The key change at the heart of Liverpool’s perfect Champions League return

Liverpool 2-0 Bologna: Mac Allister and Salah scored as the Reds made it two from two in Europe

Alexis Mac Allister, centre right, celebrates after scoring his Liverpool's opening goal (AP)

Anfield had waited over a year and a half for the return of Uefa’s top competition and Liverpool’s first home game in the Champions League since the end of February 2023 didn’t disappoint the home support.

If not the raucous, fiery atmosphere that the knockout stages of this competition can generate at this ground, there was still plenty of expectation and noise on a night when Arne Slot once again experienced the good of his team going forward, and the lax nature they’ve displayed recently at the back. This was a game which certainly provided plenty of both.

For Slot, it was a minor moment of club history: an eighth win from his first nine in charge, the first manager to do so. That, and a first clean sheet in three matches were both welcome statistics – particularly as Liverpool themselves seemed to do their best to ensure Alisson Becker would be forced to pick the ball out of the net at least once. But almost 600 days after conceding five times to the champions of Europe, Liverpool eventually produced a shut-out which hinted at why they might feel they can go on to claim that crown themselves this year.

Half of the team has changed since the Reds’ last home Champions League game – the thrilling, yet ultimately devastating, 5-2 defeat at the hands of Real Madrid. Six starters from that day under Jurgen Klopp did so here under Slot, but the most noticeable alteration was all three midfielders being changed – and, for the most part, performing in excellent fashion against Bologna.

If Klopp’s European midfield often saw Naby Keita as the fall guy, the man who inherited the No 8 shirt from a club icon being regularly subbed off, left out or absent through injury, then in October 2024 it was the newest incumbent of that jersey who provided the consistency, robustness and relentlessness which Liverpool needed, with Dominik Szoboszlai involved in both goals and a non-stop runner throughout.

In truth, the Hungarian hasn’t been quite at his best in the past couple of matches. Here however he was non-stop, equal parts ball-winner and line-breaker, able to burst past Bologna’s static centre to great effect.

Alexis Mac Allister will get headlines through scoring the first, and Ryan Gravenberch continued his impressive rise in stock with another dynamic showing, but it was Szoboszlai who had the most important impact here, culminating in his assist for Mohamed Salah.

‘Mighty Mo’ Salah scored Liverpool’s second (AFP)

That, though came after Liverpool almost contrived to throw away a great start.

Whereas in their Champions League opener they fell behind early on to Milan, here they were quickly on the front foot and ahead as the clock ticked past 10 minutes.

Mac Allister side-footed in from close range, but it was a team goal in the extreme: Szoboszlai’s return pass, Darwin Nunez’s holdup, Salah’s delivery. Luis Diaz was on hand to score if Mac Allister, who started the move, hadn’t also ended it.

But if that was a scintillating, flowing, perfectly executed move, it was to prove an oasis of aesthetics and timing in a first-half swamp of sloppiness and miscommunication.

The score was 1-0 at the break, but it’s no exaggeration to suggest it might have been two apiece, or more. From time to time Liverpool’s attack was excellent, but on more occasions the defence was bizarrely lax. Alisson, Ibrahima Konate and Trent Alexander-Arnold were all guilty of overplaying and underestimating, gifting chances on goal when Bologna should at the very least have equalised.

“It wasn’t easy but that’s normal, there’s always resistance when you play in the Champions League,” Slot said after the game.

“It was good to win and have a clean sheet. You always aim for perfection but you will not reach it. We can improve, we have to improve, but there are lots of positives to take. There was a spell we didn’t control, they threatened more than I’d like to see near the end of the first half.”

Slot has won eight of nine matches so far (AFP)

He was perhaps understating it, as Liverpool gifted one shot which was deflected onto the bar and another pair of chances which could easily have seen Bologna level. They also had one ruled out early, Thijs Dallinga finishing well but comfortably offside, before Darwin Nunez followed suit at the other end from a narrower margin of doubt.

No doubt with Slot’s half-time words of wisdom ringing in their ears, Liverpool rose above their sloppy play to dominate much of the second half.

Szoboszlai, predictably, was central to so much of that. He ultimately fed Salah for the Egyptian to bend in an unstoppable second and give breathing space, in the match as well as the wider competition: it’s six points from six ahead of games against RB Leipzig, Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid.

Still only a couple of months into his tenure, Slot will feel this was a strong step forward, but not without the odd lurch backwards, some of the same indecision at the back on show that was visible against Wolves last weekend. He won’t expect it to be the finished article or anywhere near, but at the same time he suggested ahead of the game he wouldn’t accept mediocrity, even from moment to moment in-game. If consistency is the watchword he and the team are searching for, Szoboszlai in particular gave an ideal execution of that.