After a week in which Liverpool dropped four points, The Reds won at the old enemy Manchester City to capitalise on Arsenal’s slip…
THERE’S an app on my phone which tells me how many hours of sleep I’ve had.
It goes into the details too. It tells me the difference between light sleep and deep sleep. You need more of the latter apparently.
This was not a good week to look at the figures. Wednesday night saw an all-time low.
Villa Park had me walk away with my hands in the air. It burned my head out. I’d had enough.
This had nothing to do with the score, or the misses, or the league table, or anything like that. It was just the pressure and worry. My head had gone. I just needed to be away from football for a bit. It was dominating every internal conversation I had and flavouring every mood. I just needed to vent. To clear this title challenge out of my head for a bit.
Typically, this coincided with my busiest work month of the year. February’s calendar is crammed with appointments.
I should have been getting around my customers to make sure everything’s alright and giving them my undivided attention and all I could think about was Ryan Gravenberch and how his deep sleep stats compared to mine. He’s been looking tired and somehow that became my business.
As I say, I really needed to walk away. For a bit at least. But you can’t walk away. Liverpool are still my every waking thought.
Then came West Ham.
How did you get through it? I went for a walk with about 20 minutes of the Arsenal game to go. I listened to the radio commentary on my phone and got me steps in.
It’s the hope that kills you and I wasn’t sure I could take the almost inevitable two late Arsenal goals. I should have turned it off but couldn’t. Moths are drawn to the light despite it burning them. They always go back for more pain and I’m no different.
Luckily there’s a Tesco’s near me which has an extraordinary quirk. It has absolutely no mobile signal whatsoever which admittedly isn’t that strange, but there’s a clear line of demarcation where the signal just drops. It’s the front door. It’s an absolute freak of nature. It’s like there’s a door policy. NO SIGNAL ALLOWED!
I don’t know how they do it, but you can hear everything clearly outside the store and then nothing the second you step inside. Weird.
This was the respite I needed. Radio silence. Literally.
I spent the next 12 minutes in a form of numbed panic. I was both in a hurry and slowing down so I could be spared the vagaries of fate. When I came out it was all over. The hope surged again. Villa Park forgotten. I could have given Jarrod Bowen a piggyback to wherever he wanted to be in the world.
So yesterday became a free hit. Even if we lost it was just another game where Arsenal couldn’t reduce the lead. They’d only have 12 more goes at it to our 12. Also, the dropped points from the annoying midweek draws were more or less wiped out, which made me realise all that worry was wasted and – pointedly – that I’ll never learn.
And football can do that. Liverpool can do that. You spend a few days trying to calm your mind and wonder if it’s worth the risk to your health and then, within the time it takes to buy bananas, you can’t wait for the next game to start.
Yesterday was glorious.
The highlight of the game? Curtis Jones celebrating his offside goal by telling the away end to get up and then doing the same thing again even though it had been ruled out.
In that moment he wasn’t bothered about scoring a huge goal as he knew that the battle was won. His expression for both celebrations didn’t change one iota. He just wanted to let us know that he thought all this was great too. It was a reconnect during a game. Those are the times when the whole thing feels… Collegiate.
Eleven days earlier he was running full pelt into Abdoulaye Doucouré’s chest to fight our corner. God, I love him. I don’t care.
But if there’s one man who should take most of the credit. I won’t go with Mo Salah here as how the hell do you sum that man up? I’m not even going to try.
Arne Slot’s ruthlessness astounds me. Diogo Jota and Darwin Nunez disappointed him in Birmingham, so we played a system which didn’t need them. Neither got on. Harvey Elliott played his first minutes since Plymouth, back in from the doghouse. The man’s no nonsense.
But what is more impressive is the hallmark he’s branded onto this team. It would be so easy to just follow Jürgen Klopp’s blueprint for a season until he decided what to do, but he’s already revitalised careers (Ryan Gravenberch), changed roles (Dominik Szoboszlai) and brought in a whole new system of play.
Look at Manchester City’s second half goal kicks yesterday. The entire forward line dropped to the centre of the pitch instead of pressing. Jürgen would have had them standing on City’s toes, but this manager is more about reward over risk.
And it might win him a league title. In his first season. With just one signing. And he swore at Michael Oliver. That’s a hell of a start.
I slept well last night. The stats back it up. And now I can’t wait for Wednesday.
Sing.
