Ragged and imprecise Liverpool are flawed title challengers

Jurgen Klopp’s side are nowhere near the team that won the Premier League title in 2019-20

Mon, 18 Dec, 2023 - 16:33

Jonathan Wilson

We want our title-challengers to be fallible. We don’t want a sense of a procession; we want each point to feel hard-earned. We want a sense of jeopardy about the race for the Premier League. Just perhaps not quite that fallible, not quite that hard-earned. Jeopardy, it turns out, can be pretty dull.

There were three thoughts to emerge from Sunday’s goalless 0-0 draw between Liverpool and Manchester United. The first was that United really are terrible at the moment, but at least they’ve acknowledged that. There was, paradoxically, something to be admired about the pragmatism of their approach, the way they approached the game almost like a relegation-threatened side. This wasn’t like 2017-18 when José Mourinho took United to Anfield, showed almost no ambition, drew 0-0 and seemed weirdly confused by the criticism that followed. Liverpool then were vulnerable having won one of their previous eight games; here Erik ten Hag was facing a side that had won each of its previous seven home league games this season.