July 2018
LIVERPOOL tour, we tour.
Three games, three Anfield Wrap live shows. Charlotte, New York, Detroit. These are three profoundly different places.
Charlotte is an ever-growing financial and legal hub for the south east of the United States. It’s a city trying to work out what it actually is, springing up around itself, enjoying a sprawl. It’s the south on spreadsheets.
New York is New York. So good they named it etc. It is both world city and city of the world. It overwhelms you and whatever you want to do you can do. If you haven’t been you know you should go if you can afford it – a live question, by the way – and if you have been you will be thinking of when you can go again.
But Detroit. Oh, Detroit. Charlotte sprawls, Detroit contracts. People work in Charlotte but they live in Detroit. They die there too. It’s a city which has so many problems but a city which just vibrates and shimmers and drinks and dances and asks you if you are going to get some tonight.
Go to Detroit because Detroit Hustles Harder. It’s a museum, and a petri dish, and a party.
Detroit feels like home but very much isn’t home. We have to be careful of these things because identity is complicated and we cannot decide to have other people off because it makes a neat line.
A quick Wikipedia tells you that Detroit’s black or African American community makes up 82% of its residents. The collapse of industry is on an unprecedented scale. Detroit could be the most post-industrialised place there has ever been.
We can draw some parallels, though.
Liverpool was spoken of in the context of ‘managed decline’. Well, Detroit’s decline has been managed, mismanaged, just plain organic and quite possibly systemically malevolent. There has been a mass migration from Detroit due to this.
When we said to people elsewhere in the US we were going to Detroit there was that intake of breath between teeth, that little face, that bit of ‘be careful’ hinted at or stated openly. Say to someone in Godalming you are popping to Liverpool.
Our live shows, especially abroad, are massively about identity. People come because they identify with Liverpool, both place and city. People are much more than just one thing.
The desperation in populist political circles to define people for or against something by just one facet on their complex being should be resisted at all times. It’s our responsibility to challenge and remember that at every opportunity.
No one embodies this more than Mo Salah, Egyptian King.
When he came on against Manchester City in New York, when he stood on the sidelines, it was like Beyonce was about to get on stage. Prior to the Kyiv final everyone wanted to talk about Salah, talk about him being a Muslim hero. But there is so much more to him than that. He is African and North African. Arab and Egyptian. He is a Liverpudlian icon.
He stood on the sidelines in New York and it was as though the world’s city was about to acclaim the world’s player. And then he scored straight away, Beyonce opening with Crazy In Love.
America was a blur. Everyone gave us shots to drink and we drank them. The shows went brilliantly, a celebration of supporting Liverpool.
The line about overseas supporters from jealous rivals is that they are ‘glory hunters’. If they are, they are bad ones. Liverpool have won one League Cup this decade. But if they are anything, they are journey hunters.
They came for the football, fell in love with the city, wanted this football club and the urban sprawl that defines it to define part – only part – of their personalities. We’ve got them sprung and they don’t care who sees.
We have Liverpool in common, they all get together in supporters’ clubs as we do in Anfield. In that common ground, the facets of our identities can mingle. We can enjoy our differences. Those who want to define us by one thing don’t want that common ground. It is counter to their goals.
They are wrong. We are right and Liverpool leave the United States having again brought people together having seen the Egyptian King in action.
Neil Atkinson
Sunday August 12, 2018
Dan Morgan
‘I LOVE the first day, man, everybody all friendly and shit.’
Namond Brice in The Wire had it right. School is in as of this weekend and we all get to go back to an environment where fun and enjoyment is just as fundamental as the learning process we continue to go through with Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
When Liverpool open their Premier League campaign against West Ham United at Anfield this Sunday they do so on the back of a summer holiday filled with ambition and optimism.
The summer transfer business, pre-season form and general vibe in and around the club, particularly with the conscious efforts to integrate players and fans, has left many of the opinion that this is the year that Liverpool take the next step and achieve major honours.
The contrast of The Reds’ pre-season versus a summer of World Cup and premature transfer window chaos that has engulfed those around them represents an opportunity, there is no doubt about it. Liverpool are well aware, however, that they are completely at the behest of a Manchester City side who achieved 100 points last term.
Nothing is guaranteed in the football world, especially in England where you would be foolish to dismiss the likes of Manchester United, despite them having a manager who represents that fella you used to work with who told you every day how shit his job was but stayed there for 30 years.
Nothing is guaranteed, this much we know. Everyone starts on nil, nobody has the right. Don’t do it for you, do it for Lucas.
Opening day clichés apart, an opportunity does present itself in the first four fixtures of the campaign for Klopp’s men to set a pace at the top of the table.
With chaotic pre seasons and the likelihood of opposition absentees following those who went deep into the summer in Russia, the Liverpool boss has no doubt earmarked the early fixtures as a chance for his team to open up a gap on the rest.
