Roberto Firmino defies easy categorisation and while he may not have done enough to warrant a place in the PFA’s team of the season he is a vital part of Jürgen Klopp’s attacking armoury
“We like lists because we don’t want to die,” the highbrow novelist Umberto Eco said a few years ago, going on to talk at length about the artistic urge to preserve, the Homeric tradition of listing generals and soldiers as a means of glorifying human existence and the fact he was being paid to promote a big exhibition all about lists at the time.
This may be true. But it does overlook the other type of list, lists that make you actively question the value of life itself. Yes, it’s that time of year again, the time of football lists, when the games become sunlit, demob-happy affairs and when it becomes necessary, with a sense of deathly foreboding, to divvy up the players and teams of the last nine months.
Related: Liverpool’s success without Coutinho is testament to Klopp’s genius | Liam Rosenior
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