The reality of setting standards to the height that Liverpool have reached so far this season is that not much has to go wrong for a sense of disappointment to set in. So it is that back-to-back defeats for the first time in Arne Slot’s managerial career bring questions as to whether this season is all it might have been for Liverpool.
Club captain Virgil van Dijk articulated as much in the aftermath of defeat at Wembley, telling reporters, “It’s how football works. In five days you lose twice and the world is sinking. Two weeks before everything was sunshine and rainbows everywhere.
“The Champions League we couldn’t get it done, this we lost and the FA Cup we got knocked out.”
What does not help is the sense that with defeat to Newcastle in Sunday’s EFL Cup Final, hot on the heels of their Champions League exit to Paris Saint-Germain, there are no meaningful matches left to play between now and their Premier League coronation. Everyone associated with Liverpool would argue against talk of the title as an inevitability. In acknowledging the dark cloud of last week, Slot was intent on seeing the silver lining of pushing their Premier League lead up to 12 points, as if there might have been any real jeopardy if busted-up Arsenal were only 10 off.
Van Dijk, meanwhile, was more agricultural in his description of what needs to come next. “We have to work our ass off for it.”
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He had earlier insisted that there was plenty of work left ahead of Liverpool. “We have nine games to go and I don’t think there’s any motivation needed to try to get the job done.
“You play for the biggest prize that you work so hard for from the start of the season. No-one expected us to be challenging for the Premier League. It’s the most difficult prize to get. There’s a lot at stake. There are so many positive and good things to look forward to.”
When that celebratory moment comes around, as, let’s be honest, it inevitably will, the vibes will be as immaculate as they have been through most of the season. And yet, this week will hover in the back of many minds, Liverpool or otherwise, the qualifying factor on what would otherwise have been an indisputable campaign.
For some, it will even serve as a means through which to dispute Liverpool’s domestic crown. After all it is indisputably true that Slot’s side have stayed fit when their rivals have not. Would the Reds be clear at top of the table if Van Dijk and Mohamed Salah had suffered the same injuries as Ruben Dias, Rodri, Bukayo Saka or Martin Odegaard? Obviously not. Defeat at Wembley was a sign of how profoundly Liverpool struggle in a game of balls over the top when they don’t have Trent Alexander-Arnold playing them.
Fitness has proven to be a major delineating factor of the Premier League’s title contenders this season, much as it did two years ago when William Saliba’s back gave way or as it might have done when Van Dijk’s ACL gave way under Jordan Pickford’s challenge early in Liverpool’s title defense.
The very argument that fitness and freshness matters was made resoundingly at Wembley, no matter how much Van Dijk and Slot might have insisted that the two hours they had just played against Paris Saint-Germain was not a factor in defeat to a Newcastle side that had coasted through their assignment 24 hours earlier. “We gave it our all,” said Van Dijk, who revealed Liverpool had had two days off after their Champions League loss. “That is why it is easier to keep your head up. Focusing on the final is the nicest thing to do, so I don’t think there was any of that.”
No matter the fresh legs or not, what lies ahead of Liverpool is clear. They will be champions before too long, impressive ones at that. In the five seasons since they last lifted the Premier League trophy only two sides have averaged more points per game than Slot’s: the Manchester City class of 2021-22 and the Liverpool side that pushed them to the very last kick of the ball.
This isn’t some fluke of results either, nor is the table being particularly warped by their nine penalties. Scrub them out and you still have a team with a non-penalty expected goal difference per game that places them, once again, behind only those two super-teams for 2021-22.
Doubtless the architect for this season has been Salah. It is as much of an inevitability as Liverpool winning the title that their Egyptian king will reach May with the greatest output by an individual in Premier League history. If he goes in the summer, this last week will look like it augurs to a dark future. Sunday, the first game in his Liverpool career where Salah neither took a shot nor created a chance, suggested that no one is ready to step up to 1A status when the star man playing on the right either leaves or diminishes.
Those are concerns for the future. In the present, not much should have changed in our assessment of Liverpool even if their potential trophy count has been slashed. Slot was right to note that it took “the best team in Europe at the moment” to knock his side out of the Champions League. Newcastle’s performance on Sunday would give a bloody nose to plenty of the continent’s best at full fitness.
Before too long Liverpool will be champions of England. Keep going at their current pace and they will be one of the best the country has seen in recent years. If that isn’t cause for “sunshine and rainbows”, what is?
