Liverpool ‘greatest’, Arne Slot bestest ever but Arsenal prepare for ‘bigger things’

Editor F365
Cody Gakpo celebrates with fans and teammates after scoring Liverpool's third goal against Tottenham
Liverpool confirmed their 20th league title with their result against Tottenham

There’s an awful lot of nonsense after Liverpool won the title about guards of honour and medals, and also how Arsenal could usurp them…

 

Changing of the guard
You might have heard; Liverpool have won the Premier League. Which means narratives out of the wazoo, largely on subjects of no real consequence.

So that means we go again with the ‘guard of honour’ nonsense…

‘Will Arsenal give Premier League champions Liverpool guard of honour as rule explained’ – football.london

Mediawatch is slightly perturbed by the lack of question mark but perhaps that’s inevitable when there is no actual answer.

The best we can all do is ‘probably’. Oh and there literally is no ‘rule’. You’re welcome.

‘Will Liverpool receive a guard of honour – and is it compulsory for Arsenal and Chelsea?’ – The Independent. Tut tut.

At least there’s a question mark. And once again ‘probably’ and ‘no’.

 

Full medal jacket
Now attention can turn towards who will receive a Premier League winner’s medal. Because we are all so fascinated by this one that Reach published four stories with an hour all along the same lines as this…

‘The 21 Liverpool players who will earn Premier League title medal – and those set to miss out’

The Mirror are awfully confident about something of which they have absolutely zero knowledge.

As they are forced to admit quite early in the piece: ‘Soon it will be time for Liverpool to decide who will be adorned with a Premier League winners medal. They can be distributed among the management team, players and club officials – however the victorious team sees fit.’

The only rule is that players with at least five Premier League appearances get a medal, so of course the Mirror have counted 21. Which allows them to adorn the story with an image of poor Federico Chiesa, who is ‘set to miss out’. If only there were a way to get him past his current four appearances in the next four games…

 

This means more
We can see how you would get carried away at Anfield but Jason Burt of the Daily Telegraph claiming this…

‘Arne Slot winning title is best achievement of any manager in first Premier League season’

…is ludicrous recency bias.

Arne Slot took over the third best team in the Premier League that had just logged 82 points; Antonio Conte took over the 10th best team in the Premier League that had just limped to 50 points.

By any measure other than ‘this means more, YNWA, such knowledgeable fans, proper football club’, Conte’s was the better achievement when he won the Premier League title with actual Victor Moses at wing-back.

 

The greatest love of all…
A bit cheeky of the Daily Telegraph elsewhere with this headline on their Jamie Carragher column:

‘Move over Sir Alex: There’s no denying Liverpool are England’s greatest club’

Except he never says ‘greatest’, does he? What he does say is that Liverpool are now ‘England’s most successful club’. Absolutely not the same thing.

 

On their Arse
Back to football.london as they scramble about for relevancy after the title was won a couple of hundred miles north.

‘What Arsenal did as Liverpool won the Premier League title speaks volumes for Mikel Arteta’

The implication is very clear; we are going to find out exactly what Arsenal were doing as Liverpool won the title, which is going to ‘convey a great deal without using words’ for Mikel Arteta.

What we actually get is a reminder that Arsenal are in the semi-finals of the Champions League, so there.

After various explanations and excuses for a lack of a title challenge, we are told:

‘So yes, Liverpool may well have ended up with a free run at the title in the end but Arsenal were watching on from home this weekend preparing for the semi-finals of the Champions League, and that is definitely a good enough makeweight in the final three or so weeks of the season.

‘With a squad missing the first-choice right-back, centre-back, and striker, Arsenal have already achieved great things and are still trending in the right direction even if they haven’t been able to push the Premier League winners as closely as they did in 2022/23 or 2023/24. They have bigger things to worry about now.’

So ‘What Arsenal did as Liverpool won the Premier League title’ turns out to be ‘f*** knows but they have a really big game on Tuesday, actually’.

‘PSG visit north London on Tuesday and Arsenal will fancy themselves. A quirk of the scheduling has meant that on the weekend Liverpool get their moment, Arsenal are gearing up for perhaps an even more important one themselves.’

Couple of things:

a) That’s not a ‘quirk of the scheduling’; it is customary for league titles to be won towards the end of the season.

b) A Champions League semi-final is not ‘even more important’ than winning the Premier League. Behave.

 

Scouse maths
Miguel Delaney of the Independent is always very, very pleased with himself, but he is particularly smug about this statistic…

…which forms the basis of his piece about how Liverpool have used ‘football intelligence and advanced preparation’ to keep most of their key players fit for the majority of the campaign. It’s a wonder nobody else has thought of it.

‘The two simple statistics that prove Liverpool’s title win is simply not about ‘luck’’ is the headline. We are yet to find the other ‘simple statistic’ because the one thing that can never be levelled at Delaney is simplicity. But we do hear about this statistic:

‘By 1 March, which was pretty much the point when the title race was settled, the two Premier League players with the most minutes were Van Dijk and Mohamed Salah. The centre-half was first and the Egyptian second, and that included goalkeepers. The only other outfield player in the top 10 at that point was Nathan Collins.’

Here’s a Premier League table from March 1; see if you can spot why the two Premier League players with the most minutes were Van Dijk and Mohamed Salah, somehow putting them ahead of various goalkeepers who were yet to miss a minute…

Mediawatch