A Liverpool column: Kick City When They're Down Because Great Teams Bounce Back

The lesson of 1981 when the party was supposed to be over, Salah shows where blame lies in contract mess, Real visit low on list of priorities this week and when the team were drunk on victory

WHENEVER LIVERPOOL PLAY Manchester City, especially in December, one match comes to mind. It took place on Boxing Day, 1981, and it was a landmark game for Bob Paisley’s team.

Was it a rout with a memorable Anfield goal? Was there an incident that defined the season? No. This was one of the low points of the Paisley era.

City won 3-1. A wine bottle thrown from the Kop hit Joe Corrigan, the opposing goalkeeper who would go on to coach at Anfield, on the head. On the next Friday, Kick Off, the local ITV football preview show, ended the edition with a montage of distraught Liverpool players and played The Party’s Over by Johnny Mathis.

You could see why. Paisley’s team were twelfth in the table, nine points behind the leaders, Swansea City (yes, kiddies, you read that right). Games in hand complicated matters but Liverpool’s party seasons looked to be at an end.

Paisley’s men went on to lift the title with a game to spare. There were bumps in the road – defeats away to Swansea and Brighton in February and March – but there was a relentlessness about Liverpool that was awe-inspiring. Oh, and they went to Maine Road in April and stuffed City 5-0.

It’s still November but sitting atop the Premier League with an eight-point cushion over Guardiola’s four-time champions and nine points ahead of Arsenal is a giddy position to be in. Arne Slot has outperformed all expectations. A victory over City on Sunday would seem to finish off their challenge.

Yet the lesson of 81-82 is you can never discount quality. City are showing signs of age. Their recruitment hasn’t been at the same standard over the past two years compared to previous seasons. And, of course, Rodri’s prolonged absence hurts them.

Even so, there’s enough quality available to Guardiola to go on a significant run of victories. That’s why Anfield will be so important on Sunday. When City are down, you have to kick them. Hard. There are those who’d take a draw at this juncture. No. That would be two points lost for Liverpool and a point gained for City.

Great teams make great recoveries. Notwithstanding the 115 charges and alleged cheating, City are a great team. In 1981, 40 per cent of the season had been completed when Liverpool hit their low point. Just 31 per cent of the campaign has taken place now, so there’s more time for the champions to claw their way back.

So how did Liverpool turn it round? Between Christmas and New Year, Paisley replaced Phil Thompson as captain with Graeme Souness – provoking a lifetime’s enmity between the two men. Ageing legs were phased out and young players blooded. And wounded egos provoked a savage reaction.

It’s time to be brutal with City – and I don’t mean throwing bottles at them from the Kop. When they’re down, don’t let them back up.

Salah points the finger

Mo Salah has been very astute talking about his contract negotiations – or the lack of them. He’s made it clear that he is open to an offer but has not received a proposal.

The Egyptian has put the onus on the club. When blame is apportioned, there is only one place to point the finger.

How this situation has been allowed to occur is mindboggling. There are no excuses. Who cares if there was no sporting director and there was chaos behind the scenes in the closing months of the Jurgen Klopp regime. Someone in Boston should have got off their arse and sorted this more than a year ago.

Fenway Sports Group should praise the football gods every day for the miracle of Slot. If that appointment had gone wrong, there’d be mobs with pitchforks and torches outside Anfield. Letting the contracts of the three most important outfield players reach this point is a dereliction of duty. The buck has to stop somewhere. John W Henry is the ultimate decision maker. No matter how things turn out, this is a pathetic way to run a club.

Which brings us to the Trent Alexander-Arnold derby. Real Madrid are on Merseyside for what should be a huge Champions League clash.

Champions League format a Real mess

The European champions are, er, nineteenth in the new style of table. We were told that the Swiss model – a 36-team league where each club plays eight games – would deliver excitement. What it actually delivers is more games, more cash. It, sort of, guarantees a blockbuster match or two for the sort of clubs who would skip to a superleague at the first opportunity. Liverpool v Real Madrid, for example.

But, at least for me, Real’s visit is underwhelming. Given the state of the Premier League and Liverpool’s performances in Europe, there may be a bigger case for playing a weakened team against the Spanish giants than there was nine years ago when Brendan Rodgers selected an embarrassing side to face Real.

Not that I’d advocate that and Slot would not countenance the idea. But the revamped Champions League is pure moneymaking crap.

One tip for Trent: go easy on the love-in with Jude Bellingham. Salah’s managing his potential exit cleverly. Learn a lesson from that.

Or better still, stay at Anfield. If you’re doing that, you can make as much of a fuss over Bellingham as you want.

The party was never over

One last tale from 1982. After Liverpool sealed the title, they had one more league game to play, an away fixture at Middlesbrough. Souness, now the undisputed leader of the squad, had the right hump that the club refused to have a season-ending celebration on the grounds that the World Cup was imminent.

He gathered the players on the morning of the Middlesbrough match and told them that they were having a pissup whether the club organised it or not. Off they traipsed to a Teesside pub and spent the afternoon hurling down pints.

When the game kicked off, Liverpool were squiffy to say the least. As you’d expect, they didn’t play well.

They only drew 0-0. The party was never over for these boys.

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