First Champions League win under Iraola. Liverpool 2-1 Atlético Madrid at Anfield. Mac Allister’s equaliser, Szoboszlai’s winner, Ronald Araújo playing assist king, and Florian Wirtz’s best game in a red shirt.

Vivek went further than any of us were ready for: “This is the best game I’ve seen since Klopp left.” Nobody talked him down.

Three comebacks in four games

Start with the pattern, because it’s now too big to call a coincidence. Three comebacks in four games. This team goes behind and doesn’t fold — and after a summer of arguing about whether the squad had a spine, that’s the answer arriving without anyone announcing it.

Mentality shifts are easy to claim in August and hard to fake in September.

Wirtz, finally

The best 90 minutes he’s played in red. Three assists’ worth of chances created — the kind of number that makes the possession-loss argument look as silly as it was. Two weeks ago we were using his turnovers as an indictment. Then we found out his numbers matched Bruno and De Bruyne. Now he’s just doing it.

Filed under: takes we’re glad we revisited.

Araújo goes cult hero

He was signed as a centre-half and he’s currently the most important man in the side. The assist, the ball-carrying out of defence, the press he leads from the back — and the passion, which is why Anfield has adopted him this fast.

Somebody said Robertson vibes and nobody objected. Three episodes ago the right-back slot was the thing we couldn’t stop complaining about. It’s now a strength, and it was solved by accident.

Iraola’s mistake, and the half-time fix

The honest bit, because a win shouldn’t launder it. Atlético turned up in a surprise 5-3-2 and the first half was a problem — the extra body in midfield pinned the double pivot exactly where we’ve been saying it’s vulnerable since Newcastle.

Then he fixed it. The Rio press adjustment at half-time changed the game, and that’s the part that matters: a manager who gets the first guess wrong and the second one right inside fifteen minutes is a different proposition from one who waits until the 70th.

Sheik’s counterpoint on the goal we conceded was the best line of the tactical segment: “If that was Mascherano or Fabinho, they’d have slid into Álvarez.” The shape got fixed. The bite is still a question.

Mac Allister’s reply

Contract snub, then the equaliser, then goal of the game. That left foot. There’s no cleaner way to answer a negotiation you’re losing than by deciding a Champions League night, and it makes the “new deal or profit sale” debate from last week look considerably less clever.

The philosophy split

The cleanest framing we’ve landed on for the Slot-to-Iraola change: proactive versus reactive. Slot’s Liverpool set up to control what the opponent did. Iraola’s sets up to impose what we do, then adjusts. It explains the first-half wobble and the second-half fix in the same sentence, and it’s why the ceiling looks higher even when the floor is shakier.

The bench told a story too

Barcola’s debut: the pace is genuinely frightening, the finishing wasn’t there yet, and the Wirtz link-up already looks like something. Rio had a nervous twenty minutes and then settled, which is the correct developmental order.

Koumas was, in Jins’s words, the duracell bunny. Muñoz came off the bench and introduced chaos, mostly the useful kind.

And then the twist nobody had on the card: Frimpong is actually good — as a right winger. Last episode Vivek declared his Liverpool career over. This episode we’re finding him a position. Both things can be true.

The Gravenberch problem

The one genuinely uncomfortable thread. An attitude issue, and the comparison drawn was Wijnaldum — a player whose Liverpool arc turned on whether he bought in. Nobody enjoyed making the point, and nobody argued it away either.

Better news at the other end of the age curve: Jacquet looks like a Matip–Konaté hybrid at twenty years old.

Fulham, and Arbeloa’s return

Then Saturday: Arbeloa back at Anfield with Fulham, which will be strange for everybody. Our calls are in — Sheik 3-1, JD 3-1, Jins 2-1, Vivek 2-0 — and they’re live on the Predictions page.

Watch the full episode above. Then settle it for us: was that really the best Liverpool performance since Klopp left? Drop your verdict and your Fulham scoreline on YouTube or Instagram below — we tally the weekly leaderboard and read the wildest calls on the next pod, which drops straight after full time.