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Image: /REUTERS
As he edged towards retirement, Jamie Carragher was asked why he had never won the title with Liverpool. He gave three simple reasons.
He came up against the best Manchester United team there had ever been. He came up against the best Chelsea team there had ever been.
He came up against the best Arsenal team there had ever been.
And, yes, that would do it. Of course, Carragher expanded on those observations, discussed the influence of Roman Abramovich’s fortune, the stewardship of Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, triumphs and mistakes made in the transfer market.
Yet the bottom line was that in his time, two of the biggest clubs in the country, and one that had freshly muscled its way into the elite, were at a historical peak.
Trebles, doubles, unbeaten campaigns. It was hard to keep up. And getting harder. “The Manchester City situation is going to make things even more complicated,” Carragher forecast. That was on March 4, 2011 — at that time City’s last major trophy was the League Cup in 1976.
Carragher’s words are particularly prophetic given that, by winning at Fulham at the weekend, Liverpool surpassed their points total for last season.
Even if they lost every game from here they would still have equalled their best campaign under Jurgen Klopp: 76 points in 2016-17.
Yet if City win their game in hand, Liverpool are second. Indeed, if both teams enjoyed a 100 per cent record from here, Liverpool would end up on 97 points, having lost one game in the entire campaign, and still finish runners-up.
Bottlers. Trophy dodgers. Never see it through, do they? And in every campaign there is the moment that could have been. Liverpool failed to win at home to Leicester, unlike Manchester United, Bournemouth, Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Wolves, Tottenham, Watford — and Newport County in the cup this season.
They failed to win at West Ham, unlike Bournemouth, Wolves, Tottenham, Manchester City and Watford. Turn those two draws into wins, and even City’s game in hand would cease to matter. Liverpool would be six points clear by now.
Yet the fact they could be reined in is not so much a reflection of any failure as the incredible standards these two clubs are setting.
Liverpool, with 76 points after 31 games, would have led the table outright at the same stage in eight of the past 11 seasons, and another year would have led on goal difference.
The year that Leicester won the league, a Liverpool team performing as Klopp’s is now would have been 10 points clear at this stage; and in 2010-11, too, when Manchester United were the eventual winners. United needed 80 points that year; Liverpool could have 17 more in May and still fall short. They can hardly be accused of not giving it their best shot.
At the US Masters in 2001, Tiger Woods completed his grand slam of major championships. It churlishly became known as the Tiger Slam because it was spread over two seasons — the last three majors of 2000, the first of 2001 — but as Woods responded: “If you can put all four trophies on your coffee table, I’d say it’s a slam.”
He was a class apart at that time, but does this make his rivals failures? That year in Augusta, David Duval shot a 72-hole score that would have won the Masters every year, bar four. He came second. Phil Mickelson’s score would have earned a green jacket every year bar six. He came third. Trophies are a finite indicator of sporting success, but even they require context.
There is no point documenting Sir Andy Murray’s three Grand Slam titles, without acknowledging that in the era of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic it was a feat to even get that. Equally, Klopp’s run of six straight defeats in cup finals is derided, without mentioning that in only one of those would his team be favoured to win.
Borussia Dortmund were fancied to beat Wolfsburg in the 2015 German Cup; but were they fancied to beat Bayern Munich in 2013 and 2014? No. Were Liverpool fancied to beat Manchester City? No. Sevilla? No. Real Madrid? No. It could be argued that upsets occur in sport and Klopp might have enjoyed the odd victory against the odds, but wasn’t prising the Bundesliga title from Munich in consecutive seasons exactly that?
If Liverpool can fend off Manchester City in the league this season, Klopp will have three of the finest achievements in European football to his name, because all of his titles will have been won against a considerably stronger opponent. He will have come up against the best City team, maybe even the best team there has ever been, and won. Jamie Carragher knows how hard that is. It will place Klopp among the greatest coaches in the history of his sport. No failure.
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