Brighton 3 - 0 Liverpool

Brighton: March 47’, 53’, Welbeck 81’

Pre-Match

Cody Gakpo makes his Premier League debut for Liverpool, starting up front along with Mohamed Salah and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. With Virgil van Dijk still out injured, it’s Joël Matip and Ibrahima Konaté in the center-back positions.

First Half

The early possession belonged to Brighton, who forced a handful of set pieces against Liverpool in the opening minutes of the match. The Reds avoided going behind quickly, but couldn’t seem to find a foothold in the match.

Trent Alexander-Arnold is forced into a dangerous save, getting his boot on a shot that had gotten past Alisson. It may have been a bit wide, but the margins were too close, and Trent saw off the danger while giving up another corner. Alisson stifled the responding effort, but it is by far Brighton who looked more likely to score in the first 10 minutes of the match.

Liverpool couldn’t engineer a single attack in the first 20 minutes that resulted in a shot on goal. Every pass has been too weighted, every counter too slow.

Alisson was not having a good day, showing poor decision-making with his distribution up the pitch. He nearly cost the Reds a penalty as the first half wound down. However, despite impeding March on his way through to goal, the Brighton player was deemed offside in the build up.

As the rain lashed down on both teams, Liverpool just tried to survive until the half time whistle.

Second Half

It didn’t take long at all in the second half for Liverpool to get punished for their sloppy passing. Solly March gets the last laugh against Alisson for their first half dust up and slots home after an errant pass in Liverpool’s defense got picked off in the midfield.

It’s mere minutes later when March makes it two, thoroughly outpacing a gassed out Liverpool team who look like they all want to take a nice nap on the pitch. Any hope that half time might have brought on a positive change for Klopp’s team was debunked in the first 10 minutes after the restart. Liverpool found themselves trailing by two goals, and they deserve it.

They can’t seem to unlock Brighton at all. They look undisciplined and confused as their opponents run circles around them.

Klopp felt the frustration more than any of us and showed it by making an insane quadruple substitution, swapping out Jordan Henderson, Joël Matip, Fabinho, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain all at once. In their places were Naby Keïta, Ben Doak, Harvey Elliott, and Joe Gomez.

There’s not a single player on the pitch for Liverpool who could be said to be having a good game today, but since 11 substitutions is against the rules, this would have to suffice.

Unfortunately, that did nothing to stop Danny Welbeck from sealing Liverpool’s humiliation in the 81st minute, scoring Brighton’s third.

Final Thoughts

That was a brutal 90 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.