You feel Klopp has become more ruthless over the summer. His margin for error and willingness to rehabilitate, which could be to the detriment of the team, is now at its slightest.
The signing of Alisson Becker, on the heels of some concerning pre-season displays by Loris Karius – which in turn came after the manager had briefed his support for the German stopper to continue as number one despite what happened in Kyiv – is evidence of his desire to take the next step.
The thought of Karius as Liverpool’s number one turning up to a rambunctious Selhurst Park on a Monday night in August was potentially a recipe for disaster.
The prospect of needlessly dropping points in the second game of the season could be the difference between winning a title in May and, more importantly, setting the wrong type of tone for a squad that need the utmost concentration and desire from the get go.
Klopp and his team have rectified a major weakness in Liverpool. His side look ready to step up and will need to do so from the first whistle.
There is a historic body of evidence to suggest that themes to a season can be set as early as the first day. Emile Heskey smashing one in the roof of the Anfield Road net against Bradford in 2000-01 set a precedent for him to spearhead a treble-winning Liverpool attack and have the best season of his career.
In 2013-14, Liverpool earned a 1-0 victory against a horrible Stoke side after a Daniel Sturridge strike and, more importantly, a late penalty save by Simon Mignolet. That day I came out the ground thinking Liverpool could really do something on the back of that result and the impending return of Luis Suarez.
Conversely, there is a moment on the opening day of the 2011-12 season campaign where Stewart Downing smashes the crossbar of Sunderland’s goal from 25 yards in a frustrating 1-1 draw, which not only set a frankly weird tone of repeatedly hitting the woodwork throughout that season, but also one that ensured Downing himself didn’t get to kick on.
These things can be brushed off as coincidental. However, in the subconscious mind of a player and team, they matter in the same way positive reinforcement does. If opposition clubs and supporters have spent the summer stating Liverpool will challenge for honours, then a strong start will only add to their proclamations and fears.
Liverpool already have a lot of miles in their legs and look strong entering the new campaign. They have played on average three games more than everyone else. This, we know, is a trademark of Klopp’s, to get his boys in the best possible physical shape to start strong, yet don’t be surprised to see similar levels of rotation to last season once 2018-19 hits its full stride.
The amount of players at the manager’s disposal, in line with the sheer weight of a league and cup campaign he now knows is so weathering, means there remains an element of hope surrounding the fitness and reliability of the likes of Sturridge and Adam Lallana, coupled with keeping key players fit throughout the campaign.
Regardless, you feel The Reds haven’t been in such a healthy position going into the opening day in a long time. West Ham will provide a difficult test and are, in many ways, very hard to read due to their manager and player turnaround. Yet it will be solely down to what Liverpool and Anfield do on the day to ensure we get off to the start we all want.
The manager and club have gone to great lengths in pre-season to harness the feeling of togetherness that grew with the Champions League run of last season. There has been a responsibility placed on the supporters now to ensure that the team feels the full support of the crowd and the opposition feel the full wrath of Anfield as often as possible.
There is now, more than ever in my lifetime, a feeling of all of us being in this together. If we take our lead off anything it should be how much these players are going into work every day with a smile on their face, loving being a part of what is happening at this football club.
As we enter the new campaign, it is vital to remember everything good we’re feeling about going the match right now, the concept of everyone enjoying themselves and being the envy of the football world in the process. This manager demands it. He won’t stand for anything less. It is, in his eyes, as much a route to success as signing world-class players.
The first day awaits us all. Comb your hair and shine your shoes. Liverpool Football Club, class of 2018. The best days of your life.
Controlled Aggression:
The Final Piece Of The Puzzle
Wednesday August 15, 2018
Paul Cope
I’M excited.
Excited and a little bit afraid, if I’m being completely honest.
Excited that this could well be the best Liverpool team and squad that I have ever had the pleasure of watching in my entire adult life (which I count as 1998 onwards, for those who aren’t familiar with my age, but could easily extend before my adult years to 1990 onwards if I could remember that far back).
But a little bit afraid because there are no guarantees that being this good will be enough to win the league.
In fact, I’ve realised I have an acute fear that Jürgen Klopp could create the greatest ever Liverpool side in the history of the club, accumulating more points than any previous side has ever managed, and we still might not win the title.
I think if I was a bit younger I’d be petrified at the thought.
As it stands though, I’m not going to waste too many of my waking hours worrying about how good Manchester City might be. There might not be much I can do about jumping up in the middle of the night in cold sweats about it, but I can control what I think about during the day.
And I’m choosing to think about how good we are now.
We were all excited heading into the first game of the season, but I’m not sure many of us would have predicted such a stroll in the park for our opening-day victory.
The consensus seems to be that we didn’t leave second or third gear in order to completely dominate a rejuvenated West Ham side packed with new signings and led by their highest paid manager of all time. A Premier League winner, no less.
