EPL TALK: Man United ready to overtake Liverpool, and this means more
LIVERPOOL and Manchester United are really the two explorers, lost in Africa, in that old joke. The explorers spot a lion. The lion spots lunch. One of the explorers discreetly removes his boots and pulls on a pair of running shoes. The other laughs at such a futile gesture.
“You’ll never outrun a lion,” he says.
“Screw the lion,” his friend replies. “I just have to outrun you.”
That’s Liverpool and Manchester United and the gloriously infantile tribalism that has dominated their relationship. Maybe the lion represents the English Premier League trophy. It doesn’t really matter. The real race is between each other, a race that is so bitter and wonderfully twisted that the rest of the sporting world looks on in envy.
It’s proper old-school loathing, passed from father to son like an explosive device, but it’s a cyclical process. It endures. That’s the bit so often missed. Individual rivalries are finite. Time defeated even Nadal and Federer in the end.
But the Reds and Red Devils have gone round and round for decades now, like a never-ending Royal Rumble. The participants change, but the fight goes on. And the narrative must evolve. Suspense is critical. The fear of surrendering one’s superiority must be omnipresent.
And it feels like it’s happening now. The pendulum hasn’t quite swung to Old Trafford just yet, but it’s moving in an easterly, disorderly fashion, away from Liverpool’s crushing defeat against Leeds United and towards a club now capable of seeing off dogged opposition like West Ham.
Pep Guardiola has already called it. He has insisted that Manchester United are coming, sounding like a third wheel in a relationship that he still struggles to be a part of.
This is not about you, Pep, or even Manchester City, not yet anyway. It’s about them. It’s always about them.
The Red Devils are coming, maybe for a trophy or a place in the top four, or maybe even for an outlandish shot at the title. But really, they’re coming for Liverpool. They’re coming for the perch.
Sir Alex Ferguson was consumed by the mythical perch. It dominated his planning and fuelled his siege mentality in those early years. He had to knock Liverpool off their f****** perch. He had to. There were other silverware winners in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but there was only one team on Fergie’s perch.
Rising Red Devils vs regressing Reds
And they are there now, flailing, squawking and potentially falling. The symbolism is almost too obvious. Against Leeds, a Rolls-Royce turned into a cement truck. Virgil van Dijk experienced defeat at Anfield for the first time in 70 English Premier League appearances.
His head was elsewhere. His legs were in the back of the cement truck, trapped by feet of clay, as opponents with no wins in their last eight league games somehow danced around him. Joe Gomez was no better, but Gomez hasn’t come to define the Jurgen Klopp era.
Van Dijk was the pick of a well-selected bunch, the definitive example of Liverpool’s recruitment philosophy. Target the key position, the biggest hole, and fill it with the best available. In theory, it sounds about as complicated an exercise as a PE teacher picking his first primary school side. In reality, no one did it better than the Reds. See Alisson Becker and Mo Salah for more details.
But age might be withering them, collectively at least, as their twitch fibres betray them, forcing them to second guess each other, according to Trent Alexander-Arnold, in search of uncomfortable answers.
Leeds ran further and faster. Liverpool have endured back-to-back losses against the bottom two teams. The Reds are regressing.
And that’s arguably inevitable, understandable even, for an overachieving club not blessed with a direct pipeline to the gushing oil wells of the Middle East. But the other mob are on the rise. That’s the engrossing bit.
The symbolism wasn’t particularly subtle at Old Trafford either. Records were also being broken, but only of the positive variety. Marcus Rashford scored his 100th goal, a thumping header, the kind usually scored by Cristiano Ronaldo, the kind of empathic finish that felt like a statement of intent. Rashford is finally ready to get the GOAT off his back.
But the English forward’s presence on the pitch was enough for us to go overboard on the imagery. The kids are all right again. Rashford’s inclusion marked the 85th anniversary of the first time a homegrown player was named in the squad. There has been an academy graduate in every single matchday squad since as United underlined their identity.
The Theatre of Dreams opened its doors to the Busby Babes and the Class of '92 and incubated other sons of United along the way, from Mark Hughes and Norman Whiteside to Scott McTominay and Rashford, a point made on official club media and repeated by Erik ten Hag in interviews.
The Red Devils are reasserting themselves by stressing their core values, the fabled Manchester United way, as Klopp’s Reds struggle with a diminished sense of character.
Of course, every manager since Ferguson has clutched at the same straw, the one stamped with “United DNA”, to cynically tie one’s coaching credentials to the club’s genealogy, but ten Hag might be staking a legitimate claim.
While David de Gea’s astonishing reflexes secured the win against West Ham, Harry Maguire returned alongside the outstanding Lisandro Martinez with minimal fuss. Defensive organisation has returned and Casemiro now resembles the midfield anchor capable of holding down five Champions League trophies. Just one EPL defeat since August is title-chasing form.
United are finding a basic stability once associated with Liverpool, just as Klopp’s wobblers are looking like the old Red Devils.
A sustained title race is probably beyond ten Hag’s transitional squad this season. But they are primed to outrun the Reds. For many long-suffering United supporters, this means more.
United are finding a basic stability once associated with Liverpool, just as Klopp’s wobblers are looking like the old Red Devils.
Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 26 books.
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