Leicester manage not to get thumped by Liverpool, which is almost as good as winning - The Warm-Up
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Published 11/02/2022 at 08:29 GMT
Brendan Rodgers and co. leave Anfield with no points but also with no crisis. At least not for the moment. Liverpool may or may not be catching City at the top of the table. And Arsenal pick up another comedy red card but also get three points, which makes a refreshing change.
urgen Klopp manager of Liverpool with Leicester City manager Brendan Rogers before the Premier League match between Liverpool and Leicester City at Anfield on February 10, 2022 in Liverpool, England. (
Image credit: Getty Images
FRIDAY'S BIG STORIES
Crisis Deferred
Let's be honest, friends. Sure, we all like to pretend that the appeal of the Premier League is watching the best players work for the best managers. Maybe we nod to the pace, the commitment and intensity. Or we do our best to maintain the cute little fiction that "anybody can beat anybody". (It's not true. You can't beat Manchester City.)
But get right down to it, and the Premier League, as a spectacle, does one thing better than anything else. That thing is Crisis. And it is the Crisis that we're really here for: rubberneckers on the motorway, sickos at the window. So if you tuned in to Leicester City away at Liverpool hoping for something messy, spectacular, and even apocalyptic … you weren't alone.
But we didn't get it. Instead we got a 2-0 home win, which is one of football's most mundane scorelines. Liverpool were comfortably the better team, but that would probably be happening if Leicester weren't A Crisis Club. Anyone can beat anyone. Terms and conditions apply.
So while the rest of us were feeling a little short-changed, we're guessing that Brendan Rodgers is feeling just a little bit relieved. After the game he noted that "Tonight was not just about the result but about restoring pride," which we're choosing to translate as something like "Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, we got out alive". The diagnosis after the Forest defeat was that the club needed a refresh; the rest of the season, then, is about whether Rodgers is going to be the man to oversee it.
As a club, Leicester find themselves in an unusual position: they've spent the last couple of seasons overachieving by many measures, winning the FA Cup and mounting sustained challenges for the top four. There's a Big Six, after all, so anything above seventh is decent going by definition. And if this season is to be a failure, it's a failure that will end with a comfortable midtable finish and the emergence of several promising young players. That all failures should be so painful.
A 2-0 home win for Liverpool is, as already mentioned, a deeply mundane result. But if Leicester can use it to stabilise and consolidate, and Rodgers can put together a case that he should be the man to oversee the selling and buying over the summer, then it might end up being the most important result of Leicester's season. There are no points for not getting hammered, but there is the possibility of something much more important: that tiny, massive step from Crisis to "in a bit of a rebuilding phase". Disappointing for the bloodthirsty neutral, but hey. This is Premier League. There'll be another Crisis along soon. There always is.
Title Charge?
Is it on? It might be on. It could be on. It's basically on.
Jürgen Klopp says it isn't on. "We have no chance to catch them." But he has to say that, doesn't he? He's got a squad to manage, he's got expectations to dampen, he's got perspective to keep. He couldn't say anything else. Thiago Alcântara, now, there's a man who knows what's on. "We are still there. We have played one game less and have to face them there, so it is still an open Premier League." That's the spirit. That's the stuff. That's the can-do Premier League attitude. Any on can beat any on.
Nine points becomes six with the game in hand, then three with the game at the Etihad. And that's not until April, which is ages away. Plenty of time for further nonsense, and Liverpool have dropped a mere seven points in their last 12 games. That's amazing. That's ridiculous. That's title form.
Well, it would be, had City not dropped just two points in their last 14 games. Going to have to confiscate the word "ridiculous" from the last paragraph and stick it in this one. But, by the twisted pretzel logic of football myth-making, this too offers hope. Nothing goes on forever, and so the longer a side's ridiculous run continues, the closer it is to its end. Does that make sense? Only if you don't look at it too closely. What does it mean?
It means one thing, and one thing only. It's on.
It's Happened Again!
Here are the functions of Arsenal football club, in order of importance from most to least. One, modelling and selling an exciting range of retro-inspired athleisure wear. Two, finding new and beautiful ways to get sent off. And three, if they've got any energy left, winning football matches.
