Keeping pace with Liverpool this season has been the huge problem for the other nineteen Premier League sides. Jurgen Klopp’s team have been way out in front of everyone from the off this season and now it is only a matter of matches before they will have won their first Premier League crown after thirty years of waiting for a league title.
Having run Manchester City to within a point of top spot last season, the Reds have made no mistakes this time around and are on course to match Arsenal’s Invincibles tag of 2003-04 when the Gunners went through a season unbeaten, the only team to do so in the Premier League era. Even playing at half pace this Liverpool side are far better than everyone else and there appears to be little anyone can do to stop them.
Currently the gap is sixteen points to City and with a game in hand, Liverpool could be on a staggering seventy points as February dawns and it would take the biggest capitulation of the modern era to see anything but the title head to Anfield, remarkably the title could be won as early as mid-March if the Reds continue to win and City likewise drop more points during the same period.
The defeat of huge rivals Manchester United just underlined how big the gulf now is between the two clubs, United having had Liverpool in their shadows for so many years and the tide has clearly turned in dramatic fashion.
All across the pitch Liverpool have class and talent and rarely panic if they go a goal down, so often this season they have come from behind to with late goals to seal the win, the mark of champions who from nowhere got three points whilst not playing well. They haven’t conceded a goal in the Premier League since the beginning of December, the most miserly defence across the country.
Whilst City may have scored more goals, they’ve conceded double the amount of the Reds which clearly illustrates why Liverpool are in pole position. Liverpool however have shared the goals around more which would suggest no reliance on just Mo Salah to hit the net, although he leads the Reds scoring charts with fifteen goals. Close behind Sadio Mane has thirteen and with both Firmino and Divock Origi close to double figures Klopp knows his side have goals in them, midfielders and defenders have also chipped in throughout the course of this season and those goals are often the more crucial when you dissect a season.
Klopp has overseen an improvement in some of his players who played outstandingly last season, both full backs Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold have pushed on even further this year and rarely put in a substandard performance. The return of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Adam Lallana has added more guile and creativity to the team whilst being able to depend on Jordan Henderson and Gigi Wijnaldum to maintain a performance level, it’s hard to find a weak link even if the team is not playing to its full potential.
It is difficult to see where Liverpool will drop points if any before the season ends having dispatched even their closest rivals with consummate ease and with interest still in both the FA Cup and Champions League, Klopp would be targeting a clean sweep of the treble and with the belief they have now, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be celebrating three trophies in the cabinet at the end of the season.
Every other club in the league knows they have to spend and improve over this coming summer to stop Liverpool dominating once again next season, surely the Reds and Klopp won’t have it this easy again.
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