on.

Every 1 of them wanted it. Jack Grealish had his top off before I looked at the bench.

I put Achraf Hakimi on for James McArthur.

A right back for a midfielder, with 10 men, 1-1, against Liverpool.

Sarah did not look up from the folder.

"You are going for it."

"They have got 16 minutes of Salah and Mané and 10 men in front of them, and if we sit down they score in 6."

"I know."

"Then say the other thing."

"There is no other thing," Sarah said. "Achraf runs 70 yards in a straight line and he does not stop and there is nobody at that club who wants to run 70 yards backwards in the 80th minute of a match they are supposed to be winning."

They came.

79 minutes. Van Dijk went up for a corner and got his head on it.

Thwack. Krul held it on the line with 2 hands and 4 men on top of him.

82 minutes. Shaqiri from 20 yards.

"OOOOOH."

It went over.

85 minutes. Robertson put a cross on Firmino's head 6 yards out.

Ffft.

Firmino put it wide, and that ground made a sound I have only heard at a World Cup.

And every single time we got that ball back, Achraf Hakimi went.

Not once. 6 times in 11 minutes, 70 yards, on his own, with nobody near him, into a space Andy Robertson had left because Andy Robertson is a full back who has been told to attack a team with 10 men.

The 6th one, Robertson stopped going.

88 minutes.

Tim Krul held a cross and threw it flat to Rúben Neves and Neves gave it to Hakimi before he had turned round.

70 yards.

Come on.

shhk. shhk. shhk.

Robertson went with him for 40 of it and then he was 4 yards behind and then he was 8, and Achraf Hakimi got to the byline at Wembley Stadium in the 88th minute of a football match his team were playing with 10 men.

He did not cross it.

He pulled it back, flat and hard and 6 inches off the grass, across the face of that goal, the way he has done it since he was 17 in Madrid on a training pitch nobody watched.

And Ivan Perišić came in from the back post.

11 days at this football club. 29 years old. 6 foot 2. Sold by Real Madrid's biggest rival in a window when nobody in England wanted him.

Everything went slow.

I saw Alisson go to his near post because the ball was going across him. I saw Van Dijk get a leg out. I saw Perišić get in front of Alexander-Arnold with his shoulder and not touch him.

Boom.

Right foot. 6 yards. Off the underside of the bar.

2-1.

I have been asked about the next 4 seconds about 40 times.

I did not celebrate it. I have watched it back and I am stood in a technical area with both hands on top of my own head and my mouth open and I am not making a sound.

Bray went 15 yards onto that pitch and Michael Oliver did not book him.

Sarah stood up.

RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

61,400 people under that arch in August, and I have won a Europa League and a Super Cup and stood in a World Cup final and I have never heard a noise like the one that came out of that stadium at 12 minutes to 10 on the 20th of August 2018.

It went up and it hit that arch and it came back down and it did it again.

Ivan Perišić ran to the corner where the drum is and got there before anybody caught him, and he stood in front of 3,000 people who had watched him play 19 minutes of football for their club and he put both arms out.

Achraf Hakimi got to him last, from 70 yards away, because he had been on the byline.

"HOLD. HOLD. EVERYBODY HOLD."

6 minutes and 4 of stoppage.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

Liverpool put Van Dijk up front for the last 3 and Palace put 10 men in a box and Christian Benteke headed 4 balls out of it and Tim Krul caught 2 crosses in traffic and James Tarkowski went off the pitch at the end with blood on his shirt that was not his.

Salah had 1 more at 90+3. Left foot, 18 yards, and Krul got both hands on it and held it and did not let go.

PRRRRRRP. PRRRRRRP. PRRRRRRP.

Crystal Palace 2 Liverpool 1.

Jürgen Klopp came across that pitch and got hold of my hand with both of his and said 6 words to me and I am not putting 4 of them down.

The other 2 were ten men.

Then he went and found Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who had come back out of that tunnel in a tracksuit at the whistle to stand with 10 men who had won without him, and Jürgen Klopp spent about 40 seconds with him with a hand on the back of his neck.

I do not know what he said.

Aaron has a match ban. He misses Watford.

He was stood in the middle of Wembley at 5 past 10 at night with his hands on his head, and the whole of that stadium was singing, and Michael Steele was stood next to him and neither of them said anything at all.