United see pain, recovery path as they face Liverpool
LONDON:A trip to Anfield is a journey into Manchester United’s deepest anxieties. Liverpool is the club setting the standards which United tries to emulate while dreading replicating Liverpool’s three decades of anguish to reach this point.
When United play the world and European champions on Sunday, the best United coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can hope for is slowing a title charge so relentless it seems a done deal with almost half the season still to play. “It can be an intimidating place,” Solskjaer said Friday.
Especially since Liverpool hold a 13-point lead over Manchester City at the top of the Premier League—a largely unfamiliar position for a team which last won the championship in 1990. That title extended England’s title record to 18, cementing Liverpool’s status at the time as a football force with a collapse simply unthinkable.
But as the Liverpool dynasty faded, United was resurgent.
Once the team’s 26-year title drought ended in 1993, Alex Ferguson ruled the Premier League. But United have not come close to winning the title since then, with just one runners-up finish while Liverpool are a force again under Juergen Klopp.
With Solskjaer the fourth manager in the post-ferguson era, United are 27 points behind Liverpool going into Sunday’s game. The drought is seven years and counting, but still far from Liverpool’s 30-year barren run.
“That’s what we’re working hard to make sure doesn’t happen and let that be a lesson for us,” Solskjaer said.
“They’ve been close a few times and we can’t let ourselves go another 26 years until we win the league and I’m sure we won’t, because I believe in this club. I believe that we will rebuild now. We’ve started something that is going to take a little bit of time, but we’ll get there.”
A plus for Solskjaer is that he is the only manager to take points off Klopp this season in the Premier League in a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford in October.
But Liverpool are enjoying a 38-game unbeaten run stretching into last season when they were beaten to the title by one point by Manchester City.