There was a telling, and also quite funny, moment at the start of extra time in this Carabao Cup final, a match won late on by a Liverpool team so depleted it resembled by the end one of those Friday night, club TV channel youth-team affairs, gangly kids with floppy hair veering about at some half-deserted practice ground, parents in the stand.
As the moments ticked down to the restart Liverpool’s players formed a huddle near the halfway line. At which point the Chelsea team, already in formation, seemed to realise that actually that’s the kind of thing we should be doing and abruptly shuffled in to form an even tighter, more righteous blue huddle, like a clingy new couple offering up a performative show of affection around the dinner table.
