There used to be a rivalry here, once. Two decades ago this was genuinely the most foreboding fixture in English football; a decade ago it was still deciding the destiny of league titles; five years ago it was still appointment viewing. Here, amid a fiesta of missed chances and offside flags, a deeply unserious Chelsea beat a Liverpool team that clearly couldn’t care less.
The score could have been 5-0 or 5-5 or 0-0 and frankly nobody would have been any the wiser. There was a guard of honour at the start. There were triumphal odes from the away end. Chelsea fans retorted with the Steven Gerrard song, and the “you’ll never get a job” song, and the “always the victims” song. What was it people were saying about football becoming ever more predictable, ever more rote, ever more uninspiring?
