This Season is a Massive Success. End of Story
Title can still be won, but season has already exceeded expectations
Reframing a problem or issue can often help see it more clearly.
Liverpool will be accused of choking or more harshly, bottling it, if they don’t win the league, but this season has far exceeded expectations; and that’s before adding the additional challenges.
As positive as I try to be, the Europa League has gone. I don’t see the point in wasting valuable energy in Italy, but players getting minutes to stay sharp is fine (and for returning players to get valuable minutes); it’s okay to start with a strong team and see how it goes, but with the aim to remove five players as early as possible, if the tie remains lost.
But the title is far from over, with such a tiny gap, and Arsenal suffering a shock home defeat that reduces some of the sting of Liverpool losing at home to Palace. Plus, if Arsenal and Man City progress to meet each other, they’ll face more tough games (two against each other), and more tough games in between those tough games.
Go back to the summer and think about what Liverpool have faced this season.
If I were to tell you in the summer that:
Liverpool would have an unthinkable five players sent off in the league by January, almost all against the ‘Big Seven’ as it was becoming last season, and two early in the first half of those games;
Liverpool would bid £111m for a player. He’d join Chelsea instead;
Liverpool would bid around £50m for another player. He’d join Chelsea instead;
Liverpool would give up on signing Jude Bellingham, who’d join Real Madrid instead;
Liverpool would end up with Wataru Endo instead;
a game at Spurs would lost when a legitimate and vital goal was ruled out because the VAR said the wrong thing (which Sky then tried to cover up, bizarrely);
by mid-April, Caoimhín Kelleher will have played more games than Alisson;
Liverpool would have clear penalties denied against Arsenal and Manchester City (the latter at a vital last minute stage), that neutrals would basically label as insane mistakes by the officials, to follow the insanity at Spurs;
Mo Salah would have pretty much his first proper injury ever, and return out of sorts;
And as well as Salah missing two months or so (and in some cases more), so would Trent Alexander-Arnold, Dominik Szoboszlai, Diogo Jota, Andy Robertson, Alisson, Conor Bradley, Curtis Jones, Ben Doak and Kostas Tsimikas (with Alexis Mac Allister missing over a month); while Joël Matip, Thiago and Stefan Bajcetic would barely play at all;
but Jarell Quansah and Conor Bradley would play over fifty games between them, while Jayden Danns, James McConnell and Bobby Clark would be called upon for big games, as those three teens played 25 times between them;
Darwin Núñez, for all his qualities, would miss almost every big chance he gets all season long;
Luis Díaz’s family would be kidnapped at gunpoint in Colombia and his father held hostage for weeks, that would take its toll on a player in top form at the time;
And Jürgen Klopp would announce that he’s stepping down mid-season ...
... as just some of the setbacks and challenges, then you’d be fearing some kind of mid-table finish at best, especially if people thought last season was a taste of what was to come (I didn’t, but I also didn’t expect a title challenge).
Yet look at what’s been achieved, which I shall list below.
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