Last night against Wolves they managed the clean sweep. Their London Underground collection looked striking in the Molineux floodlights. Gabriel Martinelli looked a right buffoon. And Arsenal, dear old comedy Arsenal, clung on to their 1-0 lead despite everything else. The bid for the top four lives to collapse another day.
To the decision, then, with the weary knowledge that refereeing chat is the very worst chat. Two yellows within a few seconds, the second offence committed during the advantage played after the first. It has happened before — Chris Baird jumps to mind — but it doesn't happen often, and it doesn't happen every time that it could slash should. On that basis it can fairly be called unfortunate. It also undermines the meaning of the word "caution", which would seem to require some element of warning. There should probably be a beat or two between "Don't do it again" and "Off you go".
Asked after the game about his side's knack for picking up reds — that's four in six games, which is honestly incredible — Arteta said that he had now "run out of ideas". Presumably he's tried saying "Don't do anything daft, lads". That's the other striking thing about Martinelli's dismissal: just how pointless both his interventions were. As if he'd heard about these cynical, necessary yellow cards that proper football teams pick up from time to time, and decided to give it a go, but hadn't quite worked out that context is everything. Nobody has ever needed to delay a throw-in from there.
And once you're the team that does daft things, you're that team for a long, long, long, long time. Fair? Almost certainly not. But disciplinary weirdness is just as much a part of the Arsenal brand as all these Adidas collections, and like branding it works on the subconscious. It shapes the perceptions that people have of the team. If Arsenal are going to break the top four, they will have to overcome an opponent far more tenacious, far more vicious than the teams around them. They'll have to defeat their own well-earned reputation. And to be fair, hanging on for the three points is a good start.
IN OTHER NEWS
Football is a simple game. Two teams run around for 90 minutes and then, at the end, in the 93rd minute, with his team a man down, a defender tees himself up for a volley on the edge of the box and sends his team into the semi-finals. Chapeau, Nikola Milenković, chapeau.
HAT TIP
Today's compulsory viewing is Christian Eriksen speaking with the BBC about his return to the Premier League. And, indeed, his return to the land of the living, after five minutes spent wandering the undiscovered country. We can't believe that everybody involved isn't a little worried about how this is all going to go: when one weird, inexplicable thing happens, it's only natural to assume that another will be along in five minutes. But Eriksen himself seems as happy as can be, which is the main thing, and is remarkable.
I can remember everything apart from the five minutes. I was told afterwards it was five minutes, otherwise I remember everything - the throw in, the ball hitting my knee and then I don't know what happened after. Then I woke up with people around me and felt the pressure on my chest, trying to get my breathing back, and then I woke up - I opened my eyes and saw people around me, I didn't really understand what was going on.
OTHER HAT TIP
And now, on a slightly different tip, here's Dermot Corrigan on Real Betis, who are third in La Liga and hold the advantage after the first leg of their Copa del Rey semi-final. The smell of silverware is in the air for the first time in some time, thanks to Manuel Pellegrini, a sharp and opportunistic transfer policy, and — we believe, and Corrigan doesn't deny — Hector Bellerín's spiffy little moustache.
[Betis fans] always claim they are Andalusia’s biggest club — an argument backed by their 46,374 season ticket holders. The average attendance at the Benito Villamarin this season is almost 39,000 — the third-highest in La Liga, above the Bernabeu, Sanchez Pizjuan, San Mames or Mestalla. This also means Betis felt the pandemic painfully — they depend on stadium revenue more than most clubs in La Liga. Playing in Europe this season has been important for the club’s finances. A focus on international expansion and marketing is also paying off.
COMING UP
Chelsea vs. Arsenal in the WSL. Sevilla vs. Elche in La Liga. Fizzy Pop Leipzig vs. FC Köln in the Bundesliga. PSG vs. Rennes in Ligue 1. Humanity against gravity and ice and snow in the Winter Olympics, all over discovery+.
Sliding into the weekend like a curling stone on clearout duty. Have a good one. Tom Adams will be with you on Monday.
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