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Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images
Liverpool are in the midst of one of the most challenging periods in their season. If the stakes feel high, it’s because they are.
Liverpool’s aspirations this season are virtually sky high, though the past two weeks or so have forced fans to readjust what’s possible. Knocked out of the FA Cup and held to two draws out of the previous three league matches, Liverpool have ensured that hope springs eternal for the fans in the red half of North London. Not managing to take max points against Everton and then yesterday against Aston Villa have, understandably, taken a bit of the wind out of our sails and, maybe ratcheted up the anxiety.
Things only stand to get a bit tougher with matchups against a resurgent Manchester City and their fellow oil-funded cousin in Newcastle looming over the next seven days. Liverpool are also seem to be nursing a tender squad at the moment, with Joe Gomez out for what looks like the rest of the season, Conor Bradley coming off after having been subbed on, and Trent Alexander-Arnold only just recently coming back from injury himself. In midfield, Ryan Gravenberch’s incandescent form has dipped a touch as it looks like the minutes he’s accumulated given that he’s the most irreplaceable member of that unit have finally caught up to him.
This is, then, what we call the business end of the season: not quite the homestretch, but the one where it feels like the stakes feel incredibly high. If Liverpool don’t manage to win at least one of the matches against City or Newcastle, it’ll mark this period as one where we potentially opened the door for a nervy finish. If we can scrape together 4 points between the two matches, I think it’ll feel a lot like how we entered this period: still firmly in the driver’s seat and with Arsenal, again, needing to be absolutely perfect.
A potential concern is that it seems as though clubs have made the adjustments to head coach Arne Slot’s style, managing to find ways to blunt the attack and, perhaps more importantly, find points of vulnerability in what was the stingiest defense in the first half of the season. The underlying numbers for Liverpool in terms of xGa still look good: according to Understat, Liverpool are underperforming based on the chances they’re allowing. And the Villa game in particular seems to be making up a huge chunk of that underperformance.
But the question about Slot as a coach has always been how he might respond to tough moments like this. And, perhaps more importantly, when the advantage of being a bit of an unknown to the Premier League will have worn out.
And so we’re here, an improbable season feeling a bit in the balance. Slot’s response, more than anything, will reveal a lot and I’m ready to see what we learn. Time to clock in, it’s business time.
