Have Liverpool blown it?
Who wants to be top of the Premier League at the beginning of March? Jurgen Klopp asked this question after Liverpool’s point at Goodison Park on Sunday but presumably the answer is any team who would have stayed there if they’d won their game.
The pressure is on Manchester City now, Andy Robertson said after the scoreless draw. City are now on top, but do Liverpool really believe there is any way of relieving the pressure on themselves other than by winning?
In isolation, Liverpool’s recent results don’t seem too bad, with a draw at Old Trafford and another at Goodison. But there are no results in isolation during a title race, just the suffocating pressure of attempting to win a league for the first time since 1990.
Has this become too much for Jurgen Klopp and his players? On The Football Spin, Dion Fanning and Paddy McKenna discuss whether Liverpool are bottling it and what that means exactly. Is a conservative approach evidence of bottling and, if not, what does Jurgen Klopp’s caution at this stage tell us about Liverpool and their manager?
Melissa Reddy knows Liverpool better than most journalists and she explains why the Merseyside Derby was such a disappointment for the club and why a conservative approach seems to have got the better of Klopp at this stage of the season.
This manifested itself, she says, not just in the unimaginative substitutions but in Liverpool’s approach to the game overall which revealed an anxiety about losing.
Can Liverpool depend on City to do them any more favours? After all, City’s mistakes let them back into the title race so why should they expect things to get any easier at this stage? When you’re chasing your first title since 1990, is it time to accept that you will also need to take some risks?
Liverpool aren’t doing that right now and having failed to win in two of their most significant matches in recent times, how do they make a statement again in the title race?
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