Last season defied conventional wisdom in so many ways. It’s one of the reasons why the ride this team took us on was so beautiful and why books have been written about a campaign that ultimately ended trophyless. Failure to understand that is ultimately a failure of imagination and, quite honestly, football is not the sport for anyone who lacks that. That ride really began with this fixture on 15 December 2013. Up until then it had been a hugely encouraging season (the victory at White Hart Lane sent Liverpool back to second and only two points off first place – they would ultimately sit top at Christmas). Nonetheless, the fifteen results that had preceded it were all fairly standard, even expected – Stoke City (1-0), Manchester United (1-0), Crystal Palace (3-1), West Bromwich Albion (4-1), Fulham (4-0), Norwich City (5-1, complete with the routine Suárez annihilation of the Canaries) and West Ham United (4-1) were all beaten at Anfield, with Aston Villa (1-0) and Sunderland (3-1) dispatched on the road; points had been dropped away to Swansea City (2-2), as they had been on each previous visit there since their promotion, and Newcastle United (2-2); the Derby at Goodison was even more eventful than usual but had still ended in a draw (3-3) just as it had the previous season; Liverpool had failed to win at the Emirates just as they had in 8 of the club’s previous 9 visits there (losing 0-2 this time); and even the two most eyebrow-raising results, the 0-1 defeat at home to Southampton and the 1-3 loss at Hull, were in keeping with similar lapses in seasons past (e.g. 0-2 at home to West Brom and 1-3 away to Southampton earlier that very year).
In other words, nothing outlandish had happened in the first three months of the season, nothing to predict what was to come in the new year. And while Liverpool were very much a team on the rise with plenty of potential in the ranks, conventional wisdom had it that they were only one member of a pack of as many as seven or eight teams vying for a top-four finish (11 points covered the top-nine after 16 games last season), and with a squad thinner on both quality and depth than many of their rivals. A top-four finish was possible, a title challenge out of the question. And there were many of us thinking the same way ahead of a trip to a ground where Liverpool had won 5 of 23 stretching back 20 years and lost on their previous 6 visits. Jon Flanagan was the left-back, Daniel Sturridge was injured, and the cavalry consisted of Luis Alberto, Iago Aspas and Victor Moses. And while the way in which things subsequently came together that day wouldn’t have necessarily come as an outright shock to anyone who had been watching the evolution of Brendan Rodgers’ team since the twin arrivals of Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho the previous January, who had followed the development of Jordan Henderson, who had seen signs in his goal against Norwich and performance against West Ham in the previous two games that Raheem Sterling was finding his feet, and who had allowed themselves to recognise Luis Suárez as one of the preeminent players on the planet, the nature of the scoreline (5-0) and the fixture in which it happened did mark it out as a particularly unusual result.
Milestones by their very nature can only be defined as such after the fact following a reasonable elapse of time; well from a perspective 8 and a half months removed, that day was a milestone. It was the day that Sterling announced himself at the expense of poor Kyle Naughton and began his rapid transformation into the tormenter of Premier League (soon Champions League) and international defences that he is today, the day Flanagan became the Red Cafu, the day Henderson took charge and scored (with a first-time volley, no less) in the same end where once he had missed an open goal, then played a sumptuous backheel in the lead-up to the third, the day Liverpool announced that logic, reason and, most of all, conventional wisdom would no longer be applying that season. And, for the most part, none of it did – Arsenal were beaten 5-1 with Flanagan and Aly Cissokho in the full-back positions, Stoke and Cardiff were spotted three goals apiece and beaten on an aggregate score of 11-6, Liverpool kept only 5 clean-sheets out of 19 in the new year and still came within a whisker of winning the League Championship, and all of that with Aspas and Moses still the primary attacking alternatives on the bench. Yesterday, then, seemed an apt time not only to examine whether the ride which began in this fixture last season has survived the trauma of the last five games (in particular the defeat to Chelsea, the three-goal lead coughed-up against Palace, the sloppy 2-1 win over Southampton on the opening day this season and the 1-3 defeat against Manchester City last Monday night) but also to assess just how far Liverpool have come since that afternoon in north London eight and a half months ago.