But for all of our opponent’s new-found optimism heading into the new season, we swatted them aside with ease. After half an hour I wondered how they could find a way into the game and a goal just before half time made me question whether they might just declare in the dressing room.
Let their fans get an earlier train back to London, having already been through their entire 1980s back catalogue of anti-Liverpool songs and spending half an hour telling us how quiet we were before sinking into their own silent protest for the second half. It’s depressing to see that some things never change.
We all hoped that we might send out a message to the rest of the league, and I’m not sure we could have done it much more emphatically.
A 4-0 victory that could easily have been eight. A goalkeeper making his debut without being tested in any meaningful way. Goals for our returning hero, new number 10 and long-lost lover continuing his pre-season form, breaking out the wriggly arms to the glee of the crowd, to put the cherry on the cake.
But, more than that, a look of aggression across the pitch. World-class players strewn around the Anfield turf. Pace, power and trickery at every turn.
We’re right to be excited, and we’re right to get carried away as quickly as possible, regardless of how good anyone else might be. Let’s not waste any time being cautious about what happens next.
For so many years now, I have been with many of you in bemoaning how lightweight and timid we’ve looked. Even when we’ve had sides packed with ability, we’ve always just lacked that aggression that all great sides have. That bit of needle that the best take with them to every party.
When Trent Alexander-Arnold got booked for pushing Felipe Anderson in the chest I couldn’t have been happier. Our young right back showing that it doesn’t matter who you are or what your reputation is, you can’t just waltz past us like we’re not there anymore.
There’s Virgil van Dijk gliding around the pitch from centre back barking orders at everyone around him, a man mountain in goal oozing a calm control.
There’s a terrier at left back who looks ready to ‘take this outside’ at any given moment, and a centre midfielder playing with 15 stitches in his head and another who’s no stranger to getting a red card, strutting around the place with the kind of arrogance I love in footballers.
These lads mean business. For the first time in a long time, it looks as though a team and squad has been built that combines the flair and skill we’ve seen in past Liverpool teams, with the aggression, desire and determination that’s been missing in so many of those sides, and we’re seeing it across the pitch and across the squad.
The iron fist in a velvet glove we’ve been dreaming of for so long. And what a velvet glove it is. Lads everywhere who look able to take a touch that makes us drool, beat opposition players with ease and play intricate one-twos in tight spaces that leave their adversaries chasing shadows.
I left Anfield on Sunday with the never previously experienced feeling of looking forward to when we play against a team which traditionally sets up shop in their own box and challenges us to break down their defence. A team that turns up each season laughing about how easy it is to stop Liverpool by frustrating us. Good luck with that this season, lads.
Leave this team with the ball for long enough and it looks as though it has the cool heads and tricky feet needed to slowly drive you insane. Calmly passing the ball from side to side, moving your tired legs around the pitch while prodding and probing for space then, out of nowhere, bursting past three of your players as though they don’t exist.
Maybe they don’t. Maybe you’re playing with fewer players than us. Can that be right? We started with the same number, didn’t we? But it feels like these red bastards have got more. Didn’t I just clear that ball? Why is it coming back at me so soon? Why the fuck have I got three men to mark? SOMEONE COME AND HELP ME FOR FUCK’S SAKE, THERE’S LOADS OF THEM.
But no one can come to help, mate. They’re all fucked as well. They’ve got three men to mark and no one can understand why. Van Dijk’s meant to be a centre back but he’s standing 40 yards from your goal as our deepest-lying defender, staring you straight in the eyes with a knowing grin on his face.
I know it doesn’t seem fair but you’re just going to have to live with it. Take a 4-0 defeat now and we might go easy on you. But, then again, we might score 10. We could need the goal difference in May. No hard feelings, it’s just business.
I’m not sure there could be a more glowing compliment for a Liverpool team in the modern era than me actually looking forward to watching it trying to break down a packed defence. Even as I write that I think of Jose Mourinho’s depressed face and whining voice and how wonderful it would be to tear his negative, defensive setup to bits while we dance in the aisles.
This team is capable of anything and everything. The games against Manchester City are going to continue to be epic battles, and there’s nothing we can do about how they get on against everyone else, so we might as well just enjoy every second of watching this beautiful red machine in action for the next 37 games.
It’s going to be incredible.
Monday August 20, 2018
Rob Gutmann’s Preview
IT’S funny being the buzz. Being the noise.
Outside of our bubble we’ve always been regarded as a big team, obviously, but ultimately always supporting cast actors rather than the lead. Now feels different. Now feels like it may just be our time. Let’s tempt fate and go for this. All around the world, they’re talking about The Reds. Liverpool are the insurgency. The new force.
And it’s more about the personality of this team than its accomplishments, because let’s face it, we’ve won nothing. Yet.
But opposition managers, players and supporters just can’t stop themselves talking about Liverpool. Sergio *fucking* Ramos can’t stop talking about Liverpool. Pep Guardiola can’t. Jose Mourinho loves getting into it about The Reds. Kevin De Bruyne’s got some thoughts too. And in every pub, club and on every social media platform, the word is Liverpool.
