Date: Saturday 12 August 2017
Kick-off: 12:30 [Sky Sports]
Venue:
Referee: Anthony Taylor
Assistants: G Beswick, P Kirkup
Fourth official: P TierneySummer 2017 transfers in:
Liverpool:
Mohamed Salah [£34.3m], Andrew Robertson [£8m], Dominic Solanke [Tribunal]
Watford:
Tom Cleverley [£8m], Will Hughes [£8m], Nathaniel Chalobah [£5m], Daniel Bachmann [Free], Harvey Bradbury [Free], Kiko Femenía [Free], Sam Howes [Free]
Summer 2017 transfers out:
Liverpool:
Lucas Leiva [£5m], Kevin Stewart [£4m], Andre Wisdom [£2m], Alex Manninger [Retired], Connor Randall [Loan]
Watford:
Mario Suárez [Undisclosed], Steven Berghuis [Undisclosed], Ola Adeyemo [Released], Charlie Bannister [Released], Rene Gilmartin [Released], Ogo Obi [Released], Rhyle Ovenden [Released], Mathias Ranégie [Released]
[Listed transfers are those completed at the time of writing, fees not inclusive of potential add-ons]
Pre-season results:
Liverpool:
Tranmere Rovers [W 4-0]; Wigan Athletic [D 1-1]; Crystal Palace [W 2-0]; Leicester City [W 2-1]; Hertha Berlin [W 3-0]; Bayern Munich [W 3-0]; Atletico Madrid [D 1-1]; Athletic Bilbao [W 3-1].
Watford:
AFC Wimbledon [L 2-3]; Viktoria Plzeň [W 1-0]; SD Eibar [W 1-0]; Rangers [L 1-2]; Aston Villa [D 0-0]; Real Sociedad [D 0-0].
Last 6 Premier League:
Liverpool:
WLWDWW
WBA (a) [W 1-0]; Crystal Palace (h) [L 1-2]; Watford (a) [W 1-0]; Southampton (h) [D 0-0]; West Ham United (a) [W 4-0]; Middlesbrough (h) [W 3-0].
Watford:
LLLLLL
Hull City (a) [L 0-2]; Liverpool (h) [L 0-1]; Leicester City (a) [L 0-3]; Everton (a) [L 0-1]; Chelsea (a) [L 3-4]; Manchester City (h) [L 0-5].
Football’s lie(s)A former Liverpool boss once suggested that “
football is a lie”. He was, of course, absolutely correct, and he would know more about it than most – some, encouraged in their “logic” by any number of vested interests, would still swear blind that Liverpool’s best manager in the quarter-century prior to Jürgen Klopp’s arrival virtually
destroyed the club, while the appointment of his inept successor was largely inspired by the propaganda of that individual’s media chums (at least he was a British manager at a top club, though, a tragic breed these days I’m told).
The game, and the industry which has grown up around it, lies to us all the time. From those biased “expert” opinions bemoaning the meagre managerial opportunities afforded British managers (and even
wannabe managers), to the diving and feigning of injury now commonplace on the pitch, to the record 11,231 (or so) players linked to Liverpool this summer by various media outlets (many of them dubious in stature but, sadly, some of whom were once supposedly responsible for serious journalism as opposed to scattergun speculation), to “ITK’s” of all shapes and sizes, football
is a lie, a world of never-ending rumour and counter-rumour, news and comment, from which you can never fully detach because that’s increasingly all there is.
In this age of social media, and accepting that its influence has certainly been positive in giving a voice to some extremely knowledgeable and talented people who would almost certainly not otherwise have had it, it’s easier than ever for utter rubbish, and even lies, to become accepted wisdom. A particularly insidious example, one that’s especially relevant as we look ahead to the new season, is this idea which seems to suggest that supporters should keep their mouths shut and their excitement caged until something good actually
happens, lest they be subject to ridicule or, even worse, lose “the banter” to fans of other clubs.
