Jordon Ibe gives Liverpool advantage against Stoke in Capital One Cup
Stoke 0 - 1 Liverpool
Away team scorers
Jordon Ibe 37
Jordon Ibe celebrates scoring Liverpool’s goal in the first leg of the the Capital One Cup semi-final against Stoke City.
Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to the way Liverpool set about this tie is that in the closing stages Stoke City had abandoned all the deft soft-touch football for which they would like to be renowned and gone back to aiming long, hopeful balls up to Peter Crouch. There was no way through and Jürgen Klopp’s team deserve their lead after subduing a side that has already beaten Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City on this ground this season.
Stoke certainly chose a bad night to forget the qualities that have made them such dangerous opponents recently and, having been reminded so many times that this was their first semi-final in this competition since 1972, it has to be questioned whether they allowed a little uncertainty to creep in. Bojan Krkic and Xherdan Shaqiri were substituted after strangely listless performances and there was a collective gasp from the crowd when the public announcer named Marko Arnautovic as the man of the match.
Krkic connected only with thin air with his one chance to score. Shaqiri’s night was summed up when he hit a corner straight out of play and Arnautovic rarely threatened a Liverpool side who outpassed the home team for long spells, particularly in the first half when the substitute Jordon Ibe scored the game’s decisive goal. Klopp’s men are now in a considerable position of strength before the second leg at Anfield on 26 January and the only downside is the sudden epidemic of hamstring injuries that has left them with a patched-up back four, Philippe Coutinho back on the treatment table and the makings of a defensive crisis.
Their victory certainly came at a cost given that Coutinho lasted only 17 minutes and was limping so heavily when Ibe replaced him that the Brazilian cannot be expected back for Liverpool’s next two Premier League fixtures, at home to Arsenal and Manchester United. Dejan Lovren was next after a challenge on Shaqiri, meaning Liverpool had to experiment with Lucas Leiva, a central midfielder, in the heart of their defence and Kolo Touré will also need to undergo a scan after feeling a sharp pain in the back of his leg in the last 10 minutes.
Touré chose to play on, telling Liverpool’s medical staff it was merely cramp, but Klopp talked afterwards about having “zero centre-halves left”, indicating he feared it might be something more serious. If so, Liverpool have now had 25 different injuries since Klopp joined the club and are missing 11 players. In the circumstances, they showed commendable resolve not to allow all the changes and disruption to break their supremacy. “We could have waved a white flag,” Klopp said, “but that’s not possible.”
His team began the game with great self-belief, knocking the ball around confidently and repeatedly opening up their opponents. There were only fleeting moments when the Leiva-Touré partnership was seriously threatened and it was strange to see Stoke operating with so little fluency of their own. Mark Hughes looked agitated in his technical area from the opening few minutes and the moment Glen Johnson subjected Coutinho to a perfectly-executed nutmeg was incongruous given how the first half panned out. Stoke looked sluggish in a way that could never have been expected and, for a team that pride themselves on their structure and organisation, it was unusual to see how often they lost the ball inside their own half.
Two minutes after Ibe’s goal, Roberto Firmino ran clear after dispossessing Glenn Whelan only to be let down by a piece of poor control. Liverpool, eight-time winners of this competition, could also reflect on several other chances and their inability to take them was really the only form of encouragement for Stoke. “People seem to want to criticise our performance in the first half, but sometimes you have to give credit to the opponents,” Hughes said.
“The important thing for us is that we are still in the tie and we will look to impose our tactics on them in the second leg as they have with us.”
The goal arrived in the 37th minute when James Milner, replacing Lovren after his own injury layoff, picked out Adam Lallana on the right. Lallana turned a low centre into the penalty area and, though Joe Allen’s shot was miscued, the ball spun conveniently for Ibe. His first touch managed to get the ball under control and the second picked out the corner with a left-foot shot.
Hughes brought on Jonathan Walters at half-time to add some extra height to Stoke’s attack, taking off the midfielder Geoff Cameron and moving Krkic into a more withdrawn role. The idea was to capitalise on Lucas’s lack of inches and it was the same later on when Crouch was introduced and Stoke effectively returned to their tactics of old.
For the first time, there were moments to indicate Liverpool might be vulnerable. Even then, however, there was the sight of Krkic aiming a simple pass out of play.
Hughes was exaggerating to say that Stoke had dominated the second half and his complaints about Liverpool’s time-wasting did not entirely stack up either. Simon Mignolet was booked for taking too long with one goal-kick but Liverpool’s win had its origins in the way they moved the ball during the opening 45 minutes. They outdid Stoke at their own game and, from here, it will need something special for Hughes’s team to advance.
Guardian
