Liverpool and their ‘blip’ that was the figment of a fevered imagination | Soccer

ELEVENSES

In the days before Liverpool’s trip to Manchester City, much was spoken about the mid-season wobble being endured by Arne Slot’s league leaders, a worrying collapse in form that incorporated creditable draws in difficult away games at Everton and Aston Villa, along with a win over Wolves at Anfield. Presumably working on the entirely specious presumption that Arsenal were guaranteed to win against West Ham on Saturday, a general consensus appeared to form among the punditocracy that if Manchester City could conjure up enough muscle memory to beat or even draw with a supposedly out-of-sorts Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium, the gap at the top would be reduced to just five or six points and Arsenal, with their game in hand and a match to come at Anfield, would be well and truly back in the title race.

Of course with the benefit of our old friend 20-20 hindsight, everyone can now see that much of this pre-match hypothesising was almost certainly just wishful thinking and conclude that simply hoping for a closely-contested climax to the season is no guarantee that one will materialise. The fact of the matter is that Liverpool’s recent ‘blip’ was little more than a figment of the fevered collective imagination, while most of us have been watching football for far too long to underestimate Arsenal’s comically-unerring capacity to blunderbuss themselves in both feet. While any criticism of Mikel Arteta’s side must be accompanied by the now obligatory caveat that they are missing four of their most talented attacking players through injury, any team with serious delusions of title-winning grandeur does not have any business losing at home to a West Ham side that – Football Daily checks notes – are also missing four of their most talented attacking players through knack.

Duly unencumbered by any additional pressure placed upon them in what is looking like an increasingly serene march to the title, the players of Liverpool rocked up in Manchester knowing that victory would take them 11 points clear of their London rivals and, despite enjoying only 33% of possession, strolled to a victory that could scarcely have been more routine if it had covered itself in fake tan and sequins and been performed on Strictly Come Dancing. “Three days ago we had a draw at Villa and people told me we weren’t in a good place and then three days later we win and it changes again,” mused Slot in the wake of a win that, in tandem with the previous day’s Arsenal defeat, means only a collapse of Devon Loch proportions will cost Liverpool their open-top bus parade.

“You have to have that bit of tension in the dressing room saying if you slip up now, you’ll be a laughing stock,” tooted Roy Keane on Sky Sports, upon being asked if complacency might be a problem for Liverpool’s players. “You’d have good squad members and obviously the manager would do it, the senior players would do it to make sure you don’t slack off in training. You look at some of the fixtures and you’re playing Southampton at home but you treat Southampton like you’re playing Real Madrid.” While Slot and his dressing-room leaders are unlikely to tolerate any kind of dip in standards, it is quite frankly preposterous to expect professionals even as consummate as they to treat the triple-pronged threat of Cameron Archer, Tyler Dibling and Paul Onuachu with the same amount of foreboding as that of Vinícius Jr, Kylian Mbappé and Rodrygo.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

They teased me and I said, now I’m the one who’s going to score” – Neymar explains how constant verbal pelters from Internacional de Limeira fans provoked him to ping in the first olimpico goal of his career during a 3-0 win for Santos.

May I hopefully be the first to put a headline on Liverpool’s performance v the blue half of Manchester yesterday by saying: ‘Super Salah Goes Ballistic City Are Atrocius!’” – Mike Glogower.

Football Daily’s Memory Lane on Friday (full email edition) reminds me of the day thousands of school kids wagged lessons (old Yorkshire phrase = skipped) to see Pelé play at Hillsborough on that Santos tour of 1972. The match was played on a Tuesday afternoon because floodlights could not be used due to power shortages. It provided my favourite ever football picture: Pelé surrounded by blue shirts in front of Hillsborough’s packed open Kop. As a kid I loved the novelty and sophistication of our electronic scoreboard, glimpsed top left on the photo. Oh, Wednesday lost 2-0. Of course they did” – Mike Woodc0ck.

Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Mike Woodc0ck, who gets some Football Weekly merch. We’ll be in touch. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.

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