The bookies now have us at bit over 3-1 to win the league. Just one game into the new season. This level of anticipation about what this Liverpool team might do feels unprecedented, in my memory at least. And it’s not just because this team are good, it’s the way in which they’re good.
There are many different types of winning forces in sport. Often, they are characterised not just by talent but by will, by character, by ‘winning mentality’.
Jürgen Klopp’s team feel like they are trying to transcend traditional formulas. Like marathon runners who train to run further than an actual marathon to give themselves spare capacity, this Liverpool seem geared to overbeating teams. Yeah, that sounds a bit mad, but you know what I mean. If you watched Liverpool last season, you will definitely know what I mean.
Liverpool scored at least four goals on 16 occasions last campaign.
By way of context, the last Liverpool title-winning side managed to score that many just eight times. The free-scoring, Luis Suarez-inspired side of 2013-14 that came within two points of the title put at least four past opposition on 12 occasions. Rafa Benitez’s best team of 2008-09 – again near champions – only notched four or more on six occasions.
Last season’s title winners Manchester City – the greatest team of the Premier League era, in terms of points – managed to score four and over on 14 occasions. Very good but not Liverpool very good.
Liverpool have played one, scored four so far this season. Liverpool don’t just try to beat teams, they try to unravel them. To dismember them. To bomb them back to the Stone Age. And making those things the objective doesn’t always work. It’s why Man City were first and Liverpool weren’t.
Against Roma at Anfield in May, Liverpool were five up inside an hour. Roma should’ve done the decent thing and walked off the pitch. It was shaping up to be the biggest battering any side had ever taken at that stage of the world’s premier club competition.
But Liverpool, having gorged on goals, were full and allowed themselves to become distracted. Roma pulled two back and the entire tie was kept alive when it had most definitely been declared dead.
Klopp and the club have spent the last year preparing and making fixes to weaknesses. For all the excitement and fear generated by Liverpool’s much vaunted attack, the consistent propensity to concede at crucial moments demonstrated that this promising side were not yet the real deal.
The additions of Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker, Naby Keita and Fabinho represent a determination by the manager and his support staff to build a more complete and complex team.
This is what has got the wider football world in a lather. All are sweating now because they sense that Liverpool can’t now be dismissed as mere fancy dans, all style and fragile substance. Liverpool now have backbone. A spine to supplement all that artistry and brio in the forward positions.
Klopp will probably look to go with a very similar 11 to that which beat West Ham on the season’s opening day. There is little need to consider change. There will have been eight days between games, and all of his big guns were available and looked in good fettle in the swatting aside of The Hammers.
The only selection dilemma will come in midfield where the manager must decide if either Gini Wijnaldum or James Milner deserve to lose places to accommodate now battle-ready captain Jordan Henderson. The truth though is that both Milner and Wijnaldum are playing so well at the moment that it would be hugely unjust if either had to make way just yet.
Palace won’t be pushovers and this may need to be a match won from the bench. Handy then that Liverpool’s should feature such options as Henderson, Xherdan Shaqiri, Daniel Sturridge and Adam Lallana. These are luxuries we would have only dreamed of in the near past. Now the power in reserve serves to exemplify just how full bodied this latest Liverpool vintage is.
Monday night is a scrappy night for football, but we are where we are. Number one and shooting towards the sun.
Neil Atkinson’s Review
THE season starts.
God, you felt that, didn’t you?
God, you lived that, didn’t you?
God, you loved that, didn’t you? Didn’t you?
What it is to be alive. Liverpool gave us that tonight. Being fair, so too did Crystal Palace.
It was visceral football from both sides. It was meaty football. It was the real deal, the first proper great game of the season. It had heft and presence. It kept announcing itself over and over and Liverpool had to cope with it.
Before a ball had been kicked on this fixture list this was a game that stood out. Monday night, under the lights, Selhurst Park. Palace v Liverpool. And, therefore, fair play to Palace. They brought the best of themselves.
Andros Townsend nearly scores a Tony Yeboah, nearly produces the full business. Wilf Zaha is so potent, every time he picks the ball up he screams danger. Patrick van Aanholt is a footballer. And Aaron Wan-Bissaka is marvellous and, under duress, does the right thing, and my God what a player he is.
Let no one tell you otherwise. They are quick, strong, brilliant on the ball. They finish top half. They terrify our rivals. They have 12 games against the top six. That we have won one should not be diminished. What a game to win.
Liverpool play 38 games and at least 15 of them will be, in comparison to this one, utterly sterile. It should not be such. But we all know it will be. This game was alive. It was vivid and it was active. Until the 93rd moment this was a contest. It was a contest Liverpool won.