And there’s really no better place to start than the sight of Coutinho sitting on the bench for 90 minutes where once that seat would have been occupied by Aspas or Moses, Assaidi or even Brad Smith. Or we could start with Emre Can, a substitute himself, controlling a lofted clearance and deftly getting the ball out of his feet while simultaneously holding off all 6’3” of Moussa Dembele, then spinning and sprinting clear up the centre of the pitch as the Spurs man vainly gave chase. That particular attack ended with the phenomenal Sterling bamboozling the entire Tottenham defence (having graduated, seemingly, from picking on the weak link last season to taking them all on this time) before finishing weakly, but while Sterling’s run will rightly get most of the attention, Can’s was arguably every bit as impressive. This was a substitute; Dembele, a £15m player, bounced off him. He controlled, bullied, sprinted, passed, and he made it look like nothing. There was a time not too long ago where Liverpool supporters were being treated every week to a different level of mobility and athleticism by the club’s midfielders, namely that exhibited by the likes of Charlie Adam, Jay Spearing, Joe Cole and Christian Poulsen. Yesterday, by contrast, the fantastic Henderson broke into the box to set up the first for the tip of the midfield diamond (Sterling) to slot home, Allen broke into the box to set up the second when Dier pulled him back, Can ran most of the pitch to set up a would-be fourth for Sterling again, Lazar Markovic has only made a couple of cameo appearances so far, and Adam Lallana still hasn’t played a competitive minute. For those still wondering how Liverpool are going to go about mitigating the departure of Suárez, look no further.
Speaking of context and contrast…not too long ago this club coughed up a couple of promising youth players (one of whom has since represented his country) and £5m for Paul Konchesky. I don’t mean to harp on about a lad who gave of his best every time he played for Liverpool (it’s not just him anyway – more recently than Konchesky, Brendan Rodgers’ first visit to White Hart Lane as Liverpool boss saw him employ a left-side tandem of Downing/Enrique). I hope he does well back in the top division with Leicester (obviously with the exception of any fixtures against Liverpool), but what Alberto Moreno did yesterday was almost a different sport from what Konchesky could ever offer. It makes you wonder what the man who signed him in the dark days of 2010 made of it from his seat in the stand yesterday, particularly given that it was Andros Townsend (one of the first names on Hodgson’s teamsheets for the upcoming Euro 2016 qualifying campaign, I bet) who was robbed of possession and then outpaced over three-quarters of the White Hart Lane pitch. The most impressive thing? Even more than the sublime finish, it was that Moreno was able to effortlessly control the ball travelling at that pace. It’s been the best part of a decade since Liverpool had a goal threat at full-back (unless you count Johnson as a goal threat, which I don’t), but Moreno has the potential to be so much more than that, both individually and in tandem with the rest of the team. One of the fringe benefits of Suárez was that, by last season, defenders were terrified by his mere presence in their vicinity. The only thing more likely than genius to terrify a defender is pace. It was noticeable against City too that Moreno’s closing speed is frightening (Dzeko was going through on goal in the second half at 2-0, I think, and Moreno appeared out of nowhere and won the ball cleanly). With the raw speed of Moreno, Markovic, Sterling and Sturridge around, one miscontrolled pass or bad touch can spell curtains, and they’ll know it too. Again, for those still wondering how Liverpool are going to go about mitigating the departure of Suárez, look no further.
Yesterday’s performance was, in many ways, even better than last season’s in this fixture. Then, Andre Villas Boas’ team, down to ten men after Paulinho’s red card, persisted with a suicidal high line which was arguably unwise anyway given the lack of pace (Dawson) and inexperience (Capoue) at the heart of their defence but certainly should have been discarded once the scoreline went to 3-0. It wasn’t and, in the last 15 minutes, a bad defeat subsequently became a humiliation as Coutinho and Luis Alberto picked holes at will in the home defence for Suárez and Sterling to apply the finishing touches. Yesterday, by contrast, Liverpool were content to simply see the game out and, what’s more, they were comfortable doing so. Once it went to 2-0, you got the sense that they were humming along in second gear the rest of the way (Moreno briefly applying the afterburners for the third notwithstanding). Even then, it could have easily been four (Sterling’s effort) or five (Lovren had a header from a corner, Sturridge curled one wide off his right), and that’s not even including three good chances for Balotelli in the first-half (two headers and the open-goal miss) and two decent shots by Sturridge (one just wide, the other saved by Lloris at full-stretch). Spurs, for their part, much like City on Monday night, profited almost exclusively from indecision and confusion in a defensive unit with three new members (and, including Mignolet, four different nationalities). Time will surely smooth-out those rough edges if the players are good enough (and I believe they are), yet even then Liverpool’s ‘keeper had but one save to make over the 90 minutes. Against a probable top-four contender, away from home and bedding-in a new defence, that’s pretty impressive.
There’s no doubt in my mind. Neil Atkinson said it yesterday: “we’re back on the adventure...these are definitively now two connected seasons”. This is unlikely to prove a prominent milestone like the last visit to White Hart Lane did, more a reassurance, a confirmation. In this case the milestone is an invisible, almost imperceptible one, because when a 3-0 win on a ground that has been historically tough against an expensively-assembled team with top-four ambitions and an excellent manager becomes just another three points, you know something has changed.
