If the corresponding fixture last season made Jurgen Klopp’s arrival at Liverpool inevitable, this season’s instalment served to underline both the progress that he has made and the distance that he and his team still have to travel.
A 1-1 draw with Manchester United at Old Trafford is rarely a negative result for Liverpool and it wasn’t on this occasion but it was Chelsea’s chances of being crowned champions that were enhanced rather than their own.
This time it was only two points that were dropped by Liverpool in comparison to the three that went begging in September 12 last year, a day when the club’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, decided that Brendan Rodgers was making too little of the resources available to him to be able to continue as manager.
Their answer to that problem was Klopp, who was appointed the following month, and he continues to get more out of the tools at his disposal than his predecessor had been able to.
Whether that will be enough to end Liverpool’s 27-year wait to be crowned champions remains to be seen. In the context of a title race in which anything but victory can represent a setback, their chances of finishing ahead of Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur were not helped by this draw.
But with Chelsea to visit Anfield at the end of this month and with ten of Liverpool’s remaining seventeen fixtures being at home, Klopp will believe, with some justification, that his team remain genuine contenders regardless of the pace that the league leaders continue to set.
As is his way, Mourinho had called it on beforehand, telling Liverpool that if they are fighting for the title, they would need a result, which was true apart from the fact that the one result they didn’t need was a defeat.
Lose and not only would their attempt to win the Premier League be dealt a significant blow, their hopes of finishing in the top four would also be brought into question. The stakes are never anything but high when Liverpool meet Manchester United but rarely are they this high.
Which made what occurred in the first half particularly impressive, if imperfect from Liverpool’s point of view. Tactically, they exploited the weaknesses in United that Klopp had identified, but even more telling than that was the way that they coped with the pressure of the occasion, of the identity of the opposition and of the circumstances and the results that had gone against them in the build-up to kick-off.
FIFA’s inability to provide clarification on Joel Matip’s eligibility was just one of the issues that they faced. On top of that, Nathaniel Clyne was a late withdrawal through injury and Sadio Mane was on African Nations Cup duty with Senegal, while Philippe Coutinho was considered fit enough only to start on the bench.
The stars seemed to be aligning against Liverpool, particularly with United on a nine match winning streak and the form of the other title contenders raising the possibility that they could end the day in fourth place.
This wasn’t just a test, it had the potential to be a defining game for all the wrong reasons but after surviving a spell in which their own defensive hesitancy allowed United two sights on goal in quick succession, Liverpool triggered a press and in a single, premeditated, much rehearsed movement, they turned the game in their favour.
From the moment that Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana harried Phil Jones into giving away a corner, it felt like a pivotal moment in terms of how the fixture would be played but it turned out to be even more significant than that.
In the days leading up to the game, Klopp’s set piece drills had focused mainly on one key element – creating ways for Dejan Lovren to find space in the United penalty area. It may have been a basic approach but it turned out to be a highly effective one, with Lovren’s willingness to spin off his marker being assisted by the inability of his marker, Paul Pogba, to understand the basics of his role. Faced with a problem that he could not work out how to solve, Pogba threw his hands into the air and James Milner took advantage of the penalty that Michael Oliver awarded.
(Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
Klopp bettering Mourinho tactically might not fit with the narrative that surrounds the two managers, the former portrayed as a motivator rather than a tactician, but that was what was happening. Not that Liverpool were having things their own way – Simon Mignolet was the busier of the two goalkeepers and the visitors defence was being stretched and opened up more regularly – but considering the problems Klopp was facing his team was coping better than many had expected.
It wasn’t just in their pressing that Liverpool’s teamwork caught the eye. At the other end of the field, their determination to protect Trent Alexander-Arnold whenever the teenager was exposed defensively prevented United from exposing him as much as they would have liked.
Pivotal to that was Dejan Lovren who provided his young team mate with the kind of cover that any player making his first Premier League start would wish for, even going as far as picking up a booking when trying to help Trent-Arnold out after he had lost possession.
It is that willingness to make to and mend, to deal with situations as they are rather than how you would wish them to be which underpins everything about Klopp’s approach.
Asked what he needed to be confident against United, the Liverpool manager had been unequivocal. “Give me eleven players and we will be competitive,” he said on Friday, reminding everyone that football is a team game in which problems have to be overcome and can be overcome as long as every available individual buys into the collective ideal.
Milner’s goal meant that Liverpool had United exactly where they had wanted them. The one thing Mourinho had wanted to avoid was a situation in which his own team had to be more adventurous than is ideal against a side with Liverpool’s counter attacking abilities but from the moment Milner’s typically well taken penalty defeated David De Gea that was the position that United were in. As a result, their forays forward never carried the kind of conviction that had grown during their nine match unbeaten run; a fear of being caught on the break undermining their attempts to respond.
In the end, Mourinho resorted to a strategy that he implemented to much derision when faced with a similar predicament against the same opposition almost 12 years earlier. On that occasion, a Champions League semi-final, the then Chelsea manager responded to a game slipping away from him by going direct, ushering Robert Huth into an attacking role.
(Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
It didn’t work then but this time it did as Marouane Fellaini, the substitute, unleashed the kind of penalty box chaos theory that only he can, allowing Zlatan Ibrahimovic to equalise.
Liverpool still had a result to hold onto but it wasn’t the one that they wanted most and neither was it the one that would put Chelsea under most pressure.
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