Liverpool defended brilliantly. What is important there is the idea that defending wasn’t just about sitting deep and blocking. Liverpool played some brilliant front-foot football to aid their defending.
Both Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk were able to pick their moments to influence play. They got to be excellent centre halves as part of a unit rather than excellent emergency measures. James Tomkins was on the stretch. Mamadou Sakho was on the stretch. Liverpool’s players rarely were.
Through the whole game Liverpool had a guiding intelligence that Palace struggled to deal with. All of their moves were improvised whereas Liverpool felt rehearsed, in the best possible sense. These Liverpool players love and adore each other and want to know each other’s every move from the outset.
There were exceptions: Naby Keita turned away and found Mo Salah with the most glorious inspiration imaginable. Liverpool’s finest footballer should have found the net but instead punted over. It would have been a remarkable goal, a goal to tell one hell of a story. Instead Salah ended the game goalless and perhaps slightly frustrated. Yet he assisted both Liverpool goals.
We won 2-0 and we deserved to win 2-0. We were the better side across the board. Yet there was a ton going on. Wan-Bissaka against Mane; where James McArthur was at any one time V what the momentum suggested; Christian Benteke V himself. An ongoing battle that last one. But everywhere else on the pitch football was happening. Players had to demonstrate their qualities.
It was a joy to behold. The easiest thing in the world when Liverpool come to town is for a side to hide. But that didn’t happen this evening. Palace wanted to know. They faced down Liverpool and came off second best.
They won’t be alone come May. Liverpool have the presence to face the nation down, to want to swagger wherever they go. It is marvellous and it is incredible. But it is a side maturing in front of your eyes.
The strange thing is this: They have done and lived and experienced the hard part. Most sides never properly get that, not the precocious ones, but Liverpool very much have. They know the hard part. But right now they want to make the hard be easy.
Liverpool win the game. They deserve it. But there are 36 more. Nothing stops now. But imagine being these Reds.
They march on, knowing the burden placed on them by their rivals, knowing that perfection is required by September. It is arduous and it is tough. But it is what Liverpool are built to deal with. Tonight was a sensation. Tonight was a ball. Tonight was a joy to be alive. It is exhausting how many more of them we need but this is our reality.
We have to keep winning. We have to be hard faced. We have to not apologise. We have to work, bitch.
Saturday August 25, 2018
Rob Gutmann’s Preview
IF you’re not beside yourself with excitement at the prospect of watching The Reds at home to Brighton & Hove Albion then you’re in the wrong business.
This Liverpool side are building dreams and momentum. All that stands in our way is the bearing of the psychological burden that accompanies great expectation.
Greater tests lie ahead than the already despatched West Ham and Crystal Palace, and indeed this weekend’s opponents, but fulfilling minimum requirements has proved too much for countless Liverpool setups over the decades. Ruthlessness must be the new watchword.
It’s been a long, long time since we’ve been able to go into a season sensing that something special was brewing. In my Liverpool-supporting life the most redolent example has always been the early phase of the 1987-88 campaign.
Truth be told, optimism wasn’t particularly great on the eve of that season. Yes, Liverpool had been busy in the transfer market – bringing in John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and John Aldridge – but we’d finished the 1986-87 season well behind champions Everton and had lost top scorer and main man, Ian Rush, to Juventus in a record-breaking summer transfer.
It was the early results and the nature of the performances that quickly changed attitudes.
After a narrow opening day win over Arsenal, The Reds started scoring goals in big numbers and were swatting away opponents in a fashion that suggested even better things were to come.
That was the key thing. The hype, the expectation, the excitement. It was being felt keenly by us as fans, but it was very much out there in neutral land too. We were the team all were talking about.
What differentiated and gave it a sense of its own persona was that it wasn’t just about Liverpool getting it on and winning a few games at the start of a season, it was the gelling of crucial new signings. They were refreshing and galvanised an already solid core.
There are echoes of this in Liverpool’s here and now. We’ve added five new men this calendar year. Three already look and feel not just like mainstays, but essential components of an all-new and fearsome Liverpool team.
The big goalie – Alisson Becker – he’s a lovely, big lad. As strapping as it gets. We’ve waited what might as well be a lifetime for him. But he’s here now, like a whopping, great-bearded, handsome prince in our goal.
At Crystal Palace on Monday night, there he was. Throwing himself about, kicking short, arrowing balls long, chucking it out overarm like a world-class bowler. Everything done with decisiveness and confidence, with purpose and accuracy.
Then there’s Virgil van Dijk, a veritable one-man defence. He makes men around him feel like men again. He completes our defence. He completes me. In South London he was arguably the stand-out performer in a Liverpool team of performers.
Running the colossus close as man of that match was another new boy, Naby Keita. We’ve waited a long year for Naby, but he’s proving worth it.
Eighteen months ago, I doubt any/many of us would have known him had we crashed into him on a Leipzig street corner. Our manager knew about him, though. The impression is that it must have been love at first sight for Jürgen Klopp. Here was a midfielder he could build a team around. An all-purpose running, dribbling, tackling, shooting machine.
