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Not much blue smoke there, mind.Photograph: Kieran McManus/Shutterstock
ANFIELD OF DREAMS
Rodri knacked his knee. Everyone else is rubbish. Arsenal are not a serious football club. Manchester United are hopeless. Chelsea are a shambolic mess. Lads, it’s Tottenham. They got lucky with knack. They had help from the PGMOL. While we’ll leave it up to you to decide which of the above statements are true, most if not all have been mooted as the main reasons Liverpool won the Premier League this season by fans whose almost heroic begrudgery in the face of their own teams’ failure has to be commended. Of course, a more considered view is that Liverpool are the champions again because they are quite obviously the best football team in the country and have only lost two football matches throughout a campaign from which few of their own fans, no TV or radio pundits and only one particularly enlightened, erudite and prescient podcast regular predicted they would prevail before a ball was kicked. And because Arsenal are not a serious football club.
With the title up for grabs and Dr Tottenham paying a house call, the pre-match sense around Anfield was that securing the point Liverpool needed to win their 20th championship would be little more than a formality. On a hiding to nothing and with the embarrassment of being knocked out of Bigger Vase by a team from the Arctic Circle over the next fortnight to focus on, an even more below strength Spurs than usual didn’t so much threaten to poop the party as add to the general gaiety of the occasion by taking an early lead even they knew they were never, ever going to hang on to. Liverpool duly swatted them aside, with Mo Salah even taking the time out to grab a phone and take a selfie with the Kop by way of celebrating his 28th top-flight goal of the season. The moment stood in stark contrast to the last time Liverpool won a title during the pandemic, when any such photo would have featured the beaming Egyptian and countless rows of empty red plastic seats. “Liverpool have more [Big Cups] and today will equal Manchester United’s 20 League titles – the debate is over,” said Gary Neville ahead of the game, upon being asked which is England’s most successful club. “Liverpool’s success should cause pain and heartache [to United fans].” The Sky Sports co-commentator wisely opted out of joining his fellow pundits on the pitch for the post-match debrief, choosing instead to remain in the comparative safety of his perch on the gantry.
While the mawkish, omnipresent and supercilious “this means more” cobblers dreamed up by some beanbag-dwelling marketing wonk erroneously suggests Liverpool fans somehow love their club on a level their counterparts at others couldn’t possibly comprehend, winning the title clearly meant an awful lot to everyone at the game and their ticketless brethren assembled outside the ground. Many held flares aloft, a number of which sent thick clouds of blue smoke billowing into the air over Merseyside after one mischievous Everton fan had bought a job lot of them and spent the weeks building up to yesterday’s game diligently changing the labels before selling them outside Anfield. We can but hope this entrepreneurial prankster’s reach extends as far as the Vatican, so that the traditional signal that a new pope has been elected will also serve as a tribute to Everton’s imminent departure from Goodison Park. For now, Merseyside and the Premier League is red and one suspects even Arne Slot’s famously critical father might have been quietly impressed by the scenes he saw unfold at Anfield yesterday afternoon.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Send letters to [email protected]. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day winner is … Kevin Goddard. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, can be viewed here.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, John Brewin and Robyn Cowen to discuss Liverpool’s title win and more.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Leeds chief suit Paraag Marathe is flying in for talks with Daniel Farke amid doubts about the promotion-winning manager’s future. Yikes!
Aston Villa’s Bigger Cup qualification hopes have been hit by news that Marcus Rashford has sustained season-ending hamstring twang.
Arsenal head coach Renée Slegers was proud as punch after her side’s 4-1 win at Lyon (5-3 agg) booked a place in the Women’s Big Cup final against Barcelona. “I am so happy for everyone that we have achieved this,” she cheered. “It’s a team performance and I don’t take myself out of the team … there is so much work that has been done.”
Eberechi Eze revved up his Crystal Palace teammates to “go all the way” after making it into the FA Cup final with a thumping win over Aston Villa. “We believe we can do it: 100%,” he said. “We have shown performances like this all the time, we’re not worried or fearful.”
They’ll play Manchester City in that final, though Pep Guardiola says he won’t be satisfied even if his side win. “This season has not been good. We are a thousand million points behind Liverpool [actually 21]. It’s not good,” he sniffed. “Look at the [Bigger Cup]. We won one game? Two games? We were not good.”
And Brendan Rodgers has a message for anyone who thinks winning the Scottish Premiership with Celtic is easy. “It feels like it’s been normalised when it really isn’t,” he honked, after the Hoops won only their 13th title out of the last 14. “It’s such a hard thing to do.”
COPA LOAD OF THIS
Football Daily’s match of the weekend had to be the Copa del Rey final. It was a game so extraordinary it spanned two days, involved three red cards in the 120th minute and ended up with Barcelona running around Seville with the cup after their 3-2 (aet) win. Madrid came into the match with all the grace of a bitter rhino and though they fought and rebelled, they were defeated in a chaotic ending. All the emotion exploded at the final whistle, and Lucas Vázquez, Antonio Rüdiger and Jude Bellingham were sent off. The German had to be held back from going at the referee and later apologised for throwing an ice cube at a man who had been reduced to tears by the club’s in-house TV channel’s critical video of him before the game. Classy.
STILL WANT MORE?
Unruffled Liverpool and Mohamed Salah served up theatre and euphoria on title day, writes Barney Ronay, while Andy Hunter has analysed how Arne Slot’s coolness lies at the heart of the club’s league success. He also dishes out player ratings for the season here, while Sachin Nakrani picks out 10 highs in the Reds’ giddy run to the championship. Jonathan Wilson asks: was Liverpool’s title Klopp’s final masterpiece or Slot’s foundation stone? And Rob Draper details Slot’s journey from child prodigy coach to Premier League champion.
Premier League and FA Cup talking points. Ten of them. Here. And here’s your Women’s Big Cup and WSL review.
Scott McTominay bathes in the adoration – and nicknames – as Napoli leap clear in title race, writes Nicky Bandini.
No Marmoush, no problem: Hugo Ekitiké fires Frankfurt to verge of Bigger Cup, says Andy Brassell.
And there’s trouble at Montpellier after their Ligue 1 relegation, reckons Luke Entwistle.
MEMORY LANE
23 October 1993: an aeroplane flies over Manchester City’s Maine Road during the match against Liverpool with a banner urging chairman Peter Swales to leave the club so he can be replaced by Francis Lee.
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