Neither Pep Guardiola nor Unai Emery had lost four consecutive games before this weekend. By 10pm on Saturday both had been swept up in this Liverpool wave.
“Maybe after seven years winning six Premier Leagues, maybe one year another team deserve it,” was passive-aggressive Pep perfection, a precursor to the principal pretenders proving their proficiency.
Liverpool certainly deserved it in the one exception to Manchester City’s monopoly since Guardiola started his Premier League medal collection. Having capitalised on – and arguably triggered – a collapse from the champions in 2019/20, they are threatening to repeat the feat in this glorious possible Last Dance of a season.
It was the most ‘over to you, [insert name of title challengers]’ game imaginable. The combination of a surprise Manchester City televised evening defeat, allowing for a good half-hour of earnest analysis before leading straight into a rare late kick-off time which facilitated some lesser-seen Under The Lights At Anfield weekend action, set the stage superbly. And both teams played their parts with relish.
Aston Villa were the ideal spoilers, a side brimming with individual brilliance knitted together by an elite-level manager with a fine record on such occasions.
But this Liverpool team feels different. It controls games, knuckles down, finds a way. Jurgen Klopp should be commended for leaving behind such phenomenal foundations and Arne Slot can only be applauded for using them to create a team built in the image of two wonderful coaches.
It does make you wonder how much of this is muscle memory, a more sophisticated version of Everton finishing with their highest Premier League points total ever in 2013/14 because they still had the residual defensive resilience established by David Moyes to mesh with the attacking proclivities of Roberto Martinez. It is difficult to imagine this being the start of an infernal self-destructive cycle which ultimately ends with Liverpool appointing Sean Dyche but you never know.
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Watching Darwin Nunez open the scoring was to be taken back to the Klopp times. Liverpool turned an Aston Villa corner into an insatiable counter-attack once Virgil van Dijk finally cleared his lines. Mo Salah burst through, Leon Bailey tumbled him over, Darwin Nunez latched onto the loose ball and finished expertly after taking a touch to open an angle on Emi Martinez.
It was a shame in a perverse sort of way. The sight of referee David Coote gesturing that no foul had taken place between Bailey and Salah offered a tantalising view into a future in which Anfield would have imploded with rage had Nunez not ultimately taken on the responsibility himself. The trend of opposition infringements against Salah being entirely ignored by the officials is firmly entrenched but that would have been quite something to witness; the idea he was only fouled twice in this game is hilarious and preposterous.
Little over ten minutes later Liverpool had plotted the same route to goal: a Villa corner, eventually cleared, made its way to Salah who sent Nunez on his way. With longer to think, the Uruguayan produced a quite risible finish to crown a first half-hour which summed up his Liverpool career so far perfectly.
At that point Austin MacPhee probably ought to have resigned. Aston Villa’s set-piece coach presumably did not plan for their first two corners of the game to backfire so catastrophically. The next two at least produced chances for Amadou Onana and Diego Carlos, both of which were saved by Caiomhin Kelleher. Villa’s biggest strength was also their most glaring weakness.
Liverpool reached the break ahead and might not have thanked the boffins for one particularly foreboding statistic: they were unbeaten in their last 144 Premier League games when leading at half-time. Not particularly anxiety-inducing data by itself, but only hours earlier it had been pointed out that Manchester City were unbeaten in 71 Premier League games when leading at half-time, with Brighton adding emphasis on the past tense.
In the end an entirely different parallel could be drawn to define the perfect day for Liverpool: neither Guardiola nor Unai Emery had lost four consecutive games as a manager before this weekend, yet by 10pm on Saturday evening that had changed for both mildly crisis-ridden coaches and there was one chief beneficiary.
The second half followed much the same pattern as the first. Morgan Rogers wasted a golden opportunity early on, while Liverpool relied on fast breaks – still generally from Villa corners – to provide an ever-present threat.
The sealing goal shattered any modicum of Villa momentum and underlined why some might consider Liverpool favourites in this title race. A mistake from Diego Carlos on the halfway line was punished thoroughly by Mo Salah, who is seemingly using speculation over his future as fuel to become the world’s most effective player again in the present. He may leave in the summer but the determination to ensure a remarkable parting gift is biblical.
Liverpool have been burned before and will know not to get carried away by five-point leads at the Premier League summit in November. But Manchester City have left the door wide open and the current overwhelming evidence suggests only one team will be able to push through until May.
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