By the 72nd minute in Austria, Liverpool had scored six goals against LASK. Bradley Barcola had completed his first hat-trick for the club, Lewis Koumas had found the net, and Jeremie Frimpong had contributed to three goals.
Andoni Iraola had every reason to be pleased with his attacking players.
Liverpool were leading 6–1. With another Premier League match approaching, the remaining minutes looked like an opportunity to protect the result and bring an impressive European night to a comfortable conclusion.
LASK had other ideas.
Florian Flecker scored in the 74th minute. Three minutes later, he scored again.
Suddenly, a match that had looked completely settled ended 6–3.
Liverpool were never seriously in danger of losing their advantage. But those two late goals left Iraola with something to examine, especially because LASK had already scored once earlier in the second half.
The interesting part of this game is that Liverpool’s attack and defence told two very different stories.
One showed how many ways this team can hurt an opponent. The other raised a question about how well Liverpool manage those risks once they no longer need to chase goals.
The night Liverpool’s missing forwards stopped being the story
Before travelling to Linz, Liverpool had a genuine selection problem.
Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai were unavailable. Barcola was still waiting for his first goal contribution since joining Liverpool, while Florian Wirtz was trying to turn his creative quality into more consistent results.
Iraola nevertheless backed them.
Alongside Barcola and Wirtz, he started young attackers Rio Ngumoha and Lewis Koumas, with Trey Nyoni also coming into midfield.
It was an opportunity for players who had something to prove. And once Liverpool started attacking, they gave their manager plenty to think about.
The first goal came from Ronald Araújo, who headed in Kostas Tsimikas’s corner in the 22nd minute.
Two minutes later, Liverpool’s younger attackers produced something more revealing.
Ngumoha drove into the penalty area and went down following a challenge. The referee did not award a penalty, but the attack was not over. Koumas reacted to the loose ball, found Barcola, and the French winger finished first time.
It was Barcola’s first goal for Liverpool.
What made the move encouraging was how naturally the three players connected. Ngumoha forced defenders to react to his run, Koumas recognised the next opportunity, and Barcola was ready to finish.
None of them had to do everything.
That pattern returned in the 37th minute when Wirtz combined with Barcola to create the third goal.
For weeks, Liverpool had been waiting for their attacking combinations to produce more convincing end products. Here, Wirtz was finding the final pass and Barcola was turning those opportunities into goals.
The second half brought another route.
Tsimikas crossed for Frimpong to score with a header in the 51st minute. Later, Frimpong supplied the low delivery that allowed Barcola to complete his hat-trick. He then created Liverpool’s sixth for Koumas in the 72nd minute.
By then, Liverpool had scored through a set piece, combinations between young attackers, Wirtz’s creativity and their full-backs’ attacking runs.
That mattered more than the total alone.
With several important players missing, Iraola had discovered that his available attackers could still combine effectively and finish their chances.
Barcola’s hat-trick was a major step forward. It did not automatically prove he would produce the same performance against stronger opposition, but it gave Liverpool something more substantial than encouragement about his potential.
They now had an example of those attacking relationships working in a competitive European match.
There was, however, another side to the freedom Liverpool’s full-backs enjoyed.
It was creating chances. It also demanded careful protection whenever possession changed hands.
The warning arrived before Flecker’s two goals
The temptation after a 6–3 victory is to blame Liverpool’s defending entirely on the final minutes.
That would miss what happened earlier.
LASK had already threatened in the second half. Alisson was called into action by Krystof Daněk before Robert Ljubičić scored from close range in the 63rd minute.
Liverpool were 4–0 ahead at the time.
Just a minute before that goal, Iraola had changed both central defenders. Virgil van Dijk replaced Jérémy Jacquet, while Joe Gomez came on for Araújo.
The timing was awkward.
Two defenders entered the match, and LASK immediately scored. It would be easy to blame the substitutions for disrupting Liverpool’s organisation.
But easy explanations are not always accurate.
LASK had created a chance before the changes. The match reports alone do not establish which Liverpool player’s positioning or defensive action was responsible for Ljubičić’s goal.
Nor was Iraola necessarily wrong to use a four-goal lead to manage his defenders’ minutes.
Liverpool responded strongly anyway. Barcola scored again in the 66th minute, and Koumas added the sixth six minutes later.
The visitors had restored a five-goal advantage.
That is where the last part of the match becomes interesting.
Flecker, a half-time substitute for LASK, scored in the 74th and 77th minutes. The recorded assists for both goals went to Yvan Dibango.
The same provider and finisher had helped LASK score twice in three minutes.
That is a useful clue, though not a complete tactical diagnosis.
It tells us which attacking combination Liverpool struggled to stop. It does not establish whether Frimpong had failed to recover, whether a midfielder had left the crossing lane open, or whether one of the centre-backs had lost Flecker.
Those details require the actual scoring sequences to be examined.
