THE Reds standing on the edge of a cliff.
They daren’t look down. Only look across, to the horizon, to the biggest prize. It’s time for all to show faith. The faith that Liverpool will win the Premier fucking League.
That’s how I’d feel if I was a Liverpool player. About to face Manchester City in their lair, now, on the cusp of all this. The wind is at their backs, pushing them ever forward. If it were me I would find it difficult to stay cool. I’d be too giddy. I’d get angry, happy, frustrated, bereft with anticipation. But these Liverpool lads are the best in the business. The very best. They’re about to prove it beyond doubt.
A month ago we’d never have dreamed how things would play out. We were on Manchester City’s coattails and grateful just to be in the same room. We were sighing that in any other season or era that it would be us at the top table. Not cast in the role of plucky seconds, but the real deal. Then crazy things happened. We got better. Much better. And they got worse. Much worse.
And here we are. Liverpool seven points ahead of the 100-point champions. Liverpool, 91 points in their last 38 games. Liverpool scoring, scoring, but barely letting a goal in. Liverpool, Liverpool, top of the league.
And on Thursday night it could well be City’s night and they could make us look like shit for that night. But when we wake up on Friday morning and wipe the sleep from our eyes, the worst, the worst of it, is that we will lead this league by four big points. Do your worst Manchester City. Do your fucking worst.
This must bring an end to the sense that it’s now or never for Liverpool. Every title challenge we’ve mustered since 1990 has felt like a smash and grab affair. Like, if we don’t seize our chance now, we never would. That realisation tainted all of those ventures. I’m not in it just for the pot, of itself, I want us to be the best. The best team in the land.
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We were once, and it made me feel proud. It made us all feel so very proud. We knew it was the lads on the pitch, with their talent, their style and their goals, but they knew too that it was all impossible without us. It’s always been this way. And you, me, we know, that if and when this current crop of Reds bring it home, that it will be because of all of us.
Jürgen Klopp has navigated the Christmas fixture programme by keeping players focused only on the immediate challenge in front of them. He’s preached “one game at a time” in every press conference, but all the while he’s been readying his side for the Manchester City game.
Legs will be weary, some changes are possible, but key men will be asked to go round once again. That front three and big Virgil are playing every game. They’ll get best part of 10 days off after City, surely rested in the FA Cup, but they will need to summon every sinew for one last big push.
I think we’ll win at the Etihad. Champions, at some point, definitively win their biggest game and leave no room left for doubt.
We’ve arrived at that defining moment.
Predicted 11: Alisson; Trent, Lovren, van Dijk, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum, Keita; Salah, Firmino, Mane
Kick off: 8pm, Thursday
Referee: Anthony Taylor
Odds by Redsbet: Man City 1-1, Draw 53-20, Liverpool 12-5
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I’d like to say this is a good piece, but it has mistakes in it… Tomorrow is Thursday morning and whilst I will indeed be rubbing the sleep from my eyes, it will be to the tune of still being 7 points ahead as we are yet to play City until later that evening. So being pedantic and all that, we will say Friday morning and I am one of those bastards who won’t have slept either way. If we have lost, I will be on one. If we have won I will be just crawling in from the night out celebrating this.
As for 90 points in the last 38 games (some of those coming in the midst of us managing our team for the more important CL Games rather than a chance of winning the PL, just to put it more in perspective)… I have all this as 91 points. Yeap, being pedantic again. Now it could be that my maths is askew on this, so happy to be corrected if I am wrong. But if I am right, then it shows we are just 9 points off this all conquering City Team.
Now going one further. i believe this year that all manner of scoring records are being broken as a collective in the PL. So with this all in mind, then this shows how ridiculously stingy we have become at the back… Now hopefully that will continue tomorrow evening against what is a World Class Team… who just so happen to have conceded in their last 10 games (I could be wrong on this fact again, so once more happy to be proven wrong).
So indeed much hinging on this game. Win and we go 10 clear of what has to be the greatest team of the PL Era, a team that has set records even stretch back to the very beginning of professional footy… and in doing so we are also setting records, but that is what it takes to be consider in this title race. – I personally feel that if we can get the win, then 10 points and whatever the goal diff is in our favour then equates to what is realistically a 4 game wobble. That would mean City being perfect for the next 17 and us having this 4 game wobble with the same number to go and having played 7 times against the other big 6 (can only play 10) with 2 of the remaining ones to take place at home.
It is a tall ask, as City will be only too acutely aware of this and will be up for it. There’s also a reason why they got 100 points last term and for the best part of the season were being touted to again do this total and even more this term… They are the likes we have not seen before in the PL. We are going to need to be at our best to beat them, but beat them we can as proven 3 times last term and whilst we had 11 vs 11 last term, then we were always a match for them.
However i will point to Anfield and the game this season when we got off lucky, especially with the penalty. We just didn’t turn up and if City had actually been more courageous we were there for the taking. Likewise we have been beaten 3 times away in the CL this term, all deserved. All where we failed to show. All where we looked anything but a team who are capable of winning a major prize this term. We must remember those games and remember what it takes. We have to be up for this tomorrow night and go and match City, as what I said in the stats will prove we are their equals and we should not fear them. Respect yes, but fear NO!!! We are good and now is the time to prove this like no other… and feck waking up on Friday morning to just being 4 points ahead.
One final thing is the last time we went for the PL Title under Rodgers, I felt that were we came undone was being robbed at City away. This was a 4 point swing. As if it wasn’t for the shocking officiating that game then we would have taken the PL that year. I hope tomorrow night we get a fair game and actually I also hope we get the rub of the green. – So we owe them for this alone.
So… COME ON YOU MIGHTY REDMEN. Make us proud and keep this dream going.
