Liverpool fan-baiting talk of whether the 2019/20 title should be rendered null and void as coronavirus brought the world and the Premier League to its knees morphed delightfully into the suggestion that an asterisk should forever be placed after their name in the winners list after a season that did get back underway but was defined by the sound of silence. No fans, doesn’t count.
With Arne Slot’s side 13 points clear at the top of the table and nailed on to win their second Premier League title and 20th first division gong to draw level with Manchester United, non Liverpool-supporting folk are crossing their chests and battening down the hatches in preparation for an open-top bus parade that will happen this time unless someone in China does us a solid and runs into a hospital covered in bat faeces or 6G is rolled out ahead of schedule.
But assuming a global pandemic doesn’t save us, we’ve come up with five excellent reasons why Liverpool’s title win still deserves an asterisk. That’s right guys, this one won’t count either.
No Proper Teams
Liverpool hadn’t beaten a Proper Team this season until they bungled a victory over Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday, with that robbery courtesy of Harvey Elliott’s late winner acting as a mirror for all of us Premier League-centric souls to take a long hard look in and question whether The Best League In The World is in fact the one where leathery-skinned men are ploughing fields with straw in their mouths during the week before pulling on their boots at the weekend.
A harsh appraisal of the challenges posed by Liverpool’s rivals in the Farmer’s League perhaps, but we refuse to accept that your first impression of Chris Wood would lead you to believe that he’s the Premier League’s fourth-highest goalscorer this season rather than a guy who sits in a combine harvester with a spaniel on his lap.
The 90 points Liverpool will finish the campaign on if they keep going at the same rate would only have been enough to win the title in two of the last eight seasons. Second-placed Arsenal’s two points per game will see them finish on 76 points. Slot’s side have been good but they’ve had no competition.
Manchester City
The competition has typically come from Manchester City but Rodri got injured, they’ve got the weird dearth of players in their mid-twenties prime and it all went to sh*t in a scarcely believable run of six defeats in eight games before Christmas that meant Slot no longer had to concern himself with the challenge of arguably the most dominant team in Premier League history under one of the greatest ever coaches.
It’s not Liverpool’s fault City have been balls, but they’ve been fortunate that their rebuilds have occurred at different times. Both their Premier League titles will have been won without Liverpool* winning an actual Premier League title race, losing two of them (2021/2022, 2018/2019).
No injuries
Liverpool have eased away from Arsenal because of their respective injury records. If Slot hadn’t had Mohamed Salah, Cody Gakpo and Luis Diaz for a big chunk of the season, they may not be quite so f***ed as Arsenal given the superior strength in depth in those forward positions, but similar problems in defence would have been disastrous.
Sporting director Richard Hughes viewing Slot’s injury record at Feyenoord, where player availability levels were above 90% across three seasons, as a ‘big factor’ in picking him to replace Jurgen Klopp is as depressing as it was smart. Liverpool’s absentees missed a combined 1,383 days last season, significantly more than champions Manchester City (672) and runners-up Arsenal (898). It was the reason their levels dipped so significantly in the last few weeks of that campaign, with close to a fully-fit squad now the reason they’ve pulled away at the top of the table.
Back-slaps for Hughes and Liverpool for recognising the importance of squad fitness in a packed schedule, but we aren’t at all comfortable with a situation in which players simply not being injured means you win more games of football than anyone else. Some might even say a title won on the yoga mat or in the hydrotherapy chamber removes some of the romance of football.
The Mohamed Salah injustice
An excellent example of the You’d Be F***ed Without Him argument used by generations of football fans who invalidate the But We Do Have Him defence by shaking their heads and pointing out how much worse other Liverpool players are compared to their best one.
Forty-two goal contributions in 28 games is simply far too many and plainly unfair as Liverpool should by all rights have taken £100m+ of Saudi gold and spunked it on two or three vastly inferior footballers that would have seen them battling for Champions League qualification rather than storming to the title thanks to their cheat code winger.
READ MORE: Arsenal top MVP-less Premier League table as Newcastle screwed without Alexander Isak
Slot escaping a points deduction
Some might say Manchester City are more deserving of a points deduction for their alleged nine-year breach of financial fair play including inflating sponsorship deals, making secret payments to Roberto Mancini and Yaya Toure’s agent and obstructing Premier League investigations, but what about Slot telling Michael Oliver ‘he hoped he was proud of his performance’ after the Merseyside derby?
Throw the book at him we say, in the form of a points deduction touted by former official Keith Hackett, who very proudly reminded us that he was the ref when said punishment was last doled out in 1990, before the Premier League was founded, as Arsenal and Manchester United were docked two points and one point respectively for a brawl involving 21 of the 22 players on the pitch.
That does admittedly sound like a greater offence than Slot using a couple of swears, and we suspect the Dutchman may also need to have been arrested had he done something worthy of the ten-point deduction required for a title race, but guys, we need to protect our referees somehow, and what better way to set a precedent?