During my second week of watching the Prem as a Liverpool fan — I was told to stop writing the “Premier League” because it makes me sound like the football newbie that I am — I had to do so on a tiny cell phone screen because I was joining my husband Scott and my Liverpool fan son Jonah to move my Liverpool fan daughter Abbey’s belongings to her new apartment in the Bronx as she starts a Physician Assistant Program. Abbey, who attended a Liverpool game at Anfield in May and likened its atmosphere to my beloved Fenway Park, drove and listened to the Liverpool v Bournemouth match audio while I rode shotgun and held aloft that diminutive screen.

It was definitely an inferior experience watching the game a cell phone while keeping an eye on the other two vehicles in our move-Abbey-to-the-Bronx caravan. Additionally, I couldn’t totally get into the spirit of things because I wasn’t wearing my brand new (retro version) Liverpool jersey which had recently arrived because I didn’t want it sullied as I unpacked boxes. Instead, I opted to live dangerously by wearing a Boston Red Sox tee while the Sox were playing — and beating — the New York Yankees just a few miles away from Abbey’s new digs at Yankee Stadium.

As for Liverpool’s come-from-behind 3-1 victory, it was initially quite grim inside our vehicle as not only were we stuck in atrocious traffic from Boston to NYC, but we were witnessing Bournemouth land two shots on target and one goal in the match’s opening minutes. And Liverpool, as an entity, was playing like a wet dish towel. I kept thinking about the video Jonah had shown me hours before in our kitchen, where Liverpool scored nine goals against the Cherries in a prior season. Had we unknowingly jinxed the game by musing about a possible repeat performance? I’d had Jonah knock on wood because, well, I can be a tad superstitious.

Feeling as though, after my reading about and watching of EPL football, I could speak with a teeny bit of verve about the match, I started live-tweeting. Luckily, after my first disgruntled post — “WTF @LFC @LFCUSA? Good God. Is this going to be a 9-1 but with the Reds on the wrong end? @premierleague” (the 2022 game was 9-0, I later learned, but you can’t edit tweets) — things started looking up. As Eurosport put it, “It took Liverpool half an hour to wake up but they hit two [goals] in nine minutes thanks to [Mo] Salah and an acrobatic finish from Luis Diaz.”

That Diaz goal, a quasi-bicycle kick move … a chef’s kiss of deliciousness to lift the gloom inside our vehicle as we remained stuck in stubborn traffic. Add in Salah’s goal on the rebound after his penalty kick (PK) was saved, and Abbey and I went into halftime quite happy.

Even though I’m quite new to British football, I thought the red card issued to Alexis MacAllister was bogus. Here’s what I wrote in my Notes app on my phone while watching the game on my daughter’s microscopic iPhone: “MacAllister gets bad red card. No malice. Learned that they [Liverpool] had to now play with 10 [players].” Another new football rule I filed into the recesses of my brain: red card = playing with only 10.

The issuance of that card came just 24 hours after Abbey, who’d been packing up her childhood room (!), came across the red and yellow card packet she had from her youth soccer reffing days. She never did find the right moment to flash either color card. However after watching the video of the controversial call (after our caravan took a breather at a rest area) former youth soccer ref Abbey concurred that it should’ve been a yellow.

The least surprising response to this red blunder came from my football-mad, Chelsea-supporting son Casey who did not make the trip with us. Via text, he said he agreed with the ref, adding that MacAllister’s studs were up and over a foot off the ground, a clear violation of the rules, which he’s read thoroughly. Two days later, I sent Casey a screenshot of an Instagram post from a (biased) Liverpool fan site, LFC Newsroom: “As widely expected by everyone with reasonably adequate eyesight, LFC have formally appealed for Alexis MacAllister’s red card to be overturned. … Surely it gets overturned. It was a clear mistake by the referee to give MacAllister a red card, even Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola said it wasn’t a red card.”

Those anti-red card folks were vindicated when the call was later overturned. I may have gloated (*I absolutely did*) in my family’s group text. Score one for the football novice.

Other tidbits:

Red = angry: The MacAllister red card seemed to inspire Liverpool to play a more aggressive style of football in the second half against Bournemouth, fueling a barrage of powerful shots. After the beginning of the game during which it seemed like the Reds were sleepwalking, this was refreshing.

Salah staying put: For the past few days, the internet has trembled with rumors that Salah was being wooed to leave Liverpool with the lure of a massive paycheck. Fortunately, those rumors have been dispelled. For now. (*fingers crossed and knocking on wood*)

Now, it’s onto the dangerous Newcastle team at St. James Park on Sunday. I’ll be wearing my Liverpool red!

Image credits: EuroSport/Getty and LFC Newsroom.