Liverpool’s performance in the opening 12 minutes of their defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers was so bad that the match was as good as over by then. There’s a cliché in football that 2-0 is a dangerous half time lead but the reality is that a team holding that advantage only loses around two per cent of the time.
The Reds have recovered from that position three times in the Premier League, throwing away leads twice. They would have likely got a point at best at Molineux after trailing by two goals at the interval, and even that is an optimistic view.
Things might have been different had they made more of their dominant start to the second half. Darwin Nunez missed Liverpool’s one clear-cut chance in the 66th minute but they might have halved the deficit before that. Sixteen minutes earlier, the Reds had a claim for a penalty when Andy Robertson deflected a Naby Keita shot and it was blocked by Max Kilman’s arm. Despite giving a penalty every 4.8 matches in his Premier League career, match referee Paul Tierney hasn’t given one to Liverpool in 22 games in all competitions.
