It wasn’t a replay as much as a tape that seemed stuck on the same loop, the video nasty that appeared to confirm Gareth Southgate’s opinion that Kieran Trippier has a better all-round game than Trent Alexander-Arnold. At half-time inside Anfield, the television screens that can be viewed internally showed Brighton’s first two goals time and time and time again. And then again.
There was Alexander-Arnold, with a poor header out to allow Brighton to regain the ball; it is a weakness in his game, when a diagonal ball finds him at the far post. There he was, beaten too easily by Leandro Trossard before he opened the scoring; he is not a one-on-one defender of the calibre of Kyle Walker. There he was, attempting an audacious bit of chest control, only for Danny Welbeck to head the ball away from him in the build-up to Trossard’s second. Jurgen Klopp had mounted the case for the defence of Alexander-Arnold in eloquent, impassioned fashion on Saturday. The prosecution could show the footage and not worry about the words.
