A win (and a goal) like that leaves you hungry for more. With that in mind...
Date: Sunday 7 May 2017
Kick-off: 13:30
Venue:
Referee: Bobby Madley
Assistants: A. Nunn, P. Kirkup
Fourth Official: A Taylor
Historically, this isn't a fixture to set the pulse racing. It doesn’t exactly make you gush with nostalgia, that's for sure. Aside from a few uncharacteristically high-scoring contests in the 1990’s, largely thanks to Robbie Fowler (e.g.
4-2 in 1993,
7-1 in 1999), this has regularly been a dour event in the Premier League-era. Most recently, five meetings at Anfield across League and Cup since Southampton’s return to the top flight in 2012 have yielded an average of just 1.6 goals per game.
And yet, suddenly, this year's edition may as well be a cup final, one of three to come for Liverpool over the remainder of May. Like any cup final it represents a route to success, the only one remaining available to Liverpool in a season which, for the guts of five months, carried the promise of the miraculous and is now balanced on a knife edge between the real, meaningful progress represented by a top-four finish and the return of Champions League football to Anfield next September (along with everything that entails) on one side versus fifth or sixth and another autumn of Europa League Thursday nights on the other. For the next five days or so, the visit of Southampton means everything.
The away side, of course, would appear to have very little to play for. They’re 9th with a goal difference of –5, well out of contention for a European place and, barring Swansea improving their goal difference by over twenty goals in the last three weeks of the season, safe from relegation. The highest they can finish is 8th and their campaign largely peaked when they walked out of the Wembley tunnel for the League Cup final in late-February. So on the face of it, the Saints are unlikely to be arriving on Sunday desperate for a result.
That doesn't mean they can be expected to lie down. Consider the similarities with the last time Liverpool went into the final three games of a Premier League season with anything of note to play for. Three years ago it was a nineteenth League title rather than a top-four finish at stake, but the final act of Liverpool's campaign in 2013/14 similarly began with the visit to Anfield of a team with virtually nothing riding on the game (Chelsea). We all know what happened next. We also know that Jürgen Klopp's team is a different attacking prospect without Sadio Mané. The likelihood is that Southampton would be well-drilled and difficult to breach anyway, but throw in his absence and Phil Coutinho limping off against Watford and the task becomes more complicated.
Southampton's last visit to Anfield was in January, of course, when an injury-time goal from Shane Long secured a 1-0 win and denied their hosts a trip to Wembley. For the Saints, this was the latest entry in an impressive run of inflicting serious damage on Liverpool's ambitions over the years. I’m thinking about their 2-3 victory in February 1998 which helped to derail a title challenge, the 0-0 draw in May 2000 that went some way to denying the home side Champions League football for the following season, and the three points they took back to the south coast in September 2013 thanks to Dejan Lovren’s winner, three points which would have been very handy come the end of the season for Brendan Rodgers’ title-chasing team.
Leaving history aside, if you were to pinpoint a moment when Liverpool’s season began to slow down, the first-leg of the League Cup semi-final against Sunday’s opponent on 11 January at St. Mary’s might be a good place to start. The Reds went into that game having won 17 of 25 across all competitions, losing only two. In what was the third game of a mammoth nine in the month of January, the wheels now began to wobble in a way that they hadn’t so far (notwithstanding a second game inside 48 hours at Sunderland that would have been won but for a needless late handball and a team of reserves going scoreless against Plymouth in the FA Cup).
A previous League visit to St. Mary’s in November had yielded only a 0-0 draw but Liverpool had been the better side and had carved out enough chances to win, in particular an excellent Fraser Forster save from Mané, a badly-executed finish from Roberto Firmino when clean through on goal and a gut-wrenching headed miss from Nathanial Clyne. Southampton had ended that game with no shots on target and only 3 to Liverpool’s 15 overall, a fair indication of the away side’s dominance. For all the hype about Virgil van Dijk and the home defence, Liverpool had done more than enough to win and Claude Puel acknowledged afterwards that "it's very difficult to play against this team, because they love the ball, and they have a very good transition to recover the ball."
