‘CAN we play you every week?’ was the song from the away end at Anfield.
Sadly for the hardy Crystal Palace fans who made the midweek journey up to a stormy Liverpool, they cannot. If they could, they might win the Quadruple.
Oliver Glasner has tasted victory against Liverpool not once, not twice but three times this season.
The first was in the Community Shield and now the Eagles, also the FA Cup holders and playing in Europe, are a step closer to a fourth Wembley trip in a year after toppling Liverpool in the Carabao Cup last night sparked by a first-half Ismaila Sarr double and Yeremy Pino goal.
That sentence should be motivation for any manager of a mid-table club: take the cup competitions seriously and this is what you can have. Ask any Palace fan – they tell you the last year has been the most fun of their lives following this club.
Liverpool ended the game with 10 men after youngster Amara Nallo was sent off 12 minutes after coming on. The game was gone by then but it is notable as he was sent off four minutes into his debut in a dead-rubber at PSV Eindhoven. Sixteen first-team minutes, two red cards.
Crystal Palace cruised to a comfortable 3-0 victory over a youthful Liverpool at Anfield in the League Cup
Arne Slot made 10 changes for the match and saw his rotated side unable to cope with their Premier League opponents
Glasner’s men did not need to be at their best to dispatch a Reds team who are in full-blown crisis mode right now. Arne Slot made 10 changes to the team which was beaten and bullied at Brentford – and the B Team were comfortably swatted away by Palace.
It is harsh to criticise the individual performances of Slot’s back-up brigade, which featured two debutants and a substitutes bench with nine first-team appearances between them before this game. Some of the kids showed they have a bright future.
But one thing that can be criticised is the XI itself which had the majority of the fans at Anfield fearing the worst when the team-sheet was released, the sort that can be forgiven at times but maybe not when Liverpool are on a run of five losses in six before this game.
With just one victory since the last round of this competition five weeks ago, and confidence at an all-time low of the Slot era, was he right to leave his heavyweight stars out altogether?
Would it not be better to get back into the habit of winning, while injecting a bit of confidence into the likes of Mohamed Salah, Florian Wirtz and Co? Was there no middle ground between resting a few and making 10 changes?
All easy to say in hindsight, of course. And in a gruelling season with barely any free midweeks this side of March, a night off for Virgil van Dijk and other senior stars will perhaps benefit them in the long run.
The counterargument comes when you consider that this could have been their easiest chance of a trophy this season. Win this and they were two rounds away from a shot at silverware. Now they are out and seven points behind in the league.
Whichever side of the fence you stand on, nothing good ever comes from losing – and Slot’s team are making quite the habit of it right now, this their 10th game in a row without a clean sheet, seventh on the spin they have gone 1-0 down in.
The Dutchman left several of his big hitters, including (L-R) Mo Salah, Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, our of the squad
Ismaila Sarr opened the scoring for the Eagles with a crisp finish on the edge of the area
The Senegalese enjoys a fine record against the Reds and he scored his second before the break
Fans paying good money to come here may have been disappointed to see most of the household names left out, though lots sat just behind the subs bench with a cuppa watching on knowing their places in the XI were not under any serious threat just yet.
Saying that, the Reds played some nice stuff in the opening stages but soon Palace started to find gaps in a makeshift defence featuring Andy Robertson and Wataru Endo, neither centre backs by trade, either side of Joe Gomez who has played just 36 league minutes in 2025.
Sarr was the star as the Senegal international, once said to be on Liverpool’s radar, took his tally against the Reds to four for the season. That includes one in the Community Shield, one in the league that started this wretched run for Liverpool… and two here.
The 27-year-old also scored a brace in 2020 at Vicarage Road when his former employers Watford ended an 18-match winning run for Jurgen Klopp’s team.
A rather dull game opened up on 41 minutes when Gomez failed to clear his lines from a Daichi Kamada cross and Sarr finished well past No 3 goalkeeper Freddie Woodman, a summer signing from Preston.
Four minutes later Palace were two up after Yeremy Pino slotted into Sarr’s path and he confidently finished. ‘Sarr, Sarr will tear you apart again,’ sang the away end to the tune of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart – and they were not wrong.
Thankfully for Liverpool, they are not scheduled to play Sarr and Co until April 25 unless the folk pulling the balls out of the hat in the FA Cup draw fancy a chuckle.
Palace, it is easy to forget, had also made mass changes for this game with five regulars left out. They were also in poor form. But they put in a professional performance, remaining solid at the back and capitalising on their opposition’s defensive weaknesses.
Liverpool ended the match with 10 men after youngster Amara Nallo was sent off 12 minutes after coming on
The visitors made it three in the 88th minute when Yeremy Pino curled a fine strike past Freddie Woodman
They made it 3-0 in the 88th minute when Yeremy Pino curled a fine strike past Woodman.
There were some positives for Liverpool, such as the performance of right back Calvin Ramsay on his first Reds outing for three years – he has spent the intervening time with loans at Preston, Wigan, Bolton and Kilmarnock – and a debut for gifted winger Kieran Morrison, 18.
But overall this was a night to forget as the spooky season of October ends with five losses for the month. In the coming 10 days, Liverpool play in-form Aston Villa, Real Madrid and then go to Manchester City. It can’t go on like this, can it?
