There has been something of a theme of late as far as Liverpool FC are concerned. The 3-0 and 5-0 wins over Bournemouth and Watford appear to be anomalies almost in a series of performances in which we have dominated proceedings but been unable to find the winning goal.
In our preview of the Watford game, we asked Liverpool to find their mojo again. Ninety minutes, five goals and a clean sheet later, it would be fair to conclude that they did exactly that.
Football still has the ability to surprise us all despite the millions of minutes of the beautiful game we have seen. Most expected the encounter with Manchester United on Sunday to be a highly entertaining affair, with energy and passion matched by attacking intent and quality. Bizarrely, the opposite occurred.
Ordinarily, a goalless draw at home couldn’t be construed as a good result, and particularly not for a Liverpool outfit that has been so good at Anfield this term. But whisper it: maybe the 0-0 stalemate with Bayern Munich in the Champions League last 16 first leg on Tuesday was a positive outcome.
Bottler, choker….and many more words that were slightly more graphic in nature.It’s amazing how one ‘poor’ result is perceived by the wider football community, especially when said ‘poor’ result came away at a West Ham side that has already beaten Manchester United and Arsenal at home and taken points off Chelsea.
Nobody likes to hear a football manager making an excuse for his side’s failings. But anyone who witnessed the game against Leicester on Wednesday evening perhaps would have agreed with Jurgen Klopp’s sentiments that the snow caused his players to freeze on the big stage.
Remember when there was uproar as Jurgen Klopp named a weakened side and we were knocked out of the FA Cup in the third round? Ask the players as they reclined on their sun loungers in Dubai last week if they thought that was a bad thing!
The secret to being the best is in knowing that on any given day, you can’t always be at your best. If that makes sense. That parable may be made up, but it certainly has truth to it when we think about it in the context of football.
Four points clear at the summit of the Premier League table and into the last 16 of the Champions League: the first half of the 2018/19 campaign could not have gone any better.
Plenty has been written about Liverpool’s early exit from the FA Cup. Was Jurgen Klopp disrespectful to the competition by naming a much-weakened side? Did he do the club a disservice by failing to acknowledge that this was a trophy we could be lifting come May? Or has he played a blinder in focusing solely on the Premier League title race and the Champions League?