That Alisson, Virgil and Naby seem hellbent on fulfilling their Anfield destinies in such a rush, combined with the obvious wider functionality of an already legendary attack, an impressive pre-season and a bold start to the actual campaign, are allying to bolster the burgeoning impression that we’re watching a Liverpool team on a mission.
Momentum can be all in football. The risk of a false dawn remains omnipresent, but if Klopp can harness all the positive forces working in Liverpool’s favour at the moment then a truly special era can be beckoned in sooner rather than later.
Fitness issues notwithstanding, I think we all expect Klopp to go again with the same side for Brighton. We might have expected to be seeing a midfield of Jordan Henderson, Naby Keita and Adam Lallana a couple of months ago, but Gini Wijnaldum and James Milner simply refuse to be cast off as bit-part actors.
Expect the skipper, Hendo, to again be left kicking his heels, and other big names such as Daniel Sturridge, Xherdan Shaqiri, Fabinho and Lallana to be sweating on even making the matchday squad.
The Reds may not deliver the football fiesta and banquet of goals that Anfield now routinely craves, but this all-new, eyes on the prize red wrecking ball should still have enough quality and components to make relatively short work of those plucky and in-form Seasiders.
Take the next step, Reds.
Liverpool 1 Brighton
& Hove Albion 0
Neil Atkinson’s Review
JAMES Milner tackles their lad.
James Milner tackles their lad this morning when he has his breakfast.
James Milner tackles their lad while he packs his oversized wash bag.
James Milner tackles their lad from the minute he was born to the second the freekick is given. He has lived his whole life to just tackle their lad at that moment. He has pictured tackling their lad for eternities. Galaxies have exploded, all human life has evolved and become extinct and James Milner is both tackling their lad and picturing doing so.
That moment was the moment where I was reflecting on Brighton home and away against our rivals last season and how frustrating they could be. It was the moment I was beginning to think we could be in for the longest possible afternoon.
James Milner tackles their lad and Liverpool score. From the minute he wins his tackle there is an inevitability about events. For the tackle James Milner should be given:
Flash, flash and there it is. Salah off the post or as near as dammit for it not to matter.
Then he celebrates. Then he prays. Then he pumps his fist staring at the Lower Kemlyn/Centenary/Kenny Dalglish Stand. He pumps his fist looking at me or as near as dammit and we lock eyes, or we don’t, and we are thinking Manchester City drew. Liverpool lead. Everything is vital in every sense of the word.
Man City drew.
Listen, I do this thing. Two things. Both in my head.
Thing one: while I do day-to-day tasks, I do this thing where I have imaginary conversations with the Liverpool manager. It has never been as bad as this, not since 2008 with Rafa Benitez. Maybe never as bad.
I consult Jürgen Klopp. I wonder what he would make of x, y or z. Today we had a lovely big chat about how into Wolves/Man City I should be. We should be. Should we see it as an adjunct to our game? Should we focus on The Reds? Jürgen concluded that we should, for now, see this all as part of the season’s rich tapestry, as the adventure.
Reader, I went berserk when Willy Boly scored. I kicked every ball of that last five. Manchester City have now dropped 1/7th of the points they dropped last season. That that is bananas isn’t our fault.
Thing two: I brush my teeth and think about the title. I hold a door open and think that is the behaviour of champions. I lie in bed and think about how it would be in May. If. If. If.
Everything is if. Nothing is when. If.
Send me on a night out and ask me what I would do if it happened. I have plans. Documents. A desk drawer full of contingencies. If. If. If.
Yearning on a large scale can make history. The yearning is palpable now and it isn’t even September yet. But by Christ it is fun. It is vital. It is what it is to be alive. Yearning on a large scale can make great nights out.
We’re going to have a lot of them.
I was umming and ahhing about whether or not I was going to go to town.
Then Virgil van Dijk rolled it back to Alisson Becker. And he dinked it, resplendent in yellow, over the onrushing player’s head and controlled it, and you know what, nothing may ever be the same again.
On an evening where much was tinged beige – as it has to be from time to time – it was a technicolour dreamcoat of a moment. It was what it was to be alive.
Not long after, Trent Alexander-Arnold pinged it sweeter than you have ever seen. Earlier, Gini Wijnaldum dribbled past four doing keepy-ups. Liverpool never hit the heights while winning but they are such scamps. They fizzle. Your blood does the same.
Hero worship is a strange thing when you are 37. There was a point in the second half where two of their lads walloped Milner in close succession. The ground was incensed. How dare you hit our heroes like that?
The curve goes on for so many of these Liverpool players. Twelve months ago juries were out all over the shop. Now the question is which of them you love the most.
