Managers obsess about control. It’s all very well putting on a show, but the team that wins the league will roughly be the side that controls games the best, with and without the ball. It is – and this almost goes without saying – what makes Manchester City so good under Pep Guardiola.
Liverpool are different. Their majesty, at least from a neutral’s perspective, comes from a lack of control. While Manchester City purr their way through matches, a classical symphony of a performance, Liverpool clash and clang and crash their way forwards.
At any moment of this season, you could envisage Liverpool conceding or scoring a goal within the next 30 seconds and yet wouldn’t necessarily be able to predict how.
Against most teams, that is more than good enough for victory. Jurgen Klopp has assembled a group of players with such prodigious talent (and proven himself so capable of improving them) that the noise is deafening for the majority of their opponents. But occasionally, a team turns up intent to go toe-to-toe with Liverpool. And that’s when the fun really starts.
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This was a raucous, brilliant advert for the Premier League. Chelsea started quickly and troubled Liverpool, celebrating that moral victory by conceding two goals scored by two sensational forwards who Liverpool – and the Premier League in general – will be sad to lose for the next six weeks. Sadio Mane showed Christian Pulisic how to round a goalkeeper before Mohamed Salah played a psychological prank on Marcos Alonso with a weaving run without the ball and a stabbed finish with it.
But ultimately, it proves why Liverpool will fall short in the title race. They did not soak up Chelsea pressure. They did not enjoy long spells of possession to suck the life out of the crowd and they left enough space in their defence to give Chelsea heart. They lacked control when control would surely have kept them in touch with the league leaders.
Liverpool are the best team to watch in the title race, and that’s both a compliment and an insult. Their zenith is higher than any other team in the country, but their ability to make life difficult for themselves as well as easy is their undoing. And when you watch them play open, expansive, entertaining matches against the league’s elite club, you realise that you wouldn’t have them any other way.
This is an extract of The Score, Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on all 20 Premier League teams’ performances. Sign up to receive the newsletter on Monday mornings here
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