IS Liverpool’s match this weekend the club’s most important for 25 years? Probably not, if we’re being honest. AC Milan in the Champions League final at the Ataturk Stadium possibly outweighs Hull at home. Yet, to some extent, it feels huge.
The Reds’ season so far would be almost perfect but for that 2-0 loss to Burnley back in August. Having outplayed Arsenal in their own backyard in the first game of the season, the trip to Turf Moor should have seen Liverpool pick up a routine win. Instead, we were 1-0 down within two minutes and the rest of the match was an exercise in frustration.
That the Clarets have since gone on to pick up just one point, and concede eight goals, in four games in all competitions merely compounds our misery. The reality is that Hull is exactly the sort of team we seem to have struggled against under Jürgen Klopp.
The big boys aren’t all that much of a problem, as this tweet from Dan Kennett suggests:
Klopp vs Chelsea, City, United, Arsenal and Spurs:
P14 W6 D7 L1
F26 A15
And 6 of the goals conceded in 2 games vs Arsenal #lfc— Dan Kennett (@DanKennett) September 16, 2016
When we look at last season, it seems reasonably obvious where our problems lay. A 3-1 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge was followed up by ‘that fucking loss against Crystal Palace’, to quote the manager. The 6-1 League Cup win over Saints preceded a 2-0 loss to Newcastle. A 2-2 home draw against West Brom was bad enough, but we then lost 3-0 to Watford. That’s 11 points that would have seen us finish above Tottenham in third place, level on points with Arsenal.
Of course football doesn’t work quite as simply as that, but it’s definitely fair to suggest that Klopp’s men struggled to perform against the so called ‘lesser’ teams in the Premier League. That’s what makes the game against Hull so important. Right now we have a huge amount of momentum behind our play. Plenty of people will tell you that momentum in football isn’t a real thing, and that’s probably true. But it’s definitely beneficial from a psychological point of view.
It feels to me that Liverpool have struggled to beat the weaker teams in the league on a consistent basis, for as long as I’ve been watching us play. Let’s consider three seasons when the Reds came within touching distance of that elusive Premier League title; 2001-2002, 2008-2009 and 2013-2014.
Under Gerard Houllier, Liverpool — who had won the treble the season before — were considered to be outside favourites for the league. Two games into the new season and a 2-1 loss to Bolton Wanderers put a dampener on things before a 3-1 loss to Aston Villa at Anfield had people pulling their hair out. In December we lost 4-0 to a pre-Roman Abramovich Chelsea and also lost to Southampton and Spurs. The only ‘big’ team we lost to, however, was Arsenal; something we did both home and away that season. We took four points from the Ev and six from Manchester United.
In 2008-2009 it was a similar story. Many Liverpool fans point to the relentlessness of United in that campaign and they’re right to do so. After all, between drawing with Spurs on the 13th of December and losing to us on the 14th of March they won eleven games back to back. Fulham beat them the week after we did and they then won eight of their last nine. We weren’t too shabby ourselves that season, yet we drew with teams we really should have been beating. Aston Villa, Stoke (twice), Fulham, West Ham, Hull, Everton, Wigan and Manchester City (before the oil money kicked in, properly) all took a point from us in matches we should have won.
The 2013-2014 season has similar hallmarks. A draw away to Swansea City in September was followed up by a home loss to Southampton. Back-to-back losses against City and Chelsea were perhaps a tad more understandable, but a 2-2 draw with Aston Villa at Anfield and a 1-1 draw against West Brom at the Hawthorns saw four vital points dropped. We also all remember how we started December: With a 3-1 loss away at who? Hull City. Two ‘title challenge’ seasons in row have seen us drop crucial points to this season’s opponents.
Both Manchester United, in 2008-2009, and Manchester City, in 2013-2014, were relentless in their league performances and Liverpool were unlucky to miss out on the title in all three of the seasons I’ve just discussed. Houllier’s side amassed 80 points, the winning amount the year before. Rafa Benitez’s side got 86 — the winning amount the year after. Brendan Rodgers’s men got 84, a total that would have won the league in nine out of the 24 Premier League seasons that there have been.
However, the truth is, that relentlessness is exactly what you need if you want to win the title. In the history of the Premier League only one team has lasted an entire campaign without losing a single game, so points will be dropped. The only question is who you drop them to and how often you do it. If we look back in May and Hull was the outlier then it’s safe to bet that we’ll be in the mix. If it’s a common theme then it’s more than likely that we’ll be struggling to scrape the top four, no matter how well we deal with the ‘top’ teams.
As things stand, it’s only really Liverpool fans who are talking about the Reds being possible title contenders, and even that is with an acceptance that the league is City’s to throw away. Having so brutally dispatched the defending Premier League champions and then produced a professional display to embarrass Chelsea, some non-Merseyside voices are starting to take us a little bit more seriously. Some bookies even have us as second-favourites for the league.
Anything other than a resounding win over the Tigers will see our odds extend and teams that employ the ‘low block’ confident that they’ll be able to thwart us. If we batter them, though, it will be quite a different story. Manchester United used to have teams beaten before the match had even kicked off. A cynical person might suggest that was because of Alex Ferguson’s influence over referees, but a more level-headed one would tell you it’s because the opposition knew that they would score. They just knew it. No amount of sitting deep or ‘parking the bus’ would stop them from steamrolling the dross.
