Here it comes then. The much‑promised collapse. The improbable, but somehow also deserved and collectively willed disintegration of these champions by default. Something like that anyway. Tell you what though. Fulham are good aren’t they? And particularly so, it should be said, for a team that started the day 10th in an apparently mediocre league. Or is that not part of the story?
At the end of a fun, boisterous 3‑2 victory for Marco Silva’s excellent, vigorous upper‑midtable team the talk will of course be about Liverpool, and not necessarily in a very flattering way.
Since the start of March Liverpool’s progress towards the league title has been expressed in a run of routine almost-there wins, a series of this-must-be-it moments, reminiscent of one of those lovelorn phone conversations where nobody wants to be the person to hang up. No, you say the title race is over. No you.
A trip to Fulham in the gentle sun had looked like another edge along that route, another of these mini-climaxes. But defeat will at least give fuel to the energetically pursued discussion around Liverpool’s season, the debate about worthiness and deserved success.
Never mind that Arne Slot’s team can afford to lose here and remain 11 points clear with seven to play. This game was also a no‑win situation, in a very modern, very online kind of way. Win at Craven Cottage and this would become yet another sign the league is a walkover, too easy, and that Liverpool are not great champions. Lose at Craven Cottage and this can now also become yet another sign the league is a walkover, too easy, and Liverpool are not great champions.
Football: never knowingly done or decided, no matter what the numbers might say. This has always been part of its appeal, and part of its madness too.
And this was in the end just a really good game.
Craven Cottage on a sunny Sunday is like English football in an American movie: cobble-close and homespun but also clean and quaint. A place where everyone is Hugh Grant, Liz Hurley or their quirky and warm-hearted sidekick.
Liverpool looked good early on. The opening goal was an easy, sunlit thing. Alexis Mac Allister bumping Sander Berge away, taking a touch and shooting hard and flat into the far corner.
At which point, when the day might have started to fall apart, Liverpool encountered instead undeterred opponents, plus half an hour of Alex Iwobi in unstoppable form.
The equaliser came from a nice drive down the right, helped by Curtis Jones not being a career full-back, unable to stop himself deflecting the ball to Andreas Pereira. The second goal involved Andy Robertson giving the ball to Iwobi not once but twice, then running across to deflect his shot into the goal. The third Fulham goal had Rodrigo Muniz taking a wonderful touch away from Virgil van Dijk before finishing really nicely.
What does it mean? We already know this because opinions are set. The main upshot will be an opportunity to pull apart Liverpool’s season a bit more, and indeed the Premier League itself, which is, we keep hearing, uniquely bad this time. At the weekend one pundit even suggested Slot doesn’t deserve to win manager of the year for that reason.
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Where does this stuff come from? Perhaps from boredom, the need to fill the rolling news hours. Perhaps from years of stratification masked by title races where two teams peak at the same time, thereby retaining a sellable product, despite the fact the same two teams winning every week doesn’t actually suggest a strong competition.
There are a lot of questions here. Why is three promoted teams with good players struggling to win a game taken as a sign of weakness, not strength? Perhaps Newcastle’s Carabao Cup glory should also be downgraded because the quality has never been so low. Dan Burn, throw your medals in the bin.
In reality the league is notably strong this season, the mid-tier better than it has been for years, as it should be with vast broadcast income. Fulham, Bournemouth, Aston Villa, Brighton, Brentford: these are excellent teams. Five English clubs are still in Europe.
There is a kind of boomerism nostalgia at work here, a sense of where-is-my-great-English-football-of-yesteryear. What we’re really talking about is an absence of major brands, no United, no Spurs, no City. Tell you what, music is rubbish now too. When was the last time the Eagles made an album? There was a band. Chelsea with John Terry. Proper football.
Slot is the most wronged party in all this. Here he still looked waspish and well-groomed, like the energetic mayor of a small French town about to cut the ribbon on the regional harvest festival. And his impact so far is hugely impressive. Winning the league in your first season by improving players. No major signings. Doing it all with the eternally startled Darwin Núñez as your back-up striker.
Liverpool will no doubt regroup from here. Perhaps they really will begin to lose games and limp over the line. If they do, the reason will be clear enough – strength, not weakness – as it was against an excellent Fulham team here.
Source: theguardian.com
