EXTRA TIME

Liverpool in Decline, WHU’s up?

October 30, 2022 at 5:09 am 1 comment

“Are you a Premier League manager in dire need of a career-changing result?” Chris Bascombe in The Telegraph asks. “The fixture list can currently be no kinder than providing a meeting with Liverpool. Last week Steve Cooper’s bottom club Nottingham Forest regenerated against Jurgen Klopp’s flailing side. This time it was Jesse Marsch’s Leeds United escaping the bottom three with a notable victory.”

Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool of 2022/23 has already had a bunch of bad results this season and has lost one third of their Premier League games so far (4 W, 4 D, 4 L). But only from their back to back defeats to bottom teams this impression has emanated which somehow does feel familiar to West Ham fans.

The sports writer of The Telegraph continues drawing attention to one of the Anfield greats who was sacked recently as manager: “If Steven Gerrard was back at Anfield, he might have considered he would still be in the Aston Villa job had he had the fortune to face his old club in the last few weeks.”

Albeit it had seemed that Liverpool’s stuttering season had gained some momentum in recent weeks with back to back wins at home against Manchester City and West Ham, this was only to be followed now by two defeats in a row to bottom teams Nottingham Forest and Leeds United.

And things got even worse now as the Reds’ home record in front of a full Anfield Road is gone after having stood for years: Not since Crystal Palace in April 2017 has a full Liverpool crowd witnessed a Premier League defeat in their own stadium (West Ham last won there in August 2015). Only the misery of lockdown football inflicted such setbacks and Klopp’s last glimmer of light in this troubling period has been that Anfield has remained impregnable. But with the 1-2 defeat to Leeds United at home this record doesn’t stand anymore.

On Tuesday the Reds, already qualified for the knockout round of the Champions League after a 3-0 away win over Ajax last week, have another home game against in-form Napoli to which they already lost 1-4 in the reverse fixture in September, and then they have to travel to Tottenham. Spurs are third in the table while Liverpool slumped to ninth after the Nottingham and Leeds defeats.

A chance to leapfrog Liverpool

Liverpool could even be leapfrogged on Sunday by West Ham in the unlikely case of a Hammers win over Manchester United at Old Trafford. Although West Ham have won their fifth out of five Conference League games on Thursday and have only lost once (against Liverpool) since mid-September (when they lost to Everton away), the Red Devils’ form seems to be even better!

Therefore such a win seams very improbable since Manchester United has – after Erik ten Hag‘s and Davis Moyes’s teams had a dismal start into the season – improved much quicker then the Hammers: the Red Devils have not lost at home since the first game of the season (1-2 against Brighton) and haven’t conceded a single goal at their ground since Saka scored for Arsenal in the Gunners’ 1-3 defeat on 4 September, the only occasion in which Arsenal had to accept to be on the losing end this season so far.

But in football everything is possible – just think of yesterday’s 1-4 defeat of Chelsea at Graham Potter’s old club Brighton. The Blues had been unbeaten in nine games since Potter took over after Tuchel’s sacking which had followed a 0-1 at the hand of Dinamo Zagreb.

Why not repeat today the heroics of West Ham’s 1-0 win in last year’s League Cup clash at Old Trafford, and get ahead of Liverpool in the Premier League table?

Come on you Irons!

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