Liverpool are starting to cultivate a similar reputation. Consider this quote from Nemanja Matic before our match last Friday: “Tonight will be a very hard game against a great team…They have a lot of quality. I’m sure it will be a hard game”. Most players say similar things before matches, of course, yet it’s interesting that Matic focused on Liverpool’s quality rather than his own team’s.
If we put in a decent performance against Hull, and follow it up with a similar win against Swansea City the week after, then teams like West Ham, Stoke and Sunderland, who have struggled to get going this season, will be absolutely dreading coming up against us. We’ll also have the confidence to know that we can beat the sides in the bottom half of the table, and that in itself will give our players confidence.
Klopp’s biggest task isn’t getting his players to be up for the fight against Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal. It’s ensuring that a mental block doesn’t develop against the lower teams in the league in order to allow us to amass a decent points total. If we give points away to the likes of Hull and Swansea then it could well seem as though our struggles are systematic. Win these two on the bounce and then beat United, however, and it might — just might — finally be our year.
fully see the point and hear it mentioned so often.
but if you look at 13/14 where we missed out by 2 – whilst we lost points to lower sides we picked up more than probably fair compared the team that topped us. If 90 is, roughly, the PL ceiling points wise then I am not so sure its who you lose points to that matters – its simply a case of restricting how many you lose. In 13/14 had we beaten Hull, Sunderland and Palace, but lost home and away to City, lost agst Arsenal – we’d still not have won the thing even with a better lower team record, even if the results felt more normal.
If we drop points against only the top but not bottom, or vice versa, Reds will not win the league. Point above is that dropping points against the dross makes the already small margin for winning it that much smaller. Instead of drawing, or trading home/away wins with the top top, it makes getting all 6 against the top top essential to the title run. That is a mad way to set out trying to win a title which is another way of saying it’s a way to not win a title.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves with “this is our year”…… We don’t need curses this early on…… One game at a time please…
They’re professional footballers. I believe in my abilities as much as the next person but if I can “curse them” by writing an article suggesting we could be in the title race this year then they might want to consider a different career tbh. If you think they’re not thinking about being in the mix for the title themselves then I’d suggest you don’t understand the mentality of elite level athletes.
if you can dish out effective curses there are a ton better than lashing it on our lads. And I’m pretty sure a few quid is to be made
Hi Adam, nice refresh of the website design by TAW techs, and your article is well-timed. I think some us fans have to realize what you alluded to which is one game at a time.
Not sure about curses, etc, but TAW did write an article of how Liverpool’s lack of focus on the next game may have served to undo them every season since the glory days.
Anyways I like this from you as well, ‘it’s because the opposition knew that they would score’ about United’s success. I hope the Reds can develop this mentality, which showed glimpses of it under Brendan Rogers, which unfortunately was countered by the “they also leak goals, so no worries”.
One game at a time then. Hull is not going to roll over no matter what happens this weekend. So I hope Klopp and the Reds do their best to get the Red Machine in full effect.
Up the Reds!!!
“Outside favourite”. That’s a new one.
Agree with the gist of the article though. This feels like a big game because it has the hallmarks of many previous slips. It is true that points will always be dropped, and there may well be results in 16/17 that we rue more than Burnley, but it feels like this game matters because I want these future slips to be seen as blips, not ‘here we go again moments’. For that reason we need to put a few to the sword.
its not just this game – from now until Dec 31st we only have United from what you might class as our rivals (and Everton, but that’s another story). I think its something like 14 games until Man City on new years eve.
Its this spell now where we have to put the hammer down. We can set up the second half of the season for something really special over the next block of games. Starting on Saturday….
I stupidly checked our run in at the end of the season after going all giddy kipper with our latest results and by jove its fantastic. If we are still in the mix around Easter then we will be in with a shout, especially if City are still competing in the CL and cups.
They may be Tigers, but they certainly aren’t Grreeat! lets show em up for the frosted flakes they are, bamboozle em pour forward drowning them with our fluid movement leaving their defence porous and soggy, as the ball sticks to the back of their net, we need to become serial killers of these Premiership pretending bus parkers.
Fuck it I ‘ll settle for an ugly Costa like win,
No more banana teams. end of.
Disagree on 13/14. Was the only season in my lifetime where it felt like we were consistently blowing the poorer sides away more often than not. The fixture list having City and Chelsea away back to back a few days apart before the second half of the season kicks in new year was the difference looking back at that table. 1 win and 3 losses against City and Chelsea.
On the flip side 08/09 felt like the opposite with the 4 wins against United and Chelsea but loads of draws against some real shite killing us.
Interesting that we equalled United’s 08/09 record of 11 league wins on the spin in 13/14 though. And by ‘interesting’ I mean fucking infuriating that we didn’t win it.
Think it was Mike Nevin who wrote something recently mentioning N’gog being our other striker when Torres was injured 08/09 and then Aspas being back up for when Sturridge wasn’t fit and Suarez was banned (Souhthampton at home comes to mind). The club has never really wanted it enough off the pitch and behind the scenes to make it a reality. Hopefully with Klopp as Liverpool manager that cowardly lack of ambition we’ve had over the years is done away with.
You’re spot on about 13-14 and the wins against the dross. We still failed to beat some though and the main reason in particular I mention it is because of one the teams that took points from us – Hull City.
Ah yeah that was a dreadful one tbf. I vaguely remember Victor Moses on the back of the Echo through the week saying about coming to Liverpool for games then immediately whacking out the worst individual performance of the season. Genuinely amazes me he’s still at Chelsea and is even getting some games now.
Fingers crossed Burnley was the Hull 2013 of this season out the way early anyway.