While Jürgen Klopp plays down any talk of a Liverpool quadruple, there is justification for others to contemplate itA 12.30pm kick-off after an international break will concern Jürgen Klopp more than any back-slapping to celebrate his 250th league game in charge of Liverpool on Saturday. Even a manager as despairing of the schedule as Klopp, however, may privately concede that Watford’s early arrival offers an ideal opportunity in his quest to unnerve and ultimately unseat Manchester City.Liverpool would go top with a 10th successive Premier League win and 10th consecutive home league win when Roy Hodgson’s relegation-threatened side visit. They would be on the summit for only a few hours should City respond in kind at Burnley but the sense...
Liverpool withstood everything Arsenal could throw at them and took advantage of fine margins to score their goalsThe gap through which Thiago Alcântara threaded his pass to Diogo Jota: a yard, at a generous estimate. The space that Jota found at Aaron Ramsdale’s near post to jam the ball in: maybe a couple of feet. The space in which Roberto Firmino had somehow to divert Andy Robertson’s cross past a goalkeeper literally standing next to him: a matter of inches. These are the margins that are taking Liverpool towards the top of the Premier League, and right now they are managing to find them better than anyone else.The match in summary: Arsenal were the better side for 50 minutes and...
In being receptive to new ideas and using specialist knowledge, Klopp has created a culture of continual improvementA 54-year-old performed a dad dance in the Royal Box at Wembley and whipped half of the stadium into a frenzy by hoisting the League Cup aloft not once but three times. Jürgen Klopp’s appetite for the competition, and for winning, should not be questioned again.As is the case after any big club claim the first trophy of the season, the question turned quickly from Liverpool’s Carabao Cup success to its potential impact on other prizes that glitter on the horizon. Klopp’s players have been unequivocal with their answers. On social media Mohamed Salah posted: “One down …” Trent Alexander-Arnold, who stated recently...
Chelsea stand in the way in a mouthwatering Carabao Cup final that could energise the rest of the season for the victorAnd you shall know us by the trail of sponsors. The League Cup has always been a bird-on-a-wire kind of thing. Every year this fond old springtime ritual is menaced and marginalised and threatened with ever more imminent extinction, but still people keep turning up in February and March asking where the party is.The title branding tells a story of that picaresque progress. In the space of 40 years, English football’s second-string domestic cup has gone from the quiet gravitas of being named after the entire Football League, through Coca-Cola, beer, electrical goods and the generic liquid “milk” into...
Liverpool manager’s commitment to domestic cups has been questioned but his delight at semi-final win was clearTo become a “true legend” at Liverpool, Pepijn Lijnders had claimed on the eve of the rearranged Carabao Cup semi-final, “you need to go for the national cups as well.” Jürgen Klopp’s assistant was not downplaying past glories but talking up the future of a Liverpool team that has evolved to the extent he expected it to punish Arsenal even without the cutting edge of Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané. Lijnders was talking of Liverpool’s hunger too, and it appeared he had written the script.A 2022 Carabao Cup winner’s medal will not define the Liverpool legacy of Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk, Jordan Henderson...