Everyone wants to win with style, but all that matters is getting the job done and taking the three points home with you. And that’s exactly what Liverpool did on Saturday after a hard-fought victory over Watford; a fixture that may well have just caused us a few headaches in years gone by.
After a welcome break from domestic action, it’s back to the nitty gritty for Liverpool FC as we look to stamp out authority on the Premier League table heading into the festive period. The international break is a bleak time for all club sides but especially for the Reds, with so many of our players representing their countries in far-flung corners of the globe.
Given what was at stake, Liverpool’s 0-2 capitulation at Red Star Belgrade on Thursday was wholly unacceptable. We could have made life so much easier for ourselves in a Champions League group which also contains PSG and Napoli. Qualification, with a game or two to spare, would have been a fantastic achievement, and a real bonus ahead of the tough festive schedule.
Respect is a word that, while uttered a lot, means very little in modern football. But respect was as clear as day on Saturday when Liverpool and Arsenal played out an entertaining 1-1 draw at the Emirates.
It may have only been for a brief while, but Liverpool went top of the Premier League table on Saturday night after demolishing Cardiff City 4-1. Goals from Mo Salah, Sadio Mane (x2) and Xherdan Shaqiri were enough to get the job done against the Bluebirds, and we rose to the summit of the league before Manchester City leapfrogged us once more – by goal difference only, mind you – after beating Spurs on Monday evening.
Even the most pessimistic of Liverpool FC supporters would not have expected us to come unstuck against Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League on Wednesday. As such, the convincing 4-0 victory barely raised an eyebrow.
“It is the first period in my life that we can win average matches,” Jurgen Klopp said immediately after Liverpool’s 1-0 victory over Huddersfield on Saturday. Boy, he’s not wrong either.
The dangers of the international break to club sides have been laid bare this week as the queue for the Liverpool treatment room gets even longer. Mo Salah injured himself while scoring direct form a corner for Egypt – sometimes, the luck really isn’t with you, and the thigh strain suffered has kept him out of training until Thursday, when he is rumoured to be returning to the fray.
You would have to go back months – years even – to find the last time that Liverpool failed to register a single shot on target in a football match. But that’s exactly what happened in Naples on Tuesday, when the Reds toiled to a 0-1 defeat at the hands of Napoli in the Champions League.
Two games in the space of three days against Chelsea have served up frustration and food for thought in equal measure for Jurgen Klopp. While defeat in the Carabao Cup perhaps isn’t the end of the world – we have bigger fish to fry this season, the absorbing 1-1 draw against the Blues on Saturday in the league highlighted that we may still have another step up in class to make if we want to genuinely challenge for the title.