How Carragher and Ferdinand’s palpable sexual tension might have helped rescue Liverpool’s season
There was neither a golden sky, nor the sweet silver song of the lark, when Liverpool saw through only their second pair of consecutive wins since that sequence of spawny victories which kickstarted their season.
But Arne Slot has emerged from the intense pressures of a raging storm with his standing at Anfield strengthened.
The optimism can and should only be cautious after two steps in the right direction, but navigating both Inter and Brighton without conceding at a time when many felt the manager’s position was irretrievably weak is impressive.
‘Arne Slot has a week to save his job,’ Jamie Carragher wrote precisely 18 days ago. ‘It is hard to believe that sentence is being written, but Liverpool’s next three games are against West Ham United, Sunderland and Leeds United.
‘Anything fewer than seven points will make an already unacceptable situation untenable.’
The accumulation of just five ended up being overshadowed, and the outlook on those setbacks against Sunderland and Leeds in particular have been successfully reversed.
It is funny how a simple shift in narrative means that successive draws against newly-promoted opponents are eventually forgotten and subsumed into a five-game unbeaten run, but that is how the game works and results which once felt like the beginning of Slot’s end now actually may mark the start of a revival.
Ibrahima Konate has improved, clearing an admittedly unfathomably low bar. Curtis Jones continues to set the example. Florian Wirtz is quietly bubbling away. Hugo Ekitike has been outscored so far in all competitions in his first Premier League season by only Erling Haaland and Igor Thiago. Milos Kerkez even looks vaguely competent. And the Dominik Szoboszlai right-back itch was scratched.
Everything is coming up Arne.
Of course, the Mo Salah problem was handled impeccably too. Recalling the Egyptian was only “an easy decision” because Slot’s delicate but authoritative handling of a ticking time bomb made it so.
Salah versus Liverpool soon branched off into Salah versus Carragher, with the intermittent sexual tension between Carragher and Rio Ferdinand in the eternal clash for Gary Neville’s heart ultimately taking over as it often does.
If that frees up Liverpool to focus solely on events on the pitch, and offers enough of a sacrifice to the news cycle to let the Reds mind their own business for a time, it is no bad thing.
The reconciliation in time for Salah’s influential cameo against Brighton means the circus can be packed away before he goes to AFCON and Liverpool are able to proceed without any distractions.
An issue which threatened to derail a spiralling season and cause a bitter civil war was deescalated masterfully and might have tentatively reinvigorated Liverpool’s campaign, largely because Slot was the only adult in the room.
