Reports of the demise of 2020/21 Liverpool FC have been greatly exaggerated, as evidenced by their 3-0 shellacking for Arsenal on Saturday. Yes, their Premier League title defense officially ended earlier today, with Manchester City beating Leicester City, but the Reds are all in to make a final push for the top four.
At the end of the Saturday slate, and entering Sunday’s fixtures, Liverpool were just two points behind Chelsea for the fourth and final Champions League qualification slot.
Going back to March 10, when they bested RB Leipzig 2-0 in the UCL round of 16, Liverpool have now won three in a row across all competitions. Much more impressively, they have conceded a goal during that stretch. The Merseyside club is riding momentum right now, and Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp knows they have to work hard to keep the big mo on their side.
“What’s very important for us, is we have to keep going, we have to keep the momentum,” Klopp said.
“It’s the first time we have it [this season], so we have to be careful with it, and keep it, and treat it well and we did that tonight — a really good game.”
The German said that this was a statement win for his side, who had slid all the way down to seventh in the table, amid a season that has seen an astounding level of injury setbacks in central defense and central midfield.
“It was a very important statement for us because we need to show that we will fight for it. We can’t talk about it, we need to show it on the pitch,” Klopp continued.
“We did that especially with the way we defended tonight. If we defend like this, we are difficult to break down. If we are difficult to break down, we have a good basis to play good football. That’s what we had tonight. That’s why it was so important.
“All the things that have happened to us in the past this season has brought us into a position where we don’t have it in our hands. We have to win our games but somebody else has to lose because we don’t play most of them anymore. We have to make pressure on them. That’s what we did tonight with the result but we are still not in.
“Everton can pass us. West Ham can pass us and all these kind of things so we have to fight and we will fight. That’s the statement for us and no one else.”
It’s a quick turnaround for Liverpool, who next travel to Real Madrid on Tuesday, for the first leg of their UCL quarterfinal tie, in a rematch of the 2018 final. Then it’s a home match against Aston Villa in league play on Saturday.
The Reds still have the Champions League trophy to play for this season, but also the prize of a top four finish in the league. Yes, their central defense position group has been ravaged by injury, and when midfielders went to fill in those holes, that group got banged up as well.
But they’re still here! And they have plenty of motivation to go all out and try to get the job done.
In Jurgen Klopp, they have the perfect kind of leader who can make sure they finish the job.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.