Appliance of science unable to bridge gulf in class between Midtjylland and Liverpool

The last time European football was played at Anfield was the last occasion we saw a crowd at a top-flight game in England. Seven months on from that super-spreader event against Atletico Madrid and still the pandemic shows no sign of abating. Liverpool will probably need to make it to at least the quarter-finals before there is hope of a crowd of any scale being allowed back into the stands.

It meant Midtjylland's first ever Champions League away game, taking place at the home of the six-times champions, was a muted, sanitised, strange affair. Every Danish footballer apparently dreams of playing at Anfield. But there was no greeting here of the visitors' bus with a pyrotechnic honour guard, no spine-tingling pre-match rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone, no colour to deposit in the memory bank.

For their part, it meant the ever-inquiring Liverpool faithful had no opportunity to watch what likes to characterise itself as the most sophisticated of sports science operations in action.

Remember Robert Maxwell’s attempt to merge Oxford and Reading back in the 1980s? Well, born 21 years ago from the merger of mutually suspicious local rivals Ikast FC and Herning Fremad, Midtjylland are the Thames Valley Royals of Danish football. And they have reached the top of the game there since their birth by merger through the astute use of PHd levels of data, psychology and physiology. Not to mention long throws.

Observing the appliance of science in full flow, however, had an oddly retro feeling. Brian Priske’s team were organised, drilled, choreographed to within an inch of their lives. At any moment in the game, all his players appeared to know precisely where they should be and what they should be doing. Free kicks had been rehearsed with the precision of a Broadway chorus line.

Game, athletic, supremely fit, they defended from the front, weren’t afraid to foul when the opposition broke and, in the person of Joel Andersson, they could hurl in a throw with the kind of accuracy that spoke of long hours on the training ground working with a specialist throw-in coach. Rather than something new and innovative, the football they played was in short of a kind that would have had Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce and Neil Warnock salivating.

It was enough to disturb Liverpool’s equilibrium. Not least soon after the kick off when the former Brighton forward Anders Dreyer had a sharp chance, played in by a straightforward route one long ball. He bookended that opportunity by putting a great chance into the side netting in the final moments.

For Jurgen Klopp the match provided the most awkward of challenges. Not least in his team selection. With the season condensed and compacted, the Liverpool boss went into the match acutely aware of the need to rotate his resources. Up front, his options were significant. He could rest his superstar trio of Mo Salah, Sadio Mane and Firmino and start with Diogo Jota, Minamino and Divok Origi. Not because all his pre-match talk about taking Midtjylland seriously was hollow, but to coax his squad for the relentless round of domestic encounters ahead.

At the back injuries meant he had no such luxury. And his possibilities were further compromised by the early injury to Fabinho.

The thing is, though, whoever he called upon, no level of science is able stop the kind of improvisational cunning available to Klopp. In an otherwise lacklustre performance by his team, Trent Alexander Arnold’s magnificent set up of Jota was the kind of thing that no amount of Midtjylland’s research department tapping feverishly away at their laptops could counter. The full back’s superb cut back delivered Liverpool’s 10,000th goal in a history marginally more extensive than their rivals.

It was a goal greeted by Sadio Mane and Mo Salah arriving from the bench. At their appearance, Frisk could be seen scribbling urgently in his notebook. Presumably, even as Salah ended up converting a penalty he secured, the Danish coach was writing a note to dispatch back to the club’s board: “Help!” it surely read, “send more analytics.”