Harbinger Of Glory

For a moment, it looked like Leo had nowhere to go, but then as the ball bounced once more, Leo, without even looking at where he was playing to, swung his right foot through it.

”And the clearance,” Andy Gray judged on the broadcast but he found himself making the correction when the ball left Leo’s boot with enough pace to travel across the pitch and enough weight to drop exactly where Ezra was arriving.

”And somehow’ it’s found Ezra,” Martin Tyler followed up a second later as Ezra moved towards the ball with pressure mounting on his back.

He moved onto it before Mac Allister could close him down.

”Ezra’s got it and Wigan are on the move again!”

The DW erupted as Ezra used his first touch to take the ball away from Mac Allister.

Reyes moving from the Liverpool half, slipped right beside MacAllister and called for the ball.

The sudden option distracted MacAllister enough for Ezra to slip the ball inside but as MacAllister spun around in his quest to win the ball Reyes returned it immediately to Ezra and suddenly Liverpool had a problem.

Three Wigan players were running at four defenders and the distance between them was disappearing with every step.

Gray’s voice sharpened on the broadcast as the play continued.

”Leo has started this attack with a wonderful piece of play, and now Wigan have Liverpool running toward their own goal.”

Ezra carried it toward Konaté but it was hard to step out so suddenly since Jake was keeping the defenders pinned into their half.

Eventually, the Frenchman stepped forward, causing Trent to tuck inside.

Both defenders were watching Ezra, expecting him to take them on but Ezra waited until they committed.

And when they did, he slipped the ball sideways right in the direction Trent was coming from.

Carlo was waiting near the side of the box and immediately he got the ball he moved inside, cutting up to the edge of the box.

His feints caused and threat at goal kept the Liverpool players at goal but then Carlo passed the ball to Reyes.

Before the Liverpool defenders could even turn their attention towards the Portuguese attacking midfielder, he touched the ball back to where it came from.

”It’s A LOVELY SETUPPP,” the commentary roared on the broadcast as the ball rolled slightly to a stop settling right inside the arc of the box and without hesitation, Carlo moved onto it and struck it.

The shot left his foot from an angle that seemed almost impossible.

For a fraction of a second, it looked as though the ball was heading wide as Alisson moved across, but then it changed direction.

It bent back toward the goal, almost as if it had been affected by some higher power, and it was much faster with the spin on it.

Alisson still lunged but by the time he took flight, the ball had already spun right past his hand and flew into the top corner, homing into the back of the goal.

There was nothing he could do as the net snapped back and without waiting, the DW came down.

”OH THAT IS GLORIOUS. STRUCK ONE AND NOW WIGAN HAVE STRUCK. THEY ARE TWO UP AND THEY ARE THREATENING TO RUN RIOT HERE!”

Carlo stood frozen for half a second as his brain seemed to need another moment to catch up with what his foot had just done.

Then he turned and ran while his face broke into a grin.

”CARLO REGUTTI!” Andy Gray screamed.

”TWO-NIL WIGAN! TWO-NIL AGAINST LIVERPOOL!”

Carlo dropped into a slide across the grass his arms stretched wide as the Liverpool bodies behind slumped but he couldn’t care less.

The players behind him were already running.

Ezra reached him first, then Reyes before three more Wigan shirts crashed into them.

While the noise became physical, Leo stood near the edge of the box, breathing hard and watching his teammates disappear beneath one another.

They had just done that, against Liverpool.

Two goals and now the stadium was shaking around them.

Gray could barely get his words out over the crowd.

”Two goals in the space of minutes. Liverpool have gone from being in a competitive game to suddenly being two behind.”

Tyler laughed, almost disbelieving.

”And look at that finish. Alisson couldn’t even put up a fight against that ball. He knew it was going in, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.”

”I don’t think two goalkeepers would have even mattered for a shot like that,” Andy Gray added in the broadcast.

On the Liverpool side, Trent stood with his hands on his hips before turning back to his position while Konaté looked toward the goal where Allison was picking the ball from.

Mac Allister turned away and shook his head and once more, Van Dijk was already trying to pull them together.

”Come on.”

His voice was firm.

”Come on, boys.”

He clapped his hands.

Klopp was on the edge of his technical area, staring toward the pitch before turning towards the coach a few metres away.

Dawson didn’t celebrate wildly.

He had clenched both fists when the ball went in, but now he was already looking at his players.

Two-nil was brilliant but two-nil was dangerous, sometimes even more dangerous than a one-nil lead because Liverpool were still Liverpool and they only needed just a goal to switch momentum.

Still, for the first time that afternoon, even Dawson allowed himself a smile.

Carlo finally got back onto his feet and looked toward the supporters.

He raised both arms towards the stands and the response nearly swallowed him.

A second later, he finally turned away from the supporters and started back toward halfway as his teammates followed ahead.

”Two nil,” Tyler said, settling back into the broadcast.

”Wigan Athletic two, Liverpool nil. And I’ll tell you something. The people who thought this was where the streak ended are having a very difficult afternoon.”

The people in question, the Liverpool end were stunned.

They had come into the DW believing that despite all that was going on with Wigan, their team would win and that the only question was by how much.

Two nil down at half time though, was not a variable they had considered.

The conversations happening in that away section as the game restarted were of people getting a reality check.

Some fans were even pleading for a draw now that they were 2 goals down.

They had thought that three-one to Liverpool at full-time would be a reasonable expectation.

Two-nil down before the interval with Wigan having had the better of nearly everything was not.

And what made it more difficult to process was that it wasn’t luck.

Wigan hadn’t scored from two deflections off their own defenders or from a goalkeeper spilling a shot.

They had scored because Carlo had bent one into the top corner from a tight angle and because Jake had gotten to a cross that a precise pass had created, and neither of those things had happened by accident.

On the pitch, Liverpool kept the ball in the final five minutes of the half with the idea that the most important thing they could do before the interval was stop the bleeding.

Not score, not push for the goal back, just hold the ball and deny Wigan the momentum of another chance before the two teams went inside.

Wigan pressed them for it anyway.

They came at Liverpool’s backline with the same intensity even higher intensity and for stretches of those five minutes the home crowd pushed behind them, willing each press to produce something, but Liverpool were experienced enough to move the ball through the pressure.

Then at the last embers of the half, Trent received wide right and skipped past Bennet with a change of pace that took the Wigan left back off his feet.

Leo came across to cover but Trent went outside him too before cutting the ball into the box from the byline.

The delivery was good, deep and curling toward the far post and Nunez didn’t let it go.

He went above Whatmough and O’Shea both, the height of him and the timing of the run producing a header that came down toward goal with real power behind it.

Amos moved across his line and watched the trajectory as the ball came down but luckily for him and Wigan, the ball hit the crossbar and bounced away as the away end rose and fell in the same motion.

”The crossbar,” Tyler said.

”Nunez gets above everyone but the crossbar saves Wigan. And that is as close as Liverpool have come in the past 10 minutes.”

The moment the game restarted, the referee looked at his watch, put the whistle to his mouth and the sound of it brought the first half to its end a moment later.

”And that is it. Half time here at the DW and it is a different game than most of us expected! Wigan are two up and it is looking grim for Liverpool.”