Stopped reading after 3 lines.
but you felt the need to tell him/her though!
Jody didn’t say exactly what those 3 lines he was referring to in his statement. These lines could have been of the Colombian Marching Band variety and if this was the case then no wonder he couldn’t read any further. :D
Being pedantic, the penultimate paragraph should read ‘where we came undone,’ not ‘were we came undone.’
And your prize for spotting the deliberate mistake is….???
:D
Being pedantic – 90 points from 37 league games played in 2018. If we include the last game of 2017, then 93 points from 38 games…
PS Good article from Rob
Hi Steve, Check your maths.
Yes we played 37 league games in 2018 taking 88 points in total. In the last 38 games (using the last game in 2017 which was Leicester) we took 91.
2017
Leicester win 3pts
2018
Burnley win 3pts
City win 3pts
Swansea loss 0pts
Huddersfield win 3pts
Spurs draw 1pts
Southampton win 3pts
WHU win 3pts
Newcastle win 3pts
Man Utd loss 0pts
Watford win 3pts
Palace win 3pts
Everton draw 1pts
Bournemouth win 3pts
WBA draw 1pts
Stoke draw 1pts
Chelsea loss 0pts
Brighton win 3pts
I get this to 18 games and 37pts. Add that to this season’s total thus far; 38 games and 91pts.
Just to be pedantic ;)
Great piece Rob – up the Mighty top of the table Reds!
I’m not from a country with a traditionally large footballing culture, and while I love the game, I’ve always supported a club from elsewhere as a fan (Real Madrid since 1989 – yeah, yeah, I know… I was too young to recognize the nature of evil, and it was too late after that).
There is some merit in the argument that armchair fans like me will never know what it means to be a “real” supporter of a club that is from where you are. To go to every home game, to sing and shout at the ground, to serenade the team when they win, and to lift them up with our voices when they are down. There is, however, a flip side to that same coin. It is that, removed from the immediacy of the emotion and the tribal loyalty, someone like me tends to be a football fan first and a fan of a particular team or club second. I’d argue that we find it easier to appreciate great football no matter who plays it, because the distance lends us more of an objective perspective from which to appreciate it.
Which brings me to this Liverpool team. I was never a huge fan of the Liverpool teams that I’ve seen so far (remember them from around the turn of the century). I never made a point of following them with any particular attention until Klopp’s arrival was announced, because as a football fan, I was very aware indeed of the big German whose Dortmund team sometimes played like a pack of African wild dogs who could run until the end of the world. I’ve seen them eviscerate my team and leave me applauding the television, and I saw their coach speak charismatically, humbly, sensibly, and I loved what I saw.
After Klopp arrived at Liverpool, I made a point of following their games, and I predicted right at the moment of his arrival that Liverpool were on to something special. It wasn’t especially prescient to do so – Klopp has the proven ability to get his teams functioning as more than the sum of their component parts. The only question was whether the club had the wisdom to back this ability, and provide him the component parts that would allow him to skyrocket the sum of them to stratospheric heights.
Did they ever. And has he ever.
Regardless of how this season ends, here’s the perspective of an armchair fan with the benefit of emotional distance – in this era of football, for any team to consider not winning the league as a “failure” is madness. Winning the league or the Champions’ League is not a matter of right or entitlement – only one can do each, and that they did so hardly means that the others failed. As a football fan, all I hope for is that my team plays positive, entertaining football commensurate with the players at their disposal, that the players and staff conduct themselves in a manner that doesn’t let down the club and the fans, and that the club’s senior leadership don’t behave like they’ve lost their collective minds. Herein lies identity – a far more sustainable goal than the ephemeral currency of outcomes.
In football, as in life, outcomes follow processes. Klopp and FSG seem to have put into place processes and methods at Liverpool that cannot but result in positive outcomes over time. Sometimes those outcomes will include trophies, most times they will not. As long as these processes continue to be of the type that build the club’s identity and keeps them improving steadily, what more can a fan – any fan – reasonably demand?
All of which is to say that I have derived more joy from watching Liverpool play football over the last 3 years than I have even from watching my chosen team win three straight in Europe. I’d have happily applauded the Reds if they had beaten my team in last year’s final, because they play football that lifts the heart, that stirs the soul, and are led by a man who seems like a genuinely humble and grounded human being who is very good at what he does but knows enough to not take himself too seriously.
And I’m writing all this here because in these three years of watching and loving Liverpool play, I’ve also developed a real affection for how passionate their fans seem to be, and how they wear their hearts on their sleeve. I’ve found The Anfield Wrap and a couple of other fan sites that express this love hand in hand with real football knowledge and analysis, and have enjoyed it thoroughly. I’ve learnt more about the ethos of the city and the club, and I hope the team brings the fans some silverware to celebrate at the end of the season.
And if it is not to be, so what? Celebrate anyway, you lucky bastards. You are “real” fans of one of the most exciting and enjoyable football teams on the planet, and you get to go to Anfield and play as the collective twelfth man on that team. Count your blessings, pray that it lasts a while, and spare a thought for us “armchair” fans that cannot be there ourselves in more than spirit.
I would take a draw.Not winning the title with the second or third highest points tally ever is too horrible to think about.
No Reds fan should go into this game taking the draw.
First, lets see how the match unfolds. If the scoreline 1-0 to city with 10 minutes to go, then I would take a draw in that moment but not when we lead 2-1 with 5 minutes tpo go.
These Reds have done enough to earn our faith and trust.
I want the win desperately. This is a must win for me. Season-defining. And I dont care what anxious fans think about it.
Klopp and the boys will display that winning mentality tonight. No doubt about that!
Great Article as always Rob