Liverpool vs Manchