Brentford hadn't lost a game all season. Liverpool hadn't won enough of theirs. For 44 minutes at the Gtech it looked like both runs would carry on: Bradley Barcola's chip went wide, Dominik Szoboszlai went off injured, a Liverpool penalty was overturned after a VAR check, and Keane Lewis-Potter headed Brentford in front moments later. Then Yehor Yarmoliuk made a headbutting action at Jérémy Jacquet in first-half stoppage time and was sent off after a monitor check. Víctor Muñoz equalised on 62 minutes, Alexander Isak won it on 70 on his return from a thigh problem, and Vitaly Janelt's second yellow in added time left Brentford with nine. Liverpool won 2-1 and, per Sky Sports, climbed above Brentford into fifth. The Liverpool rooms were relieved. They were not, for the most part, calm. Most of the noise was about the chances Barcola didn't take.
"Relief is a word that comes to mind": TheKopTV on Barcola's finishing
TheKopTV went live minutes after the whistle, and the opening word is the whole mood. "Relief is a word that comes to mind after that." Then they get stuck into the miss that will be in every highlights package. Barcola was clean through and, in their words, "He chose the wrong option of the three. Tried to dink it over the top of the man. It was a poor, poor finish."
The chat had already started calling him Darwin Núñez. The channel's comeback is that Núñez once lobbed a keeper from exactly that sort of chance, so: "don't call him Darwin at the Gtech". The real point is about the man supplying him. They read out the stat that Florian Wirtz became "the first Liverpool player to create nine chances in a Premier League game in 2 years", and feel sorry for him. Wirtz kept threading balls through and his teammates kept wasting them. Their pick of the day is Muñoz, and it's hard to argue.
An Iraola masterclass: Tom Little says the manager got it all right
Tom Little opens with "we made hard work of it" and then puts the blame squarely on the players, not the manager. His argument is that Andoni Iraola got every call right. Frimpong on at half-time to stretch ten men, then a bold one when Frimpong went off within minutes of coming on. Instead of Joe Gomez, Muñoz went to right-back and Rio Ngumoha came on the right. For Little that was the turning point, and he calls it "one of the best managerial performances of the season".
So the charge sheet is against the players. From about the 85th minute, Liverpool kept breaking against tired legs and wasting it. Barcola ran into a defender on a four-on-three, and stopped when he was one-on-one with Caoimhín Kelleher. "It was genuinely mind-blowing at times," Little says, and he means the decisions. He also clocked the foul throws between the 80th and 85th minutes: "Every single throw in was a foul throw that wasn't given." He gives Jacquet a big shout as well, for the sliding block that stopped Igor Thiago at the back post and for keeping his head when Yarmoliuk lost his.
"Winning ugly": TheRedmenTV takes the three points and runs
TheRedmenTV is the calm room of the bunch, and it starts with the stat Brentford won't enjoy. This was "the first defeat Brentford have had inflicted on them all season long", and the channel points out Brentford had a longer rest while Liverpool were away in Europe in midweek. The penalty call doesn't get any moaning either. Mac Allister went down, VAR overturned it, and the channel says that was the right call.
The verdict on the turnaround is generous to everyone. Barcola "somehow managed to fluff his lines" early on, but moving Muñoz to right-back was "a bit of a master stroke from the manager". Isak was quiet until he wasn't, and the channel enjoys him as "a fox in the box lethal finisher" for the afternoon. Then the shout that most of these rooms end up making: "I thought Rio made the difference." Ngumoha came on as a sub and changed the right flank.
"It wasn't vintage, but honestly, I don't care": AnfieldAgenda's live room
AnfieldAgenda had the chat going straight after full time, and it opens the way most fans felt. "It wasn't vintage, but honestly, I don't care." Then it reads out the numbers that prove the first half. Liverpool had 21 shots "but only five on target. And that's not great whichever way we dress it up." There's also a stat for the disciplinarians: 13 fouls from 14 tackles.
The best bit is the Barcola argument with the super chats. One viewer calls his decisions "disgraceful". Another says he's still finding his feet after PSG. The host lands in the middle: "I felt Barcola just overthought that situation." He says Barcola should have scored, but he'd rather Barcola got into those positions than didn't. The man-of-the-match poll offers Jacquet, Wirtz, Muñoz and Isak. Jacquet leads it, and the host goes for Muñoz anyway.
"This is what we pay the money for": Team Kopish on Isak
Team Kopish starts with the before-and-after test: a 2-1 win at the Gtech is a result "everyone would have bitten your hand off" for, "including myself". The refereeing gets a fair hearing. The channel thinks Wirtz was held and should have had a penalty ("How that's not a penalty, I don't know"), and that the Mac Allister one "absolutely wasn't a penalty" on replay. The Yarmoliuk red? "Absolutely justified."
The big point is Isak. He wasn't involved much and the ball didn't stick, but he scored the winner, and the channel lists the other recent games he has decided. "This is what we pay the money for." There's a defence of Virgil van Dijk too: "We need to really put respect on Virgil Van Dijk's name." It's not all good news. Team Kopish says it still isn't seeing much of Iraola's style of play. But with all the talk of two wins in seven before kick-off, the channel says it is "over the moon".
"We lost our heads": Mr Bee Hive on Brentford's two red cards
Over in the home end, Mr Bee Hive Of Football Chat put the blame on Brentford's own players, not the referee. The title says it plainly: Brentford lost because "We Lost Our Heads As 2 Of Ours Sent Off", and it calls both dismissals "Dumb & Pathetic". We only had the video titles to go on for this one, since captions are switched off, but they are blunt.
It matters because Brentford were 1-0 up when Yarmoliuk went. Lewis-Potter had headed them in front on 44 minutes, and the red card flipped the game. The channel came back later with a second video bringing in comments from both sets of fans, calling it "Our First Defeat". Even Manchester United channel Stretford Post, which found the red card "soft", said of Brentford that "they've only got themselves to blame". When a neutral room and the home room land in the same place, the visitors can enjoy it.
The argument: Iraola's subs, or Brentford's red cards?
The Liverpool rooms split along a simple line. Tom Little and TheRedmenTV think they watched a manager win a game with his substitutions: Muñoz at right-back, Ngumoha off the bench, legs on to see it out. Team Kopish and AnfieldAgenda are happy too, but keep coming back to 21 shots, five on target and an attack that still isn't clicking. Adikastakes goes furthest, calling it "one of the worst and the most smelling three points I've ever collected in my entire life", with a message for the forwards: "Finish your dinner." Everyone agrees on Barcola. He gets into the positions, and he still hasn't scored in the Premier League. If he scores next time out, today was a blip. If he doesn't, every one of these rooms will be talking about him again.
More from the rooms: Liverpool fan YouTubers and Brentford fan YouTubers.