Liverpool 1-1 Tottenham: Igor Tudor exhibits there IS life left in his Spurs tenure however mushy, meek Reds roll over once more with shambolic late equaliser that edges Arne Slot nearer to Anfield exit, writes IAN LADYMAN

They came to bury Igor Tudor. Metaphorically speaking, they had already dug the hole. But if anybody was going to give Tottenham’s beleaguered interim manager a leg-up as he sought release from Premier League purgatory then it was always likely to be hapless and hopeless Liverpool.

Liverpool are English champions but the longer this season goes, the more ridiculous it sounds to say that. This has not been a title defence but an abdication and now, after yet another afternoon characterised by weak, meek, witless football, Arne Slot’s team somehow sit outside possibly the weakest top four of recent Premier League history.

It’s inexcusable and the longer this road to footballing hell is travelled by Slot’s players, the less likely it feels that the Dutchman will be invited to try again next season.

So somehow here, against enormous odds, it was Tudor, Tottenham’s giant Croatian coach, who left the field to a standing ovation from the supporters in the away end. There is some life left in his spell as Tottenham interim manager yet, life in his team’s season perhaps.

Tudor took the applause of the Spurs fans modestly. He will know that this result – this single point – only takes Tottenham so far. They remain in perilous danger and once the Champions League second leg against Atletico Madrid is out of the way on Wednesday – Spurs are 5-2 down from the first leg – then the rest of the season truly begins.

Tottenham host Nottingham Forest next weekend and are currently only a point ahead of them at the wrong end of the table. That will be a completely different kind of game, one that Spurs will have to win and as such the pressures will be different.

Can they cope with that? I wouldn’t be so sure. If they don’t then they will back to square one and the decision to replace Thomas Frank with Tudor will once again look disastrously flawed. But that is the way football works at this level. Fine margins and all that. 

Here, for the first time, Tottenham fell the right side of it and in doing so ended a run of six defeats in all competitions. What they have now is not so much a platform from which to launch but some firmer ground on which to stand. It’s something at least and all the more precious given that early on in this game it didn’t look terribly likely. 

Ahead after 18 minutes through a 20-yard Dominic Szoboszlai free-kick that Spurs goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario really should have saved, Liverpool had the opportunity to sweep aside an opponent so weakened by injury and suspension that they couldn’t even fill their substitutes’ bench.

Spurs came to Merseyside as the laughing stock of the Premier League, a team that knew only to lose. But Liverpool couldn’t beat them. Not this Liverpool. They enjoyed possession and some territory and looked ready to go for the kill when Mo Salah – omitted at the start in deference to teenager Rio Ngumoha – was sent on with half an hour left. But as time wore on, so the feeling grew that there was something in this game for Tottenham.

They had been better than of late – not hard, admittedly – from the start. More organised and cohesive. Not brilliant, but better, and Richarlison – starting his first league game since early January and booed throughout as a former Everton player – had been a nuisance throughout.

The Brazilian is flawed, a little all-mouth-and-no-trousers. Consistency is a stranger to him. But he is no coward and nor does he hide from hard work. Here he was motivated and dangerous and three times Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker had saved from him before he finally provided this game with its defining moment at the death.

It was a dreadful goal from a Liverpool point of view – a shambles – but then it was always likely to be. Rewind the tapes of Leeds and Bournemouth and Wolves and you will find portentous evidence staring back at you. This is what this version of Liverpool tends to do.

A long ball from the back simply needed heading away but Andrew Robertson for some reason decided not to do that. Instead he tried to bully Randal Kolo Muani and lost. At one point he seemed to two-handedly try to shove Muani out of the way.

Muani then got rid of Virgil van Dijk as he travelled laterally across the penalty area and when he set up Richarlison in front of the Kop, his team-mate couldn’t really miss. In the away end, some of the supporters looked incredulous. In the home end, they didn’t. Those who had left five minutes before the end were either over-confident or simply terrified of what they knew was coming.

And it was a fair result, too. Liverpool had more ball but Spurs had the good chances and more shots on target.

Perhaps one crucial moment arrived shortly after Szoboszlai’s goal. Vicario should have saved the free-kick – it was a yard inside his right-hand post – but did brilliantly in the 36th minute to drop to the same side and touch Cody Gakpo’s low shot on to the frame of the goal. Had that one gone in then Spurs may well have folded and Tudor would in all likelihood have been on his way.

There were other half chances, too. Pedro Porro blocked a low Ngumoha shot and Ryan Gravenberch drove one over. In the second half, Salah’s introduction injected life and drive. He looked motivated. But, shorn of confidence and with all instinct gone, he was not capable of piercing a determined Spurs back line or indeed creating something for a team-mate, bar one pass to fellow substitute Hugo Ekitike that was spooned over.

And all the while Spurs threatened sporadically. Two Richarlison headers had arrived at the back end of the first half. Two shots early in the second were dealt with by Alisson.

Tottenham looked like a team and that’s a step forward in itself, no matter how strange it sounds. Liverpool, by full-time, carried the look of a group of players shot through with despair.

Szoboszlai looked like a ghost when interviewed on TV afterwards. ‘You look flat,’ said the man from Sky Sports. ‘That’s because I am,’ he said.

Here last April Slot’s Liverpool beat Tottenham 5-1 to clinch their first title in front of a crowd for 35 years. Slot, with his calm and self-effacing charm, looked like the man with all the post-Jurgen Klopp answers. Now he simply looks incapable of motivating this team. Strange game, football.