Liverpool have to run to stand still in their race with Manchester City, but they’re well positioned to at least push them all the way again.
Despite the best efforts of those with a vested interest, it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that Liverpool ended last season on something of a downbeat note. They’d been in it to win it for what would have been an unprecedented quadruple, and while winning two trophies is obviously not to be sniffed at, the two that they did win were not the two they would have wanted.
In the Premier League they took Manchester City to the last 20 minutes of the last day of the season. In the Champions League, they were beaten by one goal by Real Madrid. That’s how thin the margins between victory and defeat can be at the top end of the club game, even if subsequent analysis can make it feel as though the end result was never in doubt.
These weren’t the only reasons, either. The events of the evening of the Champions League final in Paris will have summoned up horrible memories from the past for Liverpool supporters of a certain age. As if the last 30 years had never passed, the French authorities shamefully tried to foist the blame of an absolute loss of control on their part onto innocent supporters, and it was only really the proliferation of smartphones that was able to disprove their lies.
And even on the playing side of the club’s operations, there was uncertainty. Sporting Director Michael Edwards left the club in May, having given his notice the previous November. Mo Salah had been stalling over contract negotiations; Sadio Mane was on his way to Munich. It would have been understandable had Liverpool supporters been feeling a little as though an era – and a feeling that they hadn’t properly experienced in more than 30 years – might be coming to an end.
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Fast-forward to the start of the 2022/23 season, and many of these concerns now look ill-placed. Salah signed a new contract. Sadio Mane did leave for Germany, but after a period of negotiation the departure was amicable, with the club quickly bringing in a replacement in the form of Darwin Nunez. The subsequent investigation into the events of Paris have proved a fairly comprehensive refutation of the lies that were spouted that evening by officials who should have known better.
The feeling of the summer of 2022 being a period of reckoning for Liverpool…
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