But the broader concern remains reasonable. At 6–1, Liverpool had little reason to keep accepting unnecessary defensive risks, yet LASK found a way to score twice almost immediately.
Iraola needed his players to recognise that the match now required different decisions.
At 6–1, Liverpool no longer needed the same risks
Frimpong had been one of Liverpool’s most productive attackers.
It would be ridiculous to criticise his forward movement throughout the game when that movement had helped create so many goals.
The question is what he needed to do after Liverpool scored their sixth.
At 0–0, sending a full-back forward can help overload the opponent’s defence and create an extra attacking option. At 6–1, the benefit of one more forward run becomes less important than avoiding repeated dangerous attacks.
Iraola did not need to abandon his system or ask everyone to retreat into the penalty area.
A smaller adjustment would have been more useful.
When Frimpong moved forward, Ryan Gravenberch could remain in a more disciplined covering position, with Gomez ready to protect the space behind the right side. On the opposite flank, Tsimikas could choose his moments rather than automatically joining every attack.
Liverpool would still have ways to keep possession and move forward. But one full-back staying deeper would reduce the number of defenders potentially left dealing with a sudden turnover.
This was an adjustment available to the players on the pitch at 72 minutes, not a proposal dependent on making another substitution.
It would have come at a cost.
Frimpong might have created fewer chances, and Liverpool would have had fewer players attacking the penalty area. LASK could also have shifted their attacks towards the opposite side.
There is no guarantee that this change would have prevented either of Flecker’s goals.
But when Liverpool were already five goals ahead, reducing the frequency of exposed defensive situations was a reasonable objective.
The other mistake would have been to defend so deeply that LASK could repeatedly deliver crosses without pressure.
Liverpool still needed the ball. Wirtz and the midfielders had to provide passing options so the team could slow the game without simply surrendering possession.
Good game management is not always about defending with more players.
Sometimes it is about making sure the opponent has fewer opportunities to attack at all.
LASK scored three, but they still had a bigger problem
LASK deserve credit for continuing to attack.
Flecker’s two late goals were a strong contribution from the bench, and Dibango’s involvement gave the home side an attacking route that produced results.
Yet those moments cannot erase what happened at the other end.
Liverpool had already scored three goals before half-time. LASK struggled with Ngumoha’s direct running, Wirtz’s passes into dangerous areas and the freedom Liverpool’s full-backs found as attacks developed.
Their problems were not limited to one opponent or one side of the pitch.
After falling 2–0 behind, LASK could have considered giving their wide defenders more support whenever Ngumoha received the ball in space.
A midfielder moving closer would have made it harder for the winger to drive directly towards the penalty area.
But that change would also have created another problem: moving extra protection towards the flank could leave more room centrally for Wirtz.
LASK needed a better balance between helping defenders out wide and protecting the passing lanes through the middle.
Liverpool had enough quality to exploit both situations, which helps explain why the home side conceded six.
Scoring three goals was a creditable response. It was not proof that LASK had defended well.
What happened to MATCHIQ’s 0–2 prediction?
The day before the match, MATCHIQ had Liverpool as favourites.
Our simplified pre-match model estimated a 66% probability of a Liverpool victory. Its most likely individual scoreline was 0–2, with an estimated probability of 10.9%.
Liverpool won. But the actual match was nothing like the scoreline we selected as our central reference.
There were nine goals, not two.
We should not pretend the prediction was completely accurate simply because the winning team was correct.
At the same time, a 66% chance of an away win never meant Liverpool had to win by a specific score. And a 10.9% probability for 0–2 meant that result was far from certain.
One unusual match cannot establish whether a probabilistic model is well calibrated. It can, however, show where the football assumptions behind a preview deserve another look.
Before the game, Liverpool’s missing attackers appeared likely to make their attacking combinations less reliable.
Against LASK, the players who were available offered a much stronger answer than expected.
Barcola’s hat-trick, Wirtz’s involvement, Koumas’s finishing and Ngumoha’s contribution all improve our assessment of Liverpool’s attacking depth.
The other part of our preview concerned the space Liverpool might leave behind their aggressive pressing.
Three goals conceded keep that concern relevant, but they do not prove all three resulted from the same weakness. The individual moves still require closer analysis.
That is the distinction Liverpool’s next match needs to test.
Against Brentford, Iraola will be without Gravenberch because of his Premier League suspension. His midfield will have to share the responsibilities of progressing the ball, pressing opponents and protecting the defenders.
A convincing attacking performance against LASK does not automatically answer those questions.
Liverpool should enjoy what happened in Linz. Six away goals, a Barcola hat-trick and valuable contributions from several young players are worth celebrating.
But the result also reminded Iraola of something that becomes increasingly important as his team develops.
A side must know how to create risks for its opponent. It must also know when to stop creating unnecessary ones for itself.
At 6–1, Liverpool had already won the contest that mattered most.
The final minutes showed there is still work to do on how they finish it.