Consider the welcome which awaited the Liverpool team bus prior to the 2-1 win over Sunderland in the closing weeks of the 2013/14 season, complete with the “now you’re gonna believe us, we’re gonna win the league” chants (which we’ll hopefully be hearing again next spring). Something which should be natural behaviour on the part of
all football supporters, joyful, unabashed excitement which had members of the team proudly posting video to their social media accounts and which should have only been greeted positively was instead met with concern by many. “But what if Liverpool
don’t win the League?” they asked. Meanwhile, the scene was predictably treated with derision by (the naturally biased) supporters of other clubs, and a combination of this and the fact that Liverpool didn’t end the season in question clutching silverware seems to have left some among us petrified of ever dreaming again, of ever allowing themselves to countenance the very
notion that fulfilment might be attained.
Football now tells you to support in a certain way, namely don’t open yourself to ridicule, don’t count your chickens before they hatch and, especially if you’re a Liverpool supporter, for God’s sake don’t ever give the impression that you think
this is our year. It tells you to somehow
care that several thousand Chelsea/Manchester City/Manchester United/insert-club-name-here supporters continue singing songs about Steven Gerrard slipping in May 2014 and that they’re somehow
right to be doing this, that the act of chanting about a long-since retired player, very often when you’re not even playing against his former team, somehow isn’t sad or pathetic behaviour at all and is, instead, actually
preferable to a fanbase growing excited at the prospect of winning a League title.
As bullshit goes, it’s particularly pungent. This attitude appears to confirm that football is now seen by many as more of a lifestyle choice than an escape from the daily grind, the latter still possible but only if you’re mindful of the banter you’ll face if you fail. Well I’m 37 years of age so, frankly,
fuck banter, or at least this industrial-strength 21st century version of it. Fuck “Slippy G” and fuck the “this is our year” cliché. “Doing” is banter’s kryptonite. It causes its jaw to drop like the collective chin of those few thousand Watford fans behind the goal at Vicarage Road last May as they watched Emre Can’s scissors kick wing its way towards the back of the net; it robs it of its voice like Luis Suárez once did to Carrow Road as he recovered from missing a sitter to score thirty seconds later; it causes it to combust like so many Evertonians on Derby day.
“Doing” is the key and, luckily, regardless of who the club has or hasn’t signed this summer, Liverpool suddenly appear to have a lot of doers in their ranks. So I’ll damned if the very real prospect of a 28th year falling short, or a transfer window that has so far delivered far less than it might, or perhaps should, have, is going to temper my excitement at watching these lads strut their stuff this season one little bit. And it all starts at Vicarage Road, scene of Liverpool’s goal of the season for 2016/17 which I now submit for your approval:
HistoryDue to Watford’s circumstances over the past three decades (i.e. having been relegated from the top division in 1988 after a five-year stay which had followed a meteoric rise through the divisions under Graham Taylor and included a League runners-up spot in 1983 and FA Cup final appearance in 1984, they have only managed to return for 4 out of the intervening 29 seasons), games between these two clubs have been few and far between down through the years (10 in almost 30 years, 2 of which were the League Cup semi-final in 2005).
In all honesty, the signing of John Barnes is probably what springs most readily to mind for the majority of Liverpool supporters when they think of Watford, and if you’re ever feeling nostalgic (and/or drunk) and check out a few of the Barnes compilations on Youtube, you’ll quickly see that he had quite a few magic moments in yellow as well as red. His arrival at Anfield for £900,000 in the summer of 1987 was not only a catalyst for what would become (and remains) arguably the greatest Liverpool team and season that many of us have ever witnessed, it led directly to Watford’s demise – not only was his absence (along with that of Taylor, himself recently departed for Aston Villa) keenly felt at Vicarage Road that season, Barnes ended up scoring 2 of the 8 goals that Liverpool stuck past them on their way to relegation.
More recently, the nature and outcome of Liverpool’s last two visits to Vicarage Road since Watford’s return to the top flight in 2015 have differed wildly. In December of that year, five days before Christmas, stand-in ‘keeper Adam Bogdan got into the festive spirit early by gift-wrapping a goal for Nathan Ake after just 3 minutes, dropping a fairly standard corner delivery which the on-loan Chelsea defender then stabbed home as the Hungarian tried vainly to retrieve his error. 12 minutes later, Martin Škrtel’s lamentable attempts to show Odion Ighalo away from goal only succeeded in ushering the Watford striker through with everything bar an accompanying red carpet. 2-0 down after 15 of the most abject minutes we’ve seen under Klopp and defensively a rabble, Liverpool ultimately lost 3-0. After an initial bounce under the new manager that included emphatic wins at Stamford Bridge and the Etihad, the sheer amount of work ahead had become suddenly, and terrifyingly, clear.
Flash forward to 1 May 2017 and Liverpool’s next trip south. Only one member of the back-four and goalkeeper who had started the previous edition of this fixture (Nathanial Clyne) remained. Gone entirely were Bogdan, Škrtel and Mamadou Sakho, with Alberto Moreno now banished to the bench. In a game with a whole lot riding on it, or at least the sum total of the prizes left available to the club at that stage of the season (i.e. Champions League qualification), the performance and result were very different.
This time Watford, aside from injury-time and the mandatory 5 minutes of heart-in-mouth defending that seems to accompany even the most comfortable Liverpool performances, were utterly nullified. Not that this was necessarily an achievement in and of itself: Watford finished 17th, parted ways with their manager and lost their final game of the season 0-5 at home to Manchester City. They were a very different prospect last May than they were in the days when the Quique Sanchez Flores honeymoon was ongoing (that 3-0 win in December 2015 put them a point outside the Champions League places with 17 played) and the Ighalo/Troy Deeney partnership couldn’t stop scoring. And yet the performance and result that night were very much part of a wider context.
MentalityKlopp’s team showed some seriously impressive resolve last season from March onwards: 9 wins out of 14 to close the season, 30 points out of a possible 42 with only 2 defeats, a tally which would equate to 81 points when extrapolated over a full season, or the same total that Leicester City achieved in 2015/16. When the pressure came on, and it did, when key players were injured, and they were, when the offensive identity began to slowly erode in Sadio Mané’s absence and a Plan B was required, this team more or less delivered under the circumstances. The Watford game personified a newfound ability (“newfound” against bottom-half sides, at least) to win ugly and, Can’s glorious moment aside, it was quite ugly.
What that might mean for the season ahead is anyone’s guess, but should Liverpool remain in the hunt for the League title around February or March and the usual media suspects start yapping about their lack of experience under pressure, games like that Monday night at Vicarage Road should spring readily to mind. Liverpool were sub-par for much of that aforementioned 14-game run to end the season, certainly once Mané went down in the Merseyside derby, but found ways to win all the same. 5 clean-sheets in the last 6 games certainly helped. It speaks to a strong mentality and stubborn bloody-mindedness lurking within a squad of players more readily associated with mercurial irresistibility. These are qualities that money alone (and the appetite and aptitude to spend it, of course) can’t buy, and they have the potential to be the key ingredients in whatever Liverpool go on to achieve this season.
That mental resolve will certainly be tested over the opening couple of weeks. A pre-international break trio of League fixtures away to Watford and at home to Crystal Palace and Arsenal will, like it or not, be expected to yield maximum points for a team with serious title intentions. Sandwiched in between are the two pivotal, potentially season-defining (already) legs against Hoffenheim and the opportunity to follow through on last season’s progress by actually making it into the Champions League and completing the process of putting the club firmly back on the map for the very best and most ambitious players (who haven’t yet been signed by Barcelona or Real Madrid). These are five games that really need to be won (albeit an aggregate victory will do against Hoffenheim), so the pressure will be on right from the start and is unlikely to let up from there.
Saturday’s OpponentsAs for Watford, their key new arrival this season is manager Marco Silva, fresh from his impressive but ultimately doomed salvage attempt at Hull which included a 2-0 win over Klopp’s men at the start of February. The most obvious change we’ll see next Saturday will undoubtedly be the formation, with Silva typically preferring a 4-2-3-1 approach to the three centre-backs favoured by his predecessor, Walter Mazzarri. Whether a two-man centre-back partnership pieced together from personnel which includes Miguel Britos, Younès Kaboul, Sebastian Prödl and Adrian Mariappa will be able to hold their own against Liverpool’s forward line remains to be seen, but from what we saw of him at Hull it can be assumed that Silva’s Watford will be well-organised at the very least, with individual weaknesses disguised as much as possible.
It’s already looking like he’ll be asked to do a similar job at Vicarage Road given his new team’s trajectory towards the end of last season (losing 10 of their last 14 games, and all of their last 6 by an aggregate score of 16-3). Watford look to be severely lacking in quality. Ighalo, whose goal against Liverpool during that 3-0 victory in December 2015 contributed towards him winning the Premier League Player of the Month award, is now plying his trade in China for Changchun Yatai F.C. Club captain and talismanic centre-forward Deeney has yet to play during pre-season as he recovers from groin surgery, with Silva having confirmed that he is unlikely to be fit for the season opener (former Liverpool youngster Jerome Sinclair has figured in pre-season and may make an appearance against his former employers). And their major new signings this summer, Will Hughes from Derby and Nathaniel Chalobah from Chelsea, are both desperately short on Premier League experience.
Tom Cleverley, meanwhile, whose permanent move from Everton was announced as far back as March and completed as soon as the window opened, is hardly going to give anyone around Vicarage Road a much-needed shot in the arm given that he was on duty for the majority of those aforementioned lacklustre results. Their reported interest in going back to Goodison for Aaron Lennon on loan doesn’t exactly reek of ambition either, although better news may be just around the corner with the Fluminense president recently confirming that a deal in the region of £11m has been agreed for 20 year-old Brazilian u-20 international forward Richarlison. Whether that deal, including work permit, is completed in time for him to face Liverpool is another matter.
In other words, Watford’s personnel next Saturday will be more or less the same as the team which Liverpool walloped 6-1 last November, an afternoon when Jürgen’s Reds were at their imperious best. At a ground where last season’s top-five all won last time around, it makes three points an absolute must for the visitors.
The Season AheadFrom there, who honestly knows? I certainly don’t want this preview to devolve into yet another thread debating the club’s transfer business, but a look ahead to the next ten months or so makes it unavoidable I’m afraid.
Had the signatures of Virgil van Dijk (still a possibility, according to one half of the transfer rumour mill at least) and Naby Keita been added to those of Mohamed Salah, Andrew Robertson and Dominic Solanke this summer, you would have probably been inclined to set the ceiling for this team a bit higher. With that said, both the squad and the first-XI (should Liverpool retain everyone over the coming weeks, certainly not a given) has admittedly improved. Salah’s speed alone should immediately galvanise an attack which became static and one-dimensional in the absence of Mané, and his presence provides balance and a sizeable additional threat for opposition defences. These two, even accepting all the usual caveats about pre-season, have looked incredible so far.
It also means that Phil Coutinho (should he stay) will presumably drop deeper and relegate quality like Adam Lallana (when he returns from his latest injury) or Gini Wijnaldum to the bench, improving both the squad’s depth and the manager’s ability to change games with substitutions. If Robertson performs well enough to nail down the left-back spot, then the team will no longer have a midfielder manning the left-hand side of its defence. And with the doubts over his future now seemingly put to bed, the perennial, mouth-watering prospect of being able to call on a fit Daniel Sturridge is rearing its head again, although even his sublime finish against Bayern recently wasn’t without yet another injury scare which the player subsequently put down to fatigue.
I certainly wouldn’t put anything past Klopp and his team: the manager is one of the very best in the game and, as 2004/05 showed us, virtually anything is possible when you’ve got the right man in charge and anywhere near enough talent at his disposal. The nerve that he and his players showed to close out last season under pressure from Arsenal and Manchester United is undoubtedly a hugely positive sign of where this team is at, and his insistence recently that “we will be playing for the championship” this year will be music to the ears of any Liverpool supporter.
Realistically, however, given the tight margins involved in achieving a top-4 finish last season and in light of the club’s transfer business in the summer as it currently stands, particularly in comparison to rivals who have strengthened, some considerably so, a repeat of last May’s top-4 finish, together with involvement in the Champions League past Christmas and perhaps claiming one of the domestic cups, is probably the most that can be realistically expected from this vantage point. Areas of need do still remain to be addressed, and that’s assuming the club manages to keep hold of Coutinho for another year and convinces Can to sign that new contract, with both outcomes still very much in the balance at the time of writing.
Frankly, and speaking only for myself, if you’re not currently stinging with disappointment at the club’s inability (once again) both to get its key targets signed (Keita’s name now seemingly etched alongside those of Mkhitaryan, Costa, Sanchez, Willian, Salah himself, and so on, with van Dijk’s possibly following) or to identify secondary targets, then I envy you. And on that latter point, if you’re not thoroughly mystified as to where the alternatives are now that those deals have apparently either fallen through or remain in the balance, the rumoured £130m or so earmarked for those players surely not so much burning a hole in the club’s pocket as it is searing its way through flesh and bone, then I want to know your secret.
At best, and I genuinely hope this is the case, the likes of me are simply jumping the gun and tormenting ourselves over nothing, little more than victims of transfer fever. It’s only early-August, after all, and there’s the best part of a month left before the window (in Sky-speak) slams shut. Plenty of time to land van Dijk (Liverpool’s last position on him, incidentally, being that “we…can confirm we have ended any interest in the player” and even the gaping arsehole of the transfer-gossip world (Twitter) can’t shit out a scenario where the club has made any actual
bid for him at the time of writing, or
any time in fact) or some hitherto unnamed target not already included in the voluminous list of players in whom the club has been supposedly interested this summer.
The reality for now, however, is that the squad Liverpool begin the season with next week is, in effect, largely the same one which struggled at times last season to deal with key absences, undoubtedly improved in attack by Salah but otherwise reinforced only with a relatively inexperienced left-back who
might work out (Robertson) and a youngster who cannot realistically be expected to contribute much in comparison to Roberto Firmino, Sturridge or Divock Origi upfront, and whose minutes are most likely to come alongside Danny Ings in the League and FA Cups (Solanke).
I have no doubt that Klopp’s Liverpool will once again decimate many teams this season, and there’s every chance that its incredible record against the other members of the top-7 (1 defeat out of 23) will continue. The counterpoint is that at the beginning of a potentially momentous season, we’re left once again hoping that injuries are kind to us, that Joel Matip and Dejan Lovren start 30+ games together and Ragnar Klavan isn’t pressed into action too often, that Sturridge can stay fit, and that we’re not without more than one of Mané, Coutinho and Lallana (already injured) for extended periods as we were last season (Salah can be added to this list). And all of this while potentially (and ideally) having to navigate an additional 8 Champions League games in the opening 4 months of the season. The continued presence of a handful of key players, therefore, looks set to once again be the difference between the title charge we saw up to the end of 2016 and the wretched run of results which followed in the new year.
The horizon brightens considerably if van Dijk signs, of course, but that situation remains as opaque as it’s been for the past 2 months. I’m all for stubborn ambition and not settling for second-best, genuinely: the last thing anyone wants is for the club to force a move for someone as the deadline approaches (like it once did for Mario Balotelli). Nonetheless, I admit I’m puzzled as to how this could be allowed to happen (i.e. starting the new season with only one certain addition to the first-XI), how that risk could be deemed worthy of being taken, by the owners, by the manager, by
anyone at the club, this summer of all summers given the challenges and opportunities ahead. It’s a mystery. Keita, according to myriad whispering voices, will be available for £48m next summer regardless of Leipzig’s unwillingness to sell, which is great if true; but would he still be interested in pitching up at Anfield if the club is participating in the Europa League by then? That’s the risk.
Football’s truthIn any case, this isn’t really the place to speculate about such things. As Rafa Benítez would no doubt tell you, football is a lie, or to quote another great man, “believe half of what you see, son and none of what you hear”. Whether the club was simply thwarted by circumstances in failing to sign many of its primary targets (and identify secondary ones of comparable quality) or this summer instead represents a continuation of the same pattern as before, whether further signings are likely to be made this month or not, is all very hard to discern from the outside.
So let’s end this preview on a more optimistic note. The only unblemished truth, as it’s always been and probably always will, is that the Reds are back in action on the 12th of August (and they may be very,
very good indeed). They will be supported to the death from one end of Vicarage Road and, win, lose or draw, will continue to be poetry in motion, the best football team in the land. All of which is as it should be.
Probable team vs. WatfordLiverpool [4-3-3]: Mignolet; Clyne, Matip, Lovren, Milner; Henderson, Coutinho, Wijnaldum; Mané, Firmino, Salah.
