Liverpool are out of the Champions League, a result that definitely wasn't in their script for the season. Time to focus on the Carabao Cup and the Premier League instead, then.
This, it seems reasonable to say, was most definitely not in the script. This meant more. It was one of those ‘Famous Anfield Nights’. Things like that aren't supposed to happen on nights like this. Yet after 120 minutes of football and a penalty shootout the result was as stark as it could be. Liverpool hadn't only been beaten at home by PSG in the Champions League; they'd been eviscerated in the subsequent penalty shootout and were out of the competition at least two rounds before they might have been expecting to be.
If anything, over the two full legs things might have been worse. Had it not been for a performance of the season from Alisson in goal throughout the first leg, they definitely would have been. But as bad as things ended up was as bad as they needed to end up, although it is also worth remembering that this was an excellent performance from a PSG team that finally seems to have slipped the celebrity-obsessed shackles of their past under Luis Enrique.
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When we pause to consider the deeply ingrained insouciance of the modern footballer, it was obvious at the end of the match that this did indeed more, from the reactions of the players alone. More than the FA Cup did, anyway. There have already been reports this morning of them having been ‘inconsolable’ in the changing room after the match.
Well, the world keeps on turning, so they need to pick themselves up again pretty quickly. On Sunday they take on Newcastle United at Wembley for the Carabao Cup, and their opponents are not only perfectly capable of giving them a game, but may also have a desire for silverware unlike almost any other on account of their club not having won a major domestic trophy in seven decades.
Of course, the domestic cups have been the lowest priority for all the biggest clubs this season. That's just the way of things, these days. But having already exited the FA Cup at Plymouth a few weeks ago, this is the last cup that Liverpool can go for, and it may have a significance that reaches beyond parading around Wembley with a trophy with red and white ribbons attached to it early on Sunday evening.
Because if there was one team that will have cheered Liverpool’s Champions League implosion more than any other, it will have been Arsenal. Not only does it clear the pathway towards potentially winning that competition themselves, but it also raises the tiniest possibility that the Premier League title race might not be completely done and dusted just yet.
Yes, yes, yes, it continues to look extremely unlikely. Liverpool are 15 points clear at the top with only have nine left to play. But Arsenal play their game in hand on Sunday lunchtime, and a win against Chelsea would cut that to twelve. But with Liverpool’s next fixtures being a Merseyside derby and a potentially tricky trip to Fulham, who’s to say that their lead won’t have been whittled down to single figures by then?
All of thismatters. Footballers are all in peak physical condition, these days, You can’t get away with being an unfit Premier League footballer. Teams are drilled to within an inch of their lives. They’re monitored for what they eat and the clubs know their whereabouts at all times. And what this means is that two other things matter in the game in ways that maybe didn’t quite so much; the psychological aspect of it all, and the fine margins.
Of course, football has always been a game of fine margins. Just ask Geoff Hurst. But these days, the margins between victory and defeat from game to game feel tighter than ever. We know that there has been**an increase in the number of late goals being scored**, and while an element of this is also psychological, relating to concentration, nerves and the like, there are also other elements at play too, most notably fatigue, from a game that is visibly quicker-paced than it was even a decade ago.
But it’s the psychological aspect of it all that hasreally changed. The pressure is greater than ever, the amounts of money concerned are astronomical, and social media means that players can’t hide themselves away from the more swivel-eyed in society in the way that they used to. Liverpool have to jump from the biggest single disappointment of their season straight into a cup final, and their reaction to that disappointment could be critical for the rest of their season.
This is essentially where true professionalism kicks in. It’s easy, when results are going your way week after week while everyone else seems to be occasionally tripping over their own bootlaces. The real test comes when your stumble comes, and how you react to it. The emotional void left by the latter stages of the Champions League now being absent from the rest of their season has to be ignored. It’s plain and simple; Liverpool have to put it behind them and go out to win that match. Game faces back on.
Of course, Newcastle have now seen the whites of their eyes. This weekend’s match between the two had been being talked of as being something of a foregone conclusion, with Liverpool’s fairly comfortable win at Anfield when the two sides met a couple of weeks ago and Anthony Gordon getting himself suspended for it by getting himself sent off towards the end of their home FA Cup defeat to Brighton.
Liverpool’s elimination will be a nice little pick-me-up for the Newcastle players. Playing this particular team must at times have looked daunting to opponents, this season. They’ve only lost once in the League, and that came in the middle of September. But instead of focusing on that, they can instead consider that this Liverpool team is beatable. PSG did it. Plymouth bleedin’ Argyle did it. If the psychological edge is important, then Newcastle can only benefit from last night’s hiccup on Merseyside.
Of course, the odds remain firmly in Liverpool’s favour. Regardless of what Arsenal do on Sunday, there’ll still be a gap of at least 12 points, and with nine to play this means that Liverpool would have to lose almost half of their remaining games to give Arsenal so much as a mathematical chance of snatching the League title. And they remain the favourites to win on Sunday because the season isn’t about their last match alone. Liverpool have been the best team in England this season, and by a long way. Basing an entire opinion on one result alone is a knee-jerk of the first order.
While the Premier League has been interesting in its unpredictability this season, the one thing that hasn’t been in the slightest bit unpredictable has been Liverpool. While everyone else has been going through some form of psychodrama or other, they have floated serenely on, devoid of the monsters that have been eating everyone else up at various points over the last seven months. The true test starts now. It’s a good job for Liverpool that the rest of the division have made it a relatively easy one. For the remainder of this season, it’s the Premier League that will have to mean more again.
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