Thirty wins. Eighty-nine goals. Ninety-seven points... but no trophy
ANFIELD CRACKLED BRIEFLY BEFORE NEWS OF CITY GOALS CAME THROUGH TO DASH THE DREAM
AT leasT they won. They didn’t deserve to but that didn’t really matter, not on this occasion. It was important that liverpool beat Wolves just so that this remarkable Premier league title race ended the way it should, with just one point between the champions and the runner-up.
Had the gap been any greater, it would have felt wrong and unfair on liverpool. Yes, Manchester City have been the better team. Pep Guardiola’s players deserve their title. But City haven’t been more than a point better.
so this felt right. sealed by goals in each half from sadio Mane on a day when liverpool were far below their scintillating best and when their goalkeeper alisson was their busiest player, this was consecutive win number nine in the Premier league to finish a season that has seen them lose only once. That defeat, of course, came at the home of the champions.
One day they will look back at the numbers and wonder how this happened. Thirty wins. eightynine goals. Ninety- seven points. and no trophy. It has not happened before and it is hard to see it ever happening again.
There have been close title races before, seasons when the gap has been just as wafer thin.
Manchester United pipped arsenal by a point in 1999 while Blackburn did the same to sir alex Ferguson’s team in 1995. But on those seasons, the title was won with 79 and then 89 points, the latter total being accrued over a 42-game season. This campaign, therefore, sits apart by a distance. This is the best liverpool team of the Premier league era and one of the best anfield has seen, yet Jurgen Klopp and his players will gather at the back end of summer knowing that the club’s run without a domestic league title will be 29 years.
liverpool could have won this title, of course. They will know that. a win against City in early January would have taken them 10 points clear. But they lost, narrowly. Then, soon after, came a fallow period of form. Draws against leicester, West Ham, everton and United.
This was a period when Klopp’s squad suffered by comparison to Guardiola’s. One to 11 — as it used to be — there is probably no difference between liverpool and City. But City do have a deeper squad and when players like Mo salah lost form in late winter, Klopp was not able to freshen.
But to say liverpool lost this title race is unfair. The Brendan Rodgers version of liverpool did blow it in 2014 but not this time. City won it by refusing to yield over the course of a run-in notable for the quality, stubbornness and courage of both teams and that is how this season should be remembered.
Here at anfield yesterday, nobody really came in expectation. Hope was all they had. Yet something unexpected did seem possible for about three minutes. Brilliantly chaotic minutes they were, too.
Football history is littered with memories of days when confusion reigned as supporters tried to keep abreast of happenings elsewhere through transistor radios and despatches passed down from the back of the terraces.
Now, in the internet age of immediate information, we thought those days were over. We were wrong. Here, with data overload playing havoc with mobile phone signals, rumours of a Brighton goal started to swirl not long after sadio Mane gave liverpool the lead in the 17th minute.
Briefly, anfield grew agitated as the truth was sought. When it came it was contrary. Brighton had not scored, after all. But then, suddenly, Brighton really did score and this time the news whipped round the stadium like some kind of electric Mexican wave.
With City a goal down, anfield quite literally shook. Barcelona last Tuesday was quite something but this, briefly, threatened to be even more visceral, more intense. liverpool, at that stage, were in the box seat and it was clear that the feeling started to impact on Klopp’s players.
liverpool lost their fluency almost immediately and they never really got it back. In truth, they looked leggy and by the time the interval came with City not only level at Brighton but ahead, the life had been sucked out of the occasion.
There in those two or three minutes, we had seen what a title win would mean to liverpool. The Champions league final against Tottenham on June 1 will offer them a consolation but, strange as it sounds, it is precisely that. For a club that has spent so long looking up in the Premier league, a return to eminence is felt like a desperate need and here, in sound and red and white frenzy, the nakedness of that emotion was laid before us.
liverpool’s two goals sit well with the story of their season. The combination was the same each time, a Trent alexander-arnold cross and a Mane finish, one a side foot and the other a header. But it was the pace of the counter, the use of the width of the field, the accuracy of the delivery that was so typical of Klopp’s team. They have proved themselves a side capable of scoring from absolutely anywhere and that is one of the reasons they are every bit as watchable as the team that has finished above them.
Wolves could and should have embarrassed liverpool. Nuno espirito santo’s team tend to play well against good sides and they would have taken something from the game had they been sharper in front of goal. alisson saved twice from Diogo Jota in the second half while Raul Jimenez miskicked dreadfully in front of the Kop when square in front of goal.
so the result wasn’t fair or reflective but it still felt right. liverpool started the season needing to make up 25 points from the last campaign. They fell short by a single point. They will carry a sense of injustice all the way to Madrid.