It needed graft. Because at times Liverpool hadn’t quite gelled. Because Brighton are a well-organised outfit. Because you can’t win 4-0 every week, it needed graft and it needed care and it needed seeing out. It needed love. Liverpool loved their three points James Milner’s tackle and Mo Salah’s whip-crack finish had given them.
They sailed those points home, held gentle between big hands. They understood the delicacy of the arrangement. They never sat back – the left back pops up inside right in the box with 10 left on the clock – but nor did they overcommit. They understood the best way to win 1-0 was to look like winning 2-0, something that has been true of football matches since the very dawn of time.
The love to work remains the best and finest thing about this Liverpool side. That and their sense of mischief. They know and believe that exuberance married to graft doesn’t do the job. It is the job. It is vital. It is what it is to be alive. It underpins the worship and the imaginary conversations and the life lessons.
Three down and 35 to go.
Be scamps, Liverpool. The hardest working scamps we have ever seen.
Saturday September 1, 2018
Rob Gutmann’s Preview
UPON reflection, I think we can treat Brighton as a bit of a wake-up call.
The best kind. The kind where you are reminded that there’s work still to be done, but learn the harsh lesson while still winning. Hopefully that, in itself, is a mark of progress.
Time may come to view the Leicester City team of this era as one of the strangest sides to have ever competed in the top tier. Their achievement in winning the league title three years ago remains – as near as dammit – the greatest sporting achievement of all time.
I’m not exaggerating. And I’m going back to the ancient Greeks here and assuming that, although some no-mark must have at some point emerged from the ether to star in the ancient games, that however Herculean that undertaking may have been, it could only, at best, have equalled Leicester City’s crowning moment.
They’d been all but relegated the season before their title win, and after it they returned to the mediocrity that had been their default existence. As if it had all been a dream.
Since, though, they have stabilised, and although they never truly convince, they have an upper half of the table resident’s-like ability to find wins, as and when they need them. At the very least, they’re now consistent in being labelable as ‘dangerous opponents’.
If we bring our second-half performance against Brighton, then we may be in for an uncomfortable Saturday. If we can find our first-half level, we will have few problems.
Klopp worried about the fade in ‘intensity’ in his team a week ago and hinted at a need for changes, despite the reasonably long recuperation period between games at this stage of the season.
Liverpool’s bench has been a sight to behold in the early phase. Such reserve riches we haven’t enjoyed for a very long time. Strange then that we were unable to truly benefit from fresh resources in the second half on Saturday. Perhaps, had Liverpool not been winning and had something to protect, we might have seen more bullish, and ultimately more productive, changes.
For Leicester, Jordan Henderson looks a solid bet to start his first game of the season. Who the captain replaces is harder to gauge. Does Klopp opt for a double defensive pivot – matching Hendo with Gini Wijnaldum – with Naby Keita foraging ahead of them, or does he stick with a singular number six, and retain Milner to augment Keita’s attacking tendencies?
If there’s to be a surprise selection it may come in the front three. Bobby Firmino hasn’t quite caught fire yet and Klopp will surely have closely observed the likes of Daniel Sturridge and Xherdan Shaqiri in training, watching for signs that they may be ready to start, and rest the Brazilian.
Another possible is Adam Lallana, maybe at Milner’s expense. Lallana has been all but written off by many supporters but the manager will recall that, pre injury, he had led the ‘press’ from the front throughout the 2016-17 campaign.
The Reds’ three wins on the board so far give them room for breath, and although a point at Leicester would be far from a disaster, the head of steam and confidence that winning habit brings needs to ideally be sustained.
That is if this season is not merely to be another entertaining one, but the defining one we all so crave.
THE thing with a title race is that for a large portion of the time you can’t be certain you’re in one.
The nature of the 24/7 coverage which surrounds football in the modern-day means that a team is just as quickly the champions elect as they are ‘bottlers’.
Some title races have been over as fast as they’ve started, some have ebbed and flowed as teams drop in and out, and some have rumbled on and on every single step of the way.
As we all know by now, this season’s title race can very much be categorised as the latter. But, if you were a fan of Liverpool or Manchester City, you’d have known you were in one almost immediately.
The first run of games before the international break started at break-neck pace for Liverpool. Like a freight train that you couldn’t be certain would ever stop while being absolutely certain of the direction it was heading in. It wouldn’t veer off even though the scale of the challenge we faced was immediately apparent.
Little did we know those first few games would come to form a microcosm, of sorts, of Liverpool’s season. At least Liverpool’s season in the context of games played against sides outside the top six.
It was an example of how much Liverpool had adapted their style; from a devastating 4-0 home win, to a hard-fought away performance resulting in a fairly comfortable scoreline, a home game which didn’t exactly go how we hoped except that we won and another tough away narrowly navigated despite some setbacks.
Liverpool showed they could win every which way. They showed Manchester City they’d have to be at their best to pip them to this league title. But most importantly, they laid a marker down.
Liverpool were back at the top table. And it would take an awful lot for them to be moved.
