‘Lighthouse’ Fabinho is a beacon in a season of brilliance
The Lighthouse showed the way. This was Liverpool back to their awesome best and Fabinho making a dominant return. It was capped with a quite brilliant goal which had that delicious trajectory of the ball still rising as it hit the net with the kind of sweet-spot “ping” that can only be heard inside an empty stadium. Unstoppable, in fact.
Utterly emphatic. Just like Liverpool this season.
Lockdown has been cruel and although there was never any doubt that when the Premier League resumed Liverpool would win their first title in 30 years – and would win it even if the season was curtailed – one unexpected plus has been allowing their Brazilian midfielder the time to fully recover from the ankle ligament injury which he suffered in late November and appeared to affect him until the campaign was halted.
It was Jurgen Klopp’s assistant
Pep Lijnders who named Fabinho “The Lighthouse” within the “organised chaos” that the Liverpool manager demands, and it has been an illuminating nickname.
With his “timing, his vision, his calmness, it gives another dimension to our midfield,” Lijnders explained, and in one performance Fabinho reasserted himself as the best defensive midfielder in the league during this campaign.
Fabinho’s arresting 30-yard strike was similar to the last league goal he scored: the opening goal in Liverpool’s 3-1 victory over Manchester City last November which led to Jose Mourinho making a big call. “The league is done,” he said simply. Mourinho was not even Tottenham Hotspur’s head coach then, he was speaking as a TV pundit, and although it was a typical piece of bravura, everyone knew that he was probably right.
Nevertheless, what a statement that was and what a season this has been. Just a short while after losing out to City, despite being defeated in just one league game in 2018-19, Klopp’s side had effectively toppled a team we felt were unstoppable.
Fabinho’s goal took his side into a 3-0 lead against Crystal Palace, but there was never going to be any repeat of 2014 and the “Crystanbul”
Maybe the champions will just be known, to use Klopp’s phrase, as the ‘Mentality Monsters’
comeback which ended Liverpool’s title hopes then. This Liverpool team are a different proposition.
So what will they become known as? We have had Manchester United’s treble winners, Arsenal’s “Invincibles”, Chelsea’s “Special Ones” under Mourinho, a “fearless” Leicester City and Manchester City’s “Fourmidables”. Maybe they will just be known, to use Klopp’s phrase, as “the Mentality Monsters”, because from the moment
You’ll Never Walk Alone faded around an empty Anfield there was never any doubt that they would collect the win that takes them to the brink of the title.
Liverpool may be crowned champions as they sit on their sofas at home should City fail to defeat Chelsea away tonight, although the current times mean there will be no party around Jordan Henderson’s house as there was at Jamie Vardy’s following Leicester’s triumph in 2016. It is shame for the club, the players and most of all their fans, but this will be an extraordinary title under any circumstances. The “Mentality Monsters” secured their first 2-0 half-time lead since December with Fabinho providing a precise assist for Mohamed Salah. It was one of the 61 passes the 26-year-old completed in the Palace half and the statistics reflected his commanding performance: 98 per cent pass accuracy, six out of six tackles and seven duels won.
Liverpool were far sharper, far quicker and also, of course, far stronger than they were at Everton with Fabinho the shining light. And so the social-distanced partying can soon begin.