A good week

Good weeks have been few and far between this season but after thumping Qarabag midweek, we followed it up with a comfortable 4-1 victory over Newcastle, to massively ease the pressure on Slot and the players, at least in the short term.

It didn’t always look like it was going to be as comfortable as it ended up however, as we had another slow start. First half hour we were really poor and Newcastle took a deserved lead, as Gordon struck the ball sweetly through Kerkez legs and past the helpless Alisson.

That seemed to bring us to like however and it was our dynamic duo of Wirtz and Ekitike who turned the game on its head. First Wirtz showed beautiful close control and footwork to wriggle past a number of defenders, before squeezing the cutback for Ekitike to poke home the equalizer. Hugo’s second however, was all about him. Kerkez played a searching ball into space, which Ekitike ran onto, one touch forward and a burst of pace past the defender and a brilliant finish with the outside of his foot. Gerrard compared Hugo to Torres at halftime and that goal certainly had shades of the prolific Spaniard around it. I actually think Ekitike has a lot more to his all round game than Torres did though. Torres game was all about running into space and finishing quickly and he was an expert at that. Outwith that though, he didn’t have a great first touch, wasn’t a great dribbler and holding the ball up and linking play, really wasn’t his game. That played a big part in why he failed at Chelsea. Ekitike can do all that though. He’s freakishly strong and holds the ball up brilliantly. He can pass, dribble, has lovely little flicks. He reads the game and gets on the end of things as we saw with his first goal but he also makes his own goals, as we saw yesterday and midweek. Make no mistake, this kid’s the real deal and we’ve got a real player on our hands here. Shoutout to Isak though, who was smiling and applauding Hugo’s goals and made a point of congratulating him when he was subbed. A classy act from our record signing, who must be watching the form of Ekitike with at least a little concern for his own place in this squad.

Our third goal, Wirtz went from provider to goal scorer, as he delivered a nice ball out to Salah who returned the favour and the in form German stroked the ball home with a perfectly placed, side foot finish. Wirtz has become the player we all hoped we’d signed in recent weeks. That’s 6 goals snd around the same number of assists in his last 10 games as he’s now making a tangible impact in every game he plays and his understanding with Ekitike grows week by week. Apparently they’ve become friends off the pitch and you can see that connection between them on it, evidenced by the fact there now the most prolific duo in the league in terms of G/A assist involvements together.

Shout out to Konaté for his performance under the circumstances and his goal was written in the stars. He was visibly emotional after it but he can be proud of his performance. I thought Szoboszlai was good at RB too and the aforementioned Wirtz but Ekitike channeled the strength of the Auld Alliance and is this week’s McMOTM.

It’ll be interesting to see if we get any last minute signings over the line, we badly need RB cover but whether we do or not, at the very least this last week has pushed the wolves a few yards back from Slot’s door. Now let’s see us build some momentum from this and put in a strong second half of the season. Walk on!