Josh Sexton
Saturday September 15, 2018
Rob Gutmann’s Preview
THERE are no cup finals in September. No title was ever decided on game five. So why does this feel like a game of monumental importance?
History may well cast this encounter into the ether, but in the here and now it’s hard to fathom a more pivotal moment. Of course, this sounds irrational and a little bit hysterical, but stay with me.
I’m a title-winning veteran. There are less of us around these days. Cherish us and enjoy us while you still can. We know what winning the league feels like. Age is sure as hell withering us, and our recollections are hazing by the year, but no one will ever steal those treasured trophy-winning memories from us. More than the memories, the feelings, the sensations in the gut, will never fade.
I used to ‘sense’ titles. Smell them coming. Liverpool were very, very good in my youth – late ’70s and the ’80s – and we’d start every season feeling it was a God-given right to win the league. But we’d never feel certain, though. That was part of the fun. We were frequently asked if it got boring, winning year on year. It never got old. In fact, each passing triumph just heightened the anxiety that at some point this must all come to an end.
The story of each season would have its own unique character and narrative. Some of the best were those where we had to come up on the rails to win. To prevail in adversity. Like 1981-82 – mid table at Christmas and floundering, top of the pile in May and all conquering.
My favourites, though, were the ones where we looked right from the off. Yes, there’d be a twist or a turn along the way, but early on there would be that sense that winning the league was our destiny. The pivotal moment would often come around now.
Liverpool have a tough month of fixtures ahead, but this impending matchup, with as good a Spurs team as there’s been in my lifetime, feels like it could be a make or break point. I’m being melodramatic because I think we all need to be. Me, you, the manager, the team, all of us. Because – to channel Jürgen Klopp – it’s essential that we believe.
League titles are won by confident teams. Sides that can banish doubt. Those Liverpool teams of my youth turned up to win each and every match. I almost can’t remember when we ever spoke of an English league fixture and said to ourselves ‘a draw would be a decent result today’.
We’re too battle scarred these days from 28 title-less years to be counting any chickens yet, or so naive as to not know that a draw away to Tottenham is never a bad result. These tonked us 4-1 at Wembley a year ago. But… We have to win this. We just do. Or at least near die trying.
Last year in this fixture, we were beaten inside the first 25 minutes. Dejan Lovren and Simon Mignolet had nightmares, and Spurs played like demons. Liverpool will have some different players to parade at Wembley this year, some in particularly key positions.
No crap goalie this time. This time we bring Alisson Becker. The greatest keeper of all time. That’s the fantasy he’s nurturing at least and the blotting of his copybook at Leicester doesn’t change that, although he could do with not soiling his own cage again any time soon.
We also bring new centre backs. Lovren and Joel Matip stunk out Wembley last October but they won’t get to reprieve themselves this time round. Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez look and feel like the present and future of Liverpool’s defence. Other newbies are the full backs Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robbo. That’s four new faces in the back five.
In midfield, I hope we recall Naby Keita. He was rested against Leicester and we missed him. He’d had moments in his first three outings that suggested he wouldn’t be long in fulfilling the prophecy for him. A red nation craves a midfield messiah and an heir to Steven Gerrard’s legacy. No one has a better chance of being our saviour than Naby.
Klopp’s ultimate selection will be much predicated on the fitness and freshness of his international break returnees. Mercifully, our front three have only had to play a solitary game apiece.
The Dutch lads – van Dijk and Gini Wijnaldum – have the relative respite of a near full week’s training ahead of Wembley. So by the standards of these things, we might arrive in West London on Saturday morning in relatively good fettle.
If there’s to be changes from the winning side at Leicester, expect Keita to replace Wijnaldum or James Milner. There might also be a surprise omission, if Roberto Firmino is deemed too weary to start after his exertions for Brazil. Might this enable a first start of this campaign for either Xherdan Shaqiri or Daniel Sturridge?
The Spurs were jolted by defeat at Watford two weeks ago. They were quietly motoring and purring in the wake of their demolition of Man United. Then reality caught up with them. It may well catch up with us soon too.
Tottenham are a very good but very strange side. There’s a mental strength there, that seems to emanate from the stoic Mauricio Pochettino, that has ensured their place as *one of* this hugely competitive league’s very best teams, for a number of seasons now.
The *one of* is key though. It’s not that they ‘need to win a trophy’, they’re bigger than that – they need to take the next step and be the actual best team. A bit like Liverpool.
Those of us travelling down to London at the crack of dawn on Saturday will do so with stout hearts and bagfuls of optimism. As we did about a year ago. Lightning often does strike twice in football. Be arsed with having to go through that trauma again, mind.
Have them focused from the get go, Jürgen. This isn’t quite a cup final, regardless of Wembley, but it is on the level of some sort of semi final.
Win it – and that’s no small ask – and take a giant step forward.
Neil Atkinson’s Review