Reds dethrone the Champions in the Manchester rain
Manchester City 0 Liverpool 2, 23rd February 2025
MANCHESTER CITY 0
LIVERPOOL 2 (Salah 14, Szoboszlai 37)
Anyone for a sing-song?
“Just like the team, that’s gonna win the Football League (AGAIN)
We Shall Not Be Moved”
Or how about a stanza from this all-time classic?
“A Liverbird, upon my chest
We are men, of Shankly’s best
A team that plays, the Liverpool way
And wins the Championship, in May”
Go on, join in, you’ll never feel more alive! And surely after dismantling the current champions 2–0 and romping 11 points clear with a numerically pleasing 11 games left, only a huge collapse will prevent the Mighty Reds of Liverpool claiming their 20th English League Title in May now.
Ever the pragmatist and with a devil on my shoulder with a calculator in his hand I am of course reminded that with 33 Premier League points still to play for nothing is mathematically over or certain and absolutely nothing is guaranteed in the final week of February with over two full months of football still to be played. I hoped for a single drawn point before kick-off, reasoning this would ensure the Reds would be 9 points clear and 3 defeats and 3 wins clear of second placed Arsenal. Despite my singing and dancing above, I am a pragmatist. But perhaps my brother-in-arms Andy spoke for Reds all over the land and across the world with his pre-game synopsis of, and I quote his final sentence to me, in full:
“City are not the same team this season so now is the perfect time to beat them at their ground and piss off the entire country”.
The last five words of Andy’s message to me made me giggle as kick-off approached and I instantly recalled two of my favourite Reds banners that have adorned The Kop End for many a football season: “Them Scousers Again” and “The Unbearables”. Well them scousers and those unbearables were majestic today and yes Manchester City are a depleted team and a shadow of their treble winning glory and yes Rodri is still injured and John Stones was missing and Erling Haaland deemed unfit to even lace up his boots but fuck that noise, none of my concern whatsoever. Liverpool under Jürgen Klopp have, season after season, gone toe-to-toe with their big spending neighbours from the other end of the East Lancs Road and whilst winning many an individual battle and the Premier League title in 2019–2020, lost the overall war. Today, Arne Slot’s Liverpool dethroned the champions, in their own backyard, and were mightily impressive in doing so too.
Working from back to front, Alisson Becker in the Reds goal collected his 93rd all time Premier League clean sheet as he repelled tame efforts from Phil Foden on 7 and 29 minutes, Omar Marmoush in between and Jérémy Doku with 20 minutes left to play but in all honesty, he barely dirtied his goalkeeping gloves. Although Doku was a constant menace (especially in the first half) and forever getting the better of Trent Alexander-Arnold on the Reds defensive right-hand side, Alisson’s clean sheet was never under serious threat as Andy Robertson was imperious at left-back and quite simply, whatever came the way of skipper Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté they kicked and headed clear any and every sporadic danger with utter disdain. The defensive back 5 soaked up City’s constant ball retention and whatever pressure they exerted with the minimum of fuss expected of a well drilled practice game where they were simply never going to concede a goal. Magnificent collective performance. As was the midfield ahead of them and the individual performances of Ryan Gravenberch (barely lost a tackle or gave the ball away), Alexis Mac Allister (another in the category of “Best performance in a Red shirt” for the Argentinian World Cup winner), Dominik Szoboszlai (brilliant again and arguable “Man of the Match” performance to go with his goal and assist) and let no-one forget or overlook the performance of Curtis Jones whose tenacity and hunt for the ball led to the turnover of the ball preceding the corner that led to Mo Salah’s opening goal. Without the scouser (them again!) and his determination to chase and harry City’s Rico Lewis out of possession of the ball, there wouldn’t have been a corner, and the Reds wouldn’t have taken such a precious early game lead.
Whilst the Colombian magician Luis Díaz was quiet by his standards, Mo Salah was otherworldly by his. Another assist. Another goal. His 25th Premier League goal of the season and 30th in all competitions ensured he equalled Gordon Hodgson’s 90 year record to go level with the South African in 3rd place on the Reds all time goal scorers list with 241 goals as talk will inevitably turn once more to two topics dear to the Egyptian King’s heart: the much sought after Ballon d’Or and a contract that will keep Mo Salah at Liverpool for the rest of his career. One is looking more certain by the game. The other? A criminal oversight. And you can decide for yourselves which is which!
Following the match and after dropping my beautiful son home, I popped into my local convenience store and catching the eye of a fellow Red (he was easy to spot, wearing as he was a home shirt of season’s past) I said how magnificent the performance was and providing my evidence of being a Liverpool Red myself, he said “11 clear of Arsenal” and, with a snigger, “20 points clear of City”.
“Not bad” I responded with a hearty laugh “and a million miles ahead of Manchester United”.
We both giggled in unison at that one!
(sorry Mum)
Arne’s Afterword
“If you play away at the Etihad, if you win there it is always a big win, no matter what the league table looks like. If you play away from home against a Pep team it is almost impossible to have more ball possession than his team has. We knew we had to defend a lot and that’s what we did really well and then some good moments in the counter-attack led to us winning the game. The fans can sing whatever they want, I think they’ve sung it for quite long already, but we know as a team how hard we have to work for every single win. It was only three days ago, somebody asked me if we’d had a dip on Wednesday. I don’t believe that as well as I am calm now about this win”.
“Now we play against Newcastle and we played a 3–3 over there which was, in my opinion, also a good result, although after 89 minutes we were 3–2 up, but we also experienced how difficult that one is. In every other league, I think a lead like this would be very comfortable — except for this one because in this league every single game gives you a lot of challenges, even Plymouth Argyle gave us a lot of challenges”.
Thanks for reading. I pen my thoughts on every Liverpool game and in recent seasons, with the addition of numerous pieces of retro writing on Reds games of the past, I’ve curated and created the following two self-published books:
"A final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" - link to Amazon
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books too. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon