Few Liverpool players came out of Sunday’s loss against Manchester United with too much credit.
The Reds didn’t play especially badly on the whole and were unlucky to come away with a defeat. But sloppy and unavoidable errors meant that that’s what they got.
One of the few who could hold his head up though was Alexis Mac Allister. The £35m man bagged his fourth goal in nine games to drag Liverpool back into the match in the first-half. It was the latest in a string of important goal contributions from Mac Allister.
However, according to pundit Richard Keys, there was another reason Liverpool’s No.10 was notable in the game. Taking to his blog on richardjkeys.com, the presenter slammed Mac Allister’s part in the first booking for eventual match-winner Amad Diallo.
“Mac Allister doesn’t come out of what happened very well either,” Keys writes. “It was churlish of him to kick the ball at Diallo so he got booked – appearing to stop a free-kick being taken.
“I hate that kind of ‘professionalism’. Apologies if it wasn’t Mac Allister, but it was bang out of order ____housery.”
Keys barking up the wrong tree
We saw this same kind of ‘outrage’ from Roy Hodgson against Virgil van Dijk back in December.
That day, then Crystal Palace manager Hodgson called Van Dijk’s professionalism into question, accusing him of deliberately getting Jordan Ayew booked. Like Amad on Sunday, Ayew was eventually red-carded.
Both instances were exactly the same. A Liverpool player trying to take a quick free-kick, an opponent standing in the way to block them from doing so. On both occasions, Van Dijk and then Mac Allister kicked the ball at the opposition player to highlight the infringement to the referee.
From our point of view, neither Van Dijk nor Mac Allister did anything wrong at all. If the player doesn’t want booking, then he shouldn’t stand there in the first place.
It isn’t the Liverpool pair who are breaking the rules here. So why is Keys not laying any blame or responsibility at the feet of Amad, who instigated the incident on Sunday.
There has been some general disappointment that the 21-year-old was sent off for removing his shirt having won the game for United in the dying seconds.
But instead of railing against the rules, why not point the finger at the player? He picked up two unnecessary bookings which were completely and totally his fault.
Mac Allister had every right to do what he did when faced with Amad circumventing the rules. Not for the first time, Keys is barking up the wrong tree with this one.