Liverpool treated their fans to six goals at Anfield tonight as they tore Sparta Prague to shreds in the Europa League round of 16, but one pundit watching the game from the Sky Sports studio wasn’t overly enthused by what he witnessed.
The Reds ended the tie 11-2 aggregate winners to cruise into the quarter-finals, and after Dominik Szoboszlai netted the home side’s fifth of the night three minutes into the second half, Jay Bothroyd didn’t mince his words about the paucity of the opposition.
Speaking on Sky Sports, the ex-Blackburn striker said: “It’s getting laughable, to be honest. 10-2 now. Liverpool have literally come out and scored again.”
He added: “It’s funny because the manager has probably said to the team ‘let’s keep it tight for five or 10 minutes’, and then [Liverpool] have come out and scored again. It’s unbelievable stuff here.
“Normally I’m complaining about a 0-0 but I’m actually bored with this now because there’s just one team playing keep-ball. It’s embarrassing for Sparta Prague, it really is.”
Admittedly the Czech champions were as weak a team as you could hope to face at this stage of the Europa League, but Liverpool deserve credit for emphatically putting them to the sword and wrapping up the tie so professionally.
Having gone into tonight’s game with a 5-1 lead from last week, the Reds could’ve been forgiven for not playing with the accelerator pressed fully, but that simply isn’t the Jurgen Klopp way.
Bothroyd may have been bored, but around 60,000 home fans inside Anfield most certainly weren’t!
You can view Bothroyd’s reaction to the Szoboszlai goal below, via @SkyFootball on X (formerly Twitter):