For Jurgen Klopp it’s all about trust. We are far too quick to judge, he says reflecting on the downturn suffered by Liverpool since his team last played Spurs six weeks ago. Back in the halcyon days of mid-December, Liverpool topped the table with successive wins against Tottenham and Crystal Palace.
That emphatic endorsement of Kloppism appeared to place in a more familiar context the distribution of power in what had been an anomalous start to the Premier League season.
We could not have imagined then, as Mohamed Salah, Bobby Firmino and Sadio Mane shared five of the seven goals against Palace that Liverpool would be anything other than the shimmering standard by which all others are measured.
It remains Liverpool’s last league win. In the five league games since, they have scored only once and have tumbled seven points adrift of the leaders.
The worry for Klopp as he seeks to impose a sense of perspective on recent events is the rise of Manchester. Whether Liverpool are being harshly judged or not ahead of the trip to Spurs is neither here nor there.
The table is the ultimate arbiter and at the halfway point of this rumbustious campaign it is Manchester City who are looking down on the field a point clear of Manchester United, who just so happened to run three past Liverpool in a thrilling re-statement of red devilishness in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
Though City are the ninth team this season to occupy the perch, there is a menacing certainty about a superpower that has won 11 on the spin. Seven of those victories have been posted in a league sequence featuring 18 goals with only one against, and that was one of the last kicks of the match at Chelsea.
Even if Liverpool were to suddenly re-inflate, pop back into shape at Spurs, giving City a seven point start in a race to the line is no bargain.
The opportunity for Klopp to judge for himself any deficit in quality, or otherwise, to City comes a week on Sunday at Anfield. It might already be too late by then should Spurs, West Ham and Brighton impose their own ambition on Liverpool.
When Spurs entered Anfield as league leaders it was easier to accept the demurring of Jose Mourinho, who ran a mile from the idea that any significance should be attached to classifications in December.
A win would take Spurs above Liverpool into fourth place, five points behind the leaders. It would also stretch to six points their advantage over transformed rivals Arsenal, who are doing all they can to restore the spread of familiar power at the top end of the table.
The visit of United to the Emirates on Saturday presents Arsenal with an opportunity to authenticate a run that has seen them win five of their six league games since Boxing Day.
We digress, given permission by a disrupted season of plenty. This half-term report has not even mentioned Leicester, arguably as easy on the eye as City, who travelled to Everton temporarily unassailable in third place. Those with Champions League signs in their eyes cannot expect Leicester to donate a place so generously a second time.
Spurs’ FA Cup triumph at Wycombe kept their season rolling along plausibly. There was a sense with the defeat at Liverpool in December that Mourinho was fully returned to himself. That old defiance radiated across Anfield, the result a monstrous injustice to the better team. His team, of course.
Had the late chances spurned by Harry Kane and Steven Bergwijn gone in, the same argument would have been available to Klopp, who saw Salah and Firmino miss excellent opportunities as well as score.
Thus does football’s narrative swirl continue to engage unabated. Big Sam is back among us. Frank Lampard is no more. Welcome Thomas Tuchel, the 12th permanent manager of the Roman Abramovich era through Chelsea’s revolving door.
That all of this is still unfolding in empty stadia is all the more remarkable. The old game has the exoskeleton of a beetle, proving impossible to crush no matter what the scale of circumstance weighing upon it. And we have reached only halfway.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/36fZM0E
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