Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
UNKLOPPABLES
Spurs 0 Liverpool 1
LIVERPOOL’S march to the title continued after Roberto Firmino’s winner at Tottenham sent records tumbling.
Jurgen Klopp’s runaway leaders set a new club record of 38 unbeaten games.
The Reds have also made the best ever start to a Premier League season – and the first team in Europe’s top-five leagues to win 20 of their opening 21 league matches.
Klopp (below) said: “It’s special. The only thing is that you don’t get anything for best starts. When someone gives you a trophy it’s done – until then you need to fight.”
THEY stood no more than a few yards away from each other for the entire piece, but the gap between the two might has well have been a motorway’s length.
Jurgen Klopp, the progressive, thoroughly modern manager, cherishing possession, attacking on all fronts.
Jose Mourinho, the decorated coach failing to move with the times. His natural caution – so often the basis of his success – now costing his team dear.
Only when Mourinho was forced to move the bus into opposition territory did Spurs look like getting something from this game.
In a much-improved second-half performance, they would have salvaged a slice of the spoils had Heung-min Son and Giovani Lo Celso not wasted late, great chances but yet another Liverpool win was hardly ill-deserved.
And it can now go without saying the title is theirs – take it as red.
The sub-plot here, though, was
Mourinho versus
Klopp (right).
Mourinho, over his career, has faced the German 11 times and has only recorded two wins.
That sort of record can get into a manager’s mind and, judging by Tottenham’s first-half approach, it certainly got into Jose’s.
Despite scoring at a rate of two a game since Mourinho took charge, Spurs’ early bus-parking was entirely predictable.
The problem is that this tactic needs the right personnel to work, needs resolute and technically sound defensive operators.
This Tottenham team is shy of a good few of those.
The throw-in that led to Liverpool’s opener was wrongly awarded, and why VAR does not get involved with that decision is anyone’s guess. But all the same, it was defended appallingly by – amongst others – Toby Alderweireld and Dele Alli.
The pass from Mohamed Salah was familiarly cute, and the side-step and finish from Roberto Firmino was textbook striking.
But it was amateurish from a back line that included 20-year-old Japhet Tanganga.
The debutant made a few eye-catching interventions, but a defensive unit that has kept only one clean sheet under Mourinho’s stewardship was no more solid for his inclusion.
In their current form, Spurs do not have the personnel to go parking anything.
And while Liverpool’s attacking triumvirate are peerlessly ruthless on the counter-attack, they are clever enough to pick locks as well.
Along with every other department, they are simply brimming with confidence.
And why wouldn’t they be?
The remainder of the Premier League fixture list is going to feel like one long of lap of honour for Klopp’s team.
Like the times when a vintage Tiger Woods would be leading a Major going into the final round.
You knew it would be an exhibition of his superiority, staged purely to embarrass the distant pretenders.
The records being pursued by Klopp are mesmerisingly multiple, but all anyone needs to know is that
Liverpool have lost just one of their last 60
Premier League matches.
Their remorseless nature gets into the head of opponents.
Spurs may have lost to them in the Champions League Final, but that was no reason for Mourinho’s or his side’s inferiority complex here.
It does not help that Christian Eriksen jacked it in about six months ago, or that Mourinho selects him to start.
The statistics will tell you that Eriksen created more chances than any other Spurs player and that he had a very decent game.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics. How he and Danny Rose lasted well over an hour before seeing their numbers in lights, only Mourinho knows.
When the changes came, Spurs were energised and Son skyed a super chance to equalise.
When Giovani Lo Celso hooked a sitter a mile wide, Mourinho sank to his knees in despair.
Meanwhile, Klopp, collecting a record-breaking 20th win from his 21 Premier League games this season, stood tall.
And that pretty much sums up where these two great managers – one of now, one of yesteryear – stand.
REPORT: SEE PULLOUT