The reality of setting standards to the height that Liverpool have reached so far this season is that not much has to go wrong for a sense of disappointment to set in. So it is that back-to-back defeats for the first time in Arne Slot’s managerial career bring questions as to whether this season is all it might have been for Liverpool.
Club captain Virgil van Dijk articulated as much in the aftermath of defeat at Wembley, telling reporters, “It’s how football works. In five days you lose twice and the world is sinking. Two weeks before everything was sunshine and rainbows everywhere.”
The Champions League we couldn’t get it done, this we lost and the FA Cup we got knocked out.
What does not help is the sense that with defeat to Newcastle in Sunday’s EFL Cup Final, hot on the heels of their Champions League exit to Paris Saint-Germain, there are no meaningful matches left to play between now and their Premier League coronation. Everyone associated with Liverpool would argue against talk of the title as an inevitability.
In acknowledging the dark cloud of last week, Slot was intent on seeing the silver lining of pushing their Premier League lead up to 12 points, as if there might have been any real jeopardy if busted-up Arsenal were only 10 off.
Van Dijk, meanwhile, was more agricultural in his description of what needs to come next. “We have to work our ass off for it.”
He had earlier insisted that there was plenty of work left ahead of Liverpool. “We have nine games to go and I don’t think there’s any motivation needed to try to get the job done.
“You play for the biggest prize that you work so hard for from the start of the season. No-one expected us to be challenging for the Premier League. It’s the most difficult prize to get. There’s a lot at stake. There are so many positive and good things to look forward to.”
When that celebratory moment comes around, as, let’s be honest, it inevitably will, the vibes will be as immaculate as they have been through most of the season. And yet, this week will hover in the back of many minds, Liverpool or otherwise, the qualifying factor on what would otherwise have been an indisputable campaign.
Doubtless the architect for this season has been Salah. It is as much of an inevitability as Liverpool winning the title that their Egyptian king will reach May with the greatest output by an individual in Premier League history.
If he goes in the summer, this last week will look like it augurs to a dark future.
