THE RED MACHINE ROLLS ON
Not even Liverpool saboteur Jose can derail title bid as...
SIX years ago, Liverpool were closing in on a league title when t hey ran i nto Jose Mourinho. Mourinho was the manager of Chelsea then and he attacked his role as the saboteur of Liverpool’s dreams with the relish of a sadist. It was a masterclass in ruination. Steven Gerrard may have slipped but it was Mourinho who did the damage.
Liverpool came up against him again last night, now the manager of Spurs. Liverpool are going for the title again. Their drought stretches to almost 30 years and their desperation to end it is driving them on with the kind of fervour t hat English f ootball has not witnessed before.
This time, as the rest of the Premier League kneels before them, not even Mourinho could derail them.
Oh he tried. And he could be proud of Spurs’ performance. And he could be proud of the fact that, without Harry Kane and other first team players, Spurs caused Jurgen Klopp’s team a mighty amount of discomfort in the last 20 minutes of this match.
But for all their effort, they could not quite find the chink in the armour that the forlorn chasing pack yearns for someone to find. Liverpool’ s recent record is dizzyingly, stupefyingly good, better than anything we have seen before, better than anything Europe has seen before.
They have not lost in the league for more than a calendar year. Their unbeaten league run now stretches to 38 games — the equivalent of an entire season.
This season, they have now played 21 games and won 20 of them. They are 16 points clear at the top. No team in Europe — never mind England — has ever made a start like this. Not even Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona.
If they continue on this course, they will am ass 110 points, smashing the English record set by Guardiola’s Manchester City two years ago.
It is inevitable that there will be more and more talk of whether Liverpool can now go on to emulate Arsenal’s Invincibles of 2003- 04 and go the whole season unbeaten. This was one banana skin that they have leapt over.
Others await but Liverpool are a machine, crushing all before them as they roll on towards a title that is already almost within their grasp.
But the statistics only tell a part of the story.
To watch Liverpool against Spurs was to see a beautiful blur of brilliant red hurtling up and down the pitch, made even more luminous by the Saturday night lights and the majesty of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium t hat hosted the latest instalment of their assault on history.
We talk about them in abstract, about how good they are, about their statistics but it is only when you see them up close that you remember how relentless they are, how merciless t hey are, how commanding they are, how well-drilled they are, how brilliant they are, how fiercely they fight to regain possession, how swiftly they counter-attack.
The Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder said recently that one of the things he admires most about this Liverpool team is that they have the humility to work hard and they ran themselves in to the ground here.
Sadio Mane was named African Player of the Year last week and attended the ceremony in Cairo and he worked harder than anyone against Spurs.
When Klopp’s team play away, when they attack, there is a hush that falls over the home crowd because every fan in the country knows how good they are.
Every fan in the country knows the sorcery their forward line is capable of producing, every fan in the country, however much they may hate to admit it, knows that they are watching a special team.
There was some surprise when Mourinho handed a league debut to young English defender Japhet Tanganga but it was exactly the kind of move Mourinho favours on occasions like this when his side are underdogs.
Call it a shot to nothing, a baptism of fire or simply brave, it was the kind of left-field decision he has used in the past to unsettle more favoured opponents.
Tanganga repaid his faith inside the first two minutes. Alex OxladeChamberlain lofted a clever ball over the Spurs defence into the path of Roberto Firmino, who t urned effortlessly i nside his defender in the box and curled a
left-foot shot towards goal. It was bound for the corner until Tanganga threw himself at it to block it.
The ball came back out to Firmino, who played it to OxladeChamberlain. His shot also beat Paulo Gazzaniga but it rebounded off the post, hit the back of Tanganga’s legs and fell into the grateful arms of the Spurs goalkeeper.
It was a breathless, pinball-game of a start.
Spurs hit back immediately. Lucas Moura and Son Heung-min both went close with curling shots from the edge of the area but Spurs saw so little of the ball for the next 20 minutes that they were restricted to trying to hold back the flood.
When another chance did come, it was Liverpool, inevitably, who created it but, when Jordan Henderson floated a ball to the back post, Virgil van Dijk’s header was too close to Gazzaniga, who beat it away from point- blank range.
Eight minutes before half-time, t hough, Spurs could not hold Liverpool back any longer.
The visitors won a throw that should have gone to Spurs, Henderson competed for a loose ball on the edge of the box, winning it by bowing his head among the feet. It fell to Mohamed Salah and when Salah slipped a pass to Firmino, the Brazil striker suckered Tanganga by allowing the ball to run across him t hen rifling a drive past Gazzaniga. Tanganga had had a good half but, in that moment, his inexperience, particularly against a player as clever as Firmino, counted against him.
Spurs were given a hint of encouragement just before the hour when Joe Gomez and Trent Alexander- Arnold got i n each other’s way and the loose ball broke to Dele Alli. Alli burst forward to the edge of the box but, as he shot, Van Dijk made a perfectly timed tackle to snuff out the danger. A minute later, Son fired just wide. Spurs were starting to play.
Their effort could not be faulted. They grew stronger and stronger as the match wore on. Son should have scored midway through the half but he lifted his shot high over the bar.
Seven minutes from the end, the stadium rose in anticipation of an equaliser when substitute Giovani Lo Celso stretched to meet a Serge Aurier cross but his lunging half volley somehow flew across goal and into touch.