If Burnley were a test of humility, a reminder that football is a game of chance as well as method and technique, then imagine the satisfaction when Liverpool grub one in off a post to re-inflate the balloon at Manchester United.
The FA Cup would not have been a priority for Jurgen Klopp when he was mapping Liverpool’s assault on 2021. After a horrible trot of four league games without a goal culminating in a first defeat at Anfield in almost four years it feels something like necessity now.
Such is the intensity of the period, scope for perspective is denied the participants. Hence Klopp can’t help but chase his counterpart Sean Dyche down the tunnel at half time like a banshee, unhinged by one perceived injustice or another. And afterwards is compelled to process a defeat that some are beginning to see as the inevitable consequence of a slippage in quality and standards.
How quickly the picture shifts. A week ago Liverpool were considered the ultimate test of United’s championship credentials, offering the most rigorous interrogation of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s ensemble.
Had the old norms held, their domination of possession and control in the first half might have yielded the kind of outcome with which we have become familiar, and that only a month ago saw Crystal Palace go for seven without reply at Anfield.
A glance at the stats reveal a familiar pounding of Burnley. The 27 shots attempted was the most by Liverpool in a match without scoring since 2013. Burnley are the Horrid Henry of football, a team that delights is making the beautiful game an ugly pageant.
United were no more effective against them in terms of creating clear opportunities but benefitted from a chance moment when Paul Pogba hit the sweet spot and volleyed a goal that on another day might have flashed over the bar.
Divock Origi was inches the wrong side of destiny when he smashed Liverpool’s best chance against the bar. Such are the margins. Pogba’s goes in to claim three points and render irrelevant any greater scrutiny of performance. Origi’s stays out, Burnley hang on, nick a late penalty and all of a sudden Liverpool’s world is a different place, every misfire scrutinised and layered with meaning.
Klopp’s one moment of clarity came at the end of the night when he observed how this tricky period served to demonstrate just how ridiculously brilliant and effective his team has been for the greater part of three seasons, reaching absurd levels of excellence and consistency.
Liverpool not only raised the bar, they lowered the colours of one of the great club sides in the history of the English game in order to prevail. Manchester City are only just beginning to show signs of recovery.
It might be that we are indeed witness to the first hints of diminution or even decline at Liverpool.
Every team is an organism all of its own. Maintaining standards, repeating performance, retaining motivation amid the maelstrom of a competition that is always evolving is coaching’s holy grail. The art of renewal within sport’s shifting dynamic is the most difficult to master.
As well as the obvious impediments to progress this season rooted in injuries to key players, Klopp is now having to manage those damned intangibles confidence and belief. The German doesn’t need the league table to tell him that opponents know his team as well as he does and have devised methods to disrupt their rhythm.
As much as it offends the Klopp aesthetic, opponents are entitled not to play to Liverpool’s strengths. It is in this narrowing margin for error that Liverpool are being asked to operate, just as City were before them, and every successful team before them.
It is on Klopp and his players to work it out, to fashion the appropriate response or accept that ultimately someone else will be tasked with the job. A fourth-round visit to Old Trafford ought to concentrate minds. Waiting for them is a United team still feeling their way in elite company, a thought that amused Jamie Carragher when it was made by United mascot Gary Neville after the tepid draw a week ago.
Neville was right. United do not have the swagger that comes with the lofty position they occupy at the top of the Premier League. They have been running a substance deficit for so long, absolute trust in the plan and each other has yet to keep pace with results. Only when outcomes match expectations in all conditions does a team really begin to motor.
This is where Liverpool have been and where they might return as early as Sunday should the fractions that have been working against them swing back in their favour.
United are arguably not as good as the table suggests, Liverpool, down to fourth, not quite as bad. At least Liverpool’s form has lessened the loading on the match itself. None is expecting the contest to reset football’s parameters. It might even be more of a spectacle than the shouty stuff beforehand and the hysteria afterwards. There could even be a goal. Imagine that.
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