Is it ‘destiny’ that Liverpool will win the title? Is it balls.

Ask a simple question
‘Liverpool: Is fate taking Jurgen Klopp’s side to title after win over Spurs?’ – BBC Sport.

No.

You are my one and only…
Okay, we couldn’t leave it there. You knew we couldn’t. Such a crock of sh*te really does have to be challenged.

Firstly, the Premier League title race is not even in Liverpool’s hands; if Manchester City win on Wednesday night against Cardiff, they will be top of the league again. If ‘fate’ is really leading Liverpool to the title, it could have made this a whole lot easier by helping them beat their title rivals in January, for example. Surely that was the optimum time for fate to intervene?

Secondly, it is incredibly patronising to suggest there are greater forces at work than Liverpool simply being a very good football team, which sometimes means that the opposition is under the kind of pressure that leads to mistakes. Jurgen Klopp politely explained all that when asked whether ‘fate’ was lending a hand.

But perhaps BBC man Phil McNulty – not exactly renowned for his interesting ideas – has been stitched up by his headline writer, and actually he doesn’t mean ‘fate’ at all?

Nope. It’s worse.

‘Liverpool have demonstrated quality, resilience, commitment and endurance since August. It has put them top of the table with just six games to play.

‘Sometimes, however, other forces are required and as Liverpool fans filed out into the streets around Anfield in a state of elation and disbelief, this 2-1 win over Tottenham prompted another question – are Klopp’s men now being guided towards their first title in 29 years by destiny?’

Guided by sodding destiny? Behave.

You will believe
But Phil McNulty is not the only man getting carried away, with Kevin Garside of i News losing his mind after a few hours in Liverpool:

‘There is about Anfield these days a sense of scale not experienced since the days of Shankly and Paisley, an atmosphere, a feeling almost that destiny is somehow playing out. The players seem driven by it and the crowd utterly convinced of it. How else to explain the dramatic winning goal bundled across the line in the last minute of normal time to yield three points that might yet beckon nirvana.’

Well, we could explain it by talking about Hugo Lloris and his tendency to make major cock-ups at inopportune moments. Or we could explain how mistakes are often made in football matches – it’s one of the defining characteristics of the sport. Or we could talk about momentum, as Klopp did at length. That all makes sense. And what doesn’t make sense is this…

‘Spurs were in the ascendency [sic]. Liverpool, who scored early, had a hot 10 minutes when it looked like they might run away with it, were managing disappointment in the closing stages fortunate to be on level terms. And then it was though the ghosts of Keegan and Toshack, of Dalglish and Rush called forth the red shirts for one more rousing effort.’

Couple of questions:

1) Can living people have ‘ghosts’?

2) Is anybody still baffled by the idea that ‘neutrals’ would prefer Liverpool did not win the title when people are moved to write this kind of schmaltz even when Manchester City are still the favourites to win the title?

The Ruin In
It seems nobody told Sky Sports that Liverpool are being guided by destiny as they still seem to believe that there is some kind of title race going on. So very silly.

Can you guess what brand name has been given to this particular title race? Because of course every title race needs a brand name…

‘Is Liverpool’s name on the Premier League trophy? Jamie Carragher is starting to believe while Gary Neville is excited for the Run In.’

“For the first time this season I felt we were on The Run In – you could feel it at the end of the game” – Gary Neville.

“That’s not the end of it today – it’s just the beginning of The Run In” – Gary Neville.

We’d like to think Neville used air quotes.

Sou, Sou naive
“They can’t keep relying on people making mistakes – Lloris has gifted them today. That will to win will not win you the league – they have to get back to being a bit classier.”

Graeme Souness clearly did not get the memo about destiny.

Crooks of the matter
In the midst of the sh*tshow going on in parliament, we all need something comforting and familiar to get through these dark days.

Which is why we applaud Garth Crooks’ decision to include Crystal Palace left-back Patrick van Aanholt at right wing-back in his BBC team of the week.

He scored, so what could he do? Well, apart from picking an actual right-back based on something other than a list of goalscorers, that is.

Unfathomable
The Daily Mail‘s Ian Herbert went to Cardiff on Sunday and got himself all baffled.

‘It was an occasion calling out for Chelsea energy and vigour, to keep pace with fourth-placed Manchester United, and yet Maurizio Sarri decided, unfathomably, to leave Eden Hazard and N’Golo Kante on the bench.’

Luckily for Herbert and anybody else who finds any team selection ‘unfathomable’, despite having absolutely no knowledge of the physical condition of those players, managers are generally asked about these things and give an explanation. And here was Sarri himself before the game:

“At the moment Kante has played 50 matches this season and Hazard 47.

“They played with their national teams – Hazard for 187 minutes and Kante for 175 minutes and so I think that it’s time to rest [them].”

For the record, only one Premier League player – Toby Alderweireld, whose weekend went incredibly well, we can all agree – has played more minutes for club and country than Kante since July 1 last year. If his own manager believed he needed a rest, it’s probably because he had a little more knowledge of the situation than a journalist from the Daily Mail.

But the bafflement did not end there…

‘The Italian did not show the remotest inclination to start Hudson-Odoi in Hazard’s place.’

No, but what he did was explain that Hudson-Odoi might start against Brighton on Wednesday, saying:

“Callum is always in my mind and I have to decide the starting XI but today I want to put him in the [position] to change the starting XI in the match on Wednesday.

“I don’t know [if he could replace Hazard] but I had – for all the international break – Pedro and Willian in training and I thought that it was right to start with them.”

So it’s fair to say that Sarri had a reasonable explanation for every decision Herbert describes as ‘unfathomable’, making those decisions very much fathomable, even if one disagrees with them.

Still, Herbert is not convinced, writing:

‘This is a club whose owner is estranged, whose squad may be temporarily unimprovable…and whose manager looks deeply out of touch with the times.’

And this is also a club that has lost just once in seven games since their shoot-out defeat in a cup final at Wembley, and a club that sits just one point behind third-placed Spurs.

What’s unfathomable is the concerted campaign against their manager.

It’s slightly rippled with a flat under-side
‘Liverpool and Man Utd transfer boost in Callum Hudson-Odoi race’ – Daily Mirror website.

Yes, we live in an age when team news is really just a ‘transfer boost’. It makes you wonder why anybody bothers with the actual football.

Recommended reading of the day
Rory Smith with perspective on the title race

Tim Flowers on his coaching career

Martha Kelner on Neil Warnock