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Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images
Liverpool’s form remains stumbling and inconsistent but it likely won’t matter in the 2024-25 Premier League title race with chasers Arsenal also dropping points.
Liverpool headed into the week 31 of the Premier League season 12 points up on Arsenal in the title race with eight games to play. They ended it 11 up with seven games to play after stumbling to defeat thanks to a poor performance against Fulham.
With Arsenal also stumbling, in their case with a draw against Everton that meant they only narrowed the gap by one, it likely won’t matter to Liverpool’s title push. Barring a complete collapse, the gap is simply too big with too few games left to play.
A few more performances like on Sunday against Fulham, though, and that narrative could yet change from a gap too big for Arsenal to reasonably overcome to a potential historic collapse by the Reds. The goal now, obviously, will be to avoid that.
“What is important is that there’s seven games left and West Ham next Sunday,” Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk said following his side’s 3-2 defeat. “We have to go all in at home next, as a team, as players with the fans and to get the three points.
“We will be training quite a lot and we are still in a very good position but games like this, especially in the first half, show that the job is not done and I’ve been saying it every week. That’s definitely the mentality in our group that the job is not done.”
The good news for Liverpool is that even if Arsenal get maximum points over their final seven games—something this current Arsenal side has never looked capable of doing this season—the highest points total they can reach this season is 83.
That means to mathematically lock up the title, Liverpool—currently on 73 points—need eleven from those final seven matches. At the low end, three wins, a pair of draws, and two losses would do that. And that’s only needed if Arsenal win out.
A potential stumble to the title may not have been what fans were hoping for during the first half of the season when Liverpool looked strong contenders across four competitions and regularly putting in dominant performances, but it’s still a title.
And setting the bar at better than 83 points to mathematically secure the title isn’t a standard that would win the Reds a title in almost any other recent season—and it likely won’t be enough in future seasons. But it’s good enough this year.
“It was not acceptable as a team,” Van Dijk added of Sunday’s defeat. “It was a poor day for all of us and I think there were moments we should have dealt with better. Those moments can happen, but they scored three and we were on the back foot.
“No one can ever be perfect but we were sloppy and we got punished quickly and, like I said, then it becomes a difficult battle to play. We still had the belief, still had opportunities but, based on the first half, you can’t argue with the result.”
