REDS ON REDS
Funny rivalry, Liverpool and Manchester United. They are English football’s most successful clubs but there’s rarely been a moment in history when both of the clubs were competing against each other to be the toppermost of the poppermost. To use the pre-cancellation phrasing of former Stretford Ender Stephen Patrick Morrissey, the north-west giants oscillate wildly. Give or take the 2008-09 saga of Rafa Benítez’s “facts” and Kiko Macheda’s dance moves, and a 1995-96 campaign when Roy Evans’s men-in-white-suits party boys couldn’t keep pace with the Neville brothers’ early nights, you’d have to go back to the era of Shankly and Busby, the Beatles and the Hollies, for both clubs as the best around.
When one’s up, the other’s down, though both clubs are so bloody big that being “down” usually means a mid-to-higher table mediocrity of the type that someone like, say, Steve Parish at Crystal Palace would give up his Porsche and blowdryer for. This season, it’s Liverpool’s turn to man the doldrums. They’re a tough watch at the moment, the former Red Machine. Last week’s goalless draw at Parish’s Selhurst Colosseum was so lacking in entertainment and spark it made a Graham Potter press conference look like An Audience With Robin Williams. A midweek swiping aside of Wolves was better, but soft rock when compared to Jürgen Klopp’s most paint-stripping heavy metal thunder. “If you can’t find it, grind it” – as Football Daily’s driving instructor used to say – appears to be their route to the top four.
It might just work but Jürg meanwhile finds himself having to praise, yuk, Manchester United. “It’s pretty much impossible to be happy about something positive at Manchester United when you are the Liverpool manager,” he wailed. “They have turned into a results machine. They are squeezing results out with some really good performances,” he sobbed. “Top football, and if it is not going so well, they still get results,” he bawled, combining gritted teeth with sorrowful, bereft recollection; only a year ago it was Liverpool fans dreaming of the multiple gongs United are now chasing.
They last met back in August, United having flopped so badly against Brighton and Brentford that Ten Hag was one defeat away from Confirmed Fraud status. A 2-1 win at Old Trafford, inspired by the resurgent Marcus Rashford, and King Erik was set on his way to re-popularising roll-neck sweaters and the Salford goatee box-beard. Liverpool’s season was meanwhile dumper-bound, though Sunday at Anfield, where Ten Hag whispered, with typical understatement, “the ambience will not be supporting us” is Jürg & co’s chance to swing that perpetual M62/East Lancs pendulum back towards Merseyside.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think his destiny is already written in the stars. It’s going to happen; I don’t know when, but it is going to happen” – Pep Guardiola believes Burnley’s Vincent Kompany will return to Manchester City as their manager one day. But first he’ll be back there in the FA Cup quarter-finals.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
“Re: yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs (full email edition). I have officially given up all hope of ever being nominated for Premier League manager of the month. Being passed over for February in spite of managing almost the same number of games as Antonio Conte, plus having fewer defeats and the same number of wins has left me a bit cynical about the whole system” – Pat Condreay.
“On a recent Football Weekly Extra pod, John Brewin commented that ‘if you’re in this industry … you receive daily emails and you do wonder who’s edited this and signed off that’. While I am not a football journalist, as someone who signed up for your daily missive in 1998, I wholeheartedly concur” – Bryan Paisley.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Pat Condreay.
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