1) Werner still quite the curate’s egg
In the summer of 2020, Liverpool were big favourites to sign Timo Werner from RB Leipzig before the move fell through when Jürgen Klopp could not assure his fellow German of regular first-team football. Liverpool fans have spent the last couple of seasons relieved that the striker chose Chelsea instead, his numbers way down on what they were in the Bundesliga. Werner remains a maddening but intriguing presence. Watch the denouement of the FA Cup semi-final. In the final 10 minutes, he overruns the ball to ruin a fast break, has the energy to get back and halt a Palace counterattack, is named man of the match, flashes a cross into the box with no Chelsea shirt in sight, drives into the area again to put the ball on a plate for Romelu Lukaku, who hits a post, and rounds it all off by ballooning a dreadful shot into Row Z. There is Werner’s Chelsea career in microcosm. Wild, erratic and inconsistent and yet he’s capable of being the biggest threat to Klopp and Liverpool in next month’s FA Cup final. David Tindall
