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?
Losing away at Manchester City is not a disaster. The bookies, who typically act as the barometer for these things through their odds, made the champions roughly an even money prospect to win on Thursday evening. Liverpool, on the other hand, were outsiders at 5/2.
A Premier League title eliminator on January 3rd? Okay, it’s not as straightforward as that – life, and certainly football, never are, but let’s not beat about the bush: Thursday’s match will have a colossal impact on the destination of the famous trophy.
Well, if Carlsberg did the perfect footballing week, it would looks something like the seven or eight days that Liverpool have just enjoyed.
Let’s file away the nerve-shredding 1-0 win over Napoli as ‘job done’, shall we!? It was a tight old affair, as you’d expect with so much on the line, and it took two solitary standout moments to settle the contest.
There was no last gasp drama, no goalkeeping madness, no Jurgen Klopp celebration dash against Bournemouth….just a calm, clinical and comfortable Liverpool somewhere near their best.
We’re going about our business in fraught fashion, but Liverpool keep grinding out results; a trait we’ve been lacking for the past couple of years. When Jack Cork fired Burnley ahead on Wednesday evening it was very much a case of here we go again. But James Milner equalised and then along came the cavalry: Jurgen Klopp sending on Mo Salah and Roberto Firmino from the subs’ bench.
As Super Sundays go, that was absolutely tip top. The Merseyside derby with Everton had petered out into stalemate – a result which did us no favours as we hunt down Manchester City, but then football’s fickle finger of fate played its hand.
There were all sorts of shenanigans going on that may or may not have influenced the outcome of the game, but the reality was that Liverpool were thoroughly outplayed by PSG in Wednesday’s 1-2 defeat in Paris.