Finding Perspective Amid Liverpool's Sudden Slump

Cause for concern, or just a minor hiccup in an otherwise historic season? Three losses in four games across all competitions have raised an eyebrow for Liverpool.

It can be difficult at times like this to get the sense of perspective right. Liverpool has lost three out of its last four games. It has gone out of the FA Cup. Its hopes of becoming only the third unbeaten league champion ever are over. It trails Atletico Madrid 1-0 in its Champions League last-16 tie before Wednesday’s second leg. 

In other circumstances, these would be the ingredients of an incipient crisis. But Liverpool sits 22 points clear at the top of the Premier League, albeit having played a game more than Manchester City in second, and last weekend's defeat at Watford was its first loss in 44 Premier League matches.

If there has been a collective slackening of the sinews at Liverpool, it is only understandable. Liverpool had won a record-tying 18 Premier League games in a row before the setback at Watford. Given that, barring something utterly extraordinary, it will win its first league title in 30 years in the next few weeks, this will have been an excellent season for the club. If the title had been offered to any fan before the season began, the offer would have been accepted with no thought of circumstances or performances in other competitions.

That remains true. As well as almost certainly winning the Premier League, Liverpool has also won the Club World Cup, but there remains a danger that the season, largely because Liverpool’s form has been so exceptional and the league is essentially without any drama, could end in an anticlimactic fashion.

Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

On the evidence of the first legs of the Champions League, this is not a vintage European season. Real Madrid and Barcelona are as weak as they have been in a generation. Juventus is struggling between the contradictory styles of its coach, Maurizio Sarri, and its highest-paid player, Cristiano Ronaldo. Paris Saint-Germain is underwhelming in characteristic fashion, unable to accommodate Neymar while still having a functioning midfield. With Manchester City hampered by the injuries to Aymeric Laporte and the failure to replace Vincent Kompany, Liverpool at its best would be a strong favorite to retain the Champions League title.

And were Liverpool to do that, to become only the second side successfully to defend the European title in 30 years, it would make this season not just special but historically exceptional–an equivalent to the 1983-84 side that won the league, European Cup and League Cup. Not to do that, to slip tamely from the Champions League without being involved in an epic clash with one of the true elite, would feel like a missed opportunity.

Liverpool probably hasn’t quite been at its best since the 4-0 win at Leicester on Boxing Day–although it did still win nine in a row in the league after that. The more significant downturn has come since the winter break: five games that have brought uneasy one-goal wins over Norwich and West Ham and defeats to Atletico, Watford and Chelsea. Something similar happened last season when early elimination from the FA Cup gave Liverpool a 10-day break. It drew four of its following six league games (and was held at home by Bayern in the Champions League), a run that ultimately allowed Manchester City to take the league title. So perhaps there is something about Jurgen Klopp’s side that means it requires regular games to maintain its rhythm.

Personnel, obviously, makes a difference. Dejan Lovren was bullied by Troy Deeney in a way that Joe Gomez probably wouldn’t have been. Equally, if Jordan Henderson were fit, Liverpool would have in midfield a captain who never stops cajoling his side, maintaining standards and focus and keeping at bay the slight complacency that regular victories can induce. Going unbeaten in the league for 15 months must induce a strange mental condition, one where there is simultaneously an expectation of victory and yet pressure to keep that run going. Henderson refers constantly to the cliché of taking each game as it comes, but he has proved adept at keeping the side doing that.

If Liverpool loses to Bournemouth at home on Saturday, then perhaps it is in the midst of some extraordinary crisis. But the likelihood is this will be a reset, a straightforward victory to clear the mind before the far more meaningful business of the Champions League on Wednesday. This has been a great season for Liverpool regardless, but it could be one of its greatest. And yet, if it were to go out of the Champions League this soon, it could be a champion that ends up drifting through the last two months of the season with nothing for which to play.