COLLY: LIVERPOOL HAVE WON NOTHING YET
PUT away the bunting and the plans for a ticker-tape parade, because the title hasn’t been decided yet.
Only those who don’t truly understand football will think Liverpool’s 3-1 victory over Manchester City on Sunday means anything different.
I said before the game that you wouldn’t find any bookies paying out on my old club as champions this week if they won at Anfield.
And even though they did run out winners with a terrific performance you still won’t find me anointing Liverpool just a third of the way into the season.
Give me a nine-point gap over City on April Fool’s Day, and over Leicester and Chelsea for that matter, and maybe we can talk about it then. But until then, no chance, no chance at all.
What a game it was, though, and what a shame the result was mired in controversy.
We ought to have been celebrating two great teams and an exhilarating game for the rest of the week, and talking about nothing else.
But the way technology has taken centre stage this season, that was never going to be the case and so it proved.
Pep Guardiola and his City stars were right to claim handball against Trent Alexander-Arnold – it should have been given and why it wasn’t is anyone’s guess.
But that’s the problem with VAR, it’s an absolute mess, and the Premier League and referees in England are starting to look not fit for purpose because of it.
The indecisiveness and nitpicking of it all is missing the point completely and it’s detracting from the overall performances of such as Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson, who helped Liverpool win the game from the wide areas just as I suspected they would. Those two have rightly taken the plaudits but I want to pick out Jordan Henderson, who is so far removed from the player many of us thought he was three or four years ago. He can fill in centrally in midfield, and still make up width. That is a nod to the exceptional tactics of Jurgen Klopp who knows his two young full-backs will sometimes get overloaded and need a bit of help.
I was one of those who looked at Henderson and James Milner (left) and wondered if they would be the two who could hamper the team. Milner has been round the block and has always been a great pro, but I wasn’t sure he’d add another dimension.
I was with a lot of Liverpool fans who also wondered if Henderson should even be in the team, let alone be captain.
But the pair haven’t just answered the questions about them, they have become intrinsic parts of the team and the dressing room.
Any squad that has lots of mercurial characters and youngsters needs a glue to bind it together and those two have done that and then some for Liverpool.
And if the men from Anfield do end up being crowned champions this season there is no doubt that they will have been two of the most important drivers of that – Henderson in particular, given the way he has grown into the captaincy.
Finding a new leader after Steven Gerrard was always going to be difficult, but Henderson has stepped up brilliantly.