Less than two months later, and Southampton would have had their passage booked to Wembley by the end of the first-half but for a combination of goalkeeper and woodwork. Admittedly missing Joel Matip, Jordan Henderson, Mané and with Coutinho only fit enough for a half-hour from the bench, the performance was nonetheless as bad as anything we had seen under Klopp and the manager was brutally honest afterwards: “We needed Loris Karius to save our lives two or three times. The best thing for us is the result. We know that we can play better at Anfield – nothing is decided. We cannot be happy with the performance, Southampton cannot be happy with the result. It could and should have been 2-0, 3-0.”
In the event, Liverpool didn’t play all that much better in the second-leg, going down 0-1 again after huffing and puffing for 90 minutes and failing to blow Southampton’s house in. The tempo was finally raised in the second-half for arguably the first time in the tie, but the closest the home side got to a goal came from a mistake, Forster almost spilling Emre Can’s powerful shot over his own line. January got no better after that: the final tally for the month was a single win out of nine, exits from both domestic cups and 3 points from a possible 12 in the League. The ease with which Puel’s team blunted what until very recently remained the League’s most potent attack proved to be a harbinger for similarly wretched efforts at Hull and Leicester which ultimately applied the last few shovels of dirt to any notions of a nineteenth League title.
Klopp’s men have picked it up again since that defeat at Leicester. As disappointing as it was to drop five points from winning positions at home to Bournemouth and Crystal Palace in recent weeks, five points which would have virtually secured third place already while leaving Liverpool in with a shout of second, the Reds have won six out of their last nine, losing only once, and have quietly put together a run of good results during the most critical part of the season. Having briefly lost control of their own Champions League destiny after that loss to Palace, a couple of unexpected results over the weekend, along with Can's goal of the season at Watford, has handed the initiative back. Win their last three games and keep pace with Manchester City's goal difference, and third place is Liverpool's to lose.
With Southampton likely to provide a fair amount of resistance on Sunday, patience will be a key factor. Against Chelsea three years ago, on a day when a draw would have been a fine result, the key moment of the game arrived with Steven Gerrard Liverpool's deepest player, just inside his own half with no cover behind him. In retrospect it was madness, and a team with more attacking talent than this one (including, as it did, the since-departed Luis Suárez and Raheem Sterling, as well as a younger version of Daniel Sturridge) tried vainly to force openings for the rest of a game that ran away from them, leading to a result which effectively cost Liverpool the title and had a massive bearing on the loss of a 3-0 lead at Crystal Palace a few days later as Rodgers' side tried to rack up goals.
While Southampton might not be the equal of that Chelsea side, there is even less margin for error on Sunday - a draw probably won't do for third and would leave fourth at the mercy of Manchester United dropping points again
, and fourth, even if Manchester United drop points again, leaves Liverpool vulnerable to the possibility of them winning the Europa League. Victory is a must, and the last thing Liverpool need is to become wreckless. The nightmare scenario on Sunday is the home side resorting to aimless shots from outside the box and over-committing men forward as the game wears on, giving Southampton, good enough to score twice at Stamford Bridge recently, the opportunity to counter-attack should Liverpool become ragged in the search for a goal.
In the run-up to Sunday much will no doubt be made of Puel's record against Liverpool, now standing at five unbeaten across spells at Lyon and Southampton. It means nothing, certainly not as much as the return from injury of Lallana, excellent at times against Watford, Sturridge and, hopefully, Coutinho. Their presence, whether from the start or off the bench, should hopefully mean that Liverpool have more than enough to win on Sunday and keep themselves in pole position for one of the remaining Champions League places. Just don't expect it it to be easy - bitter experience, both recent and otherwise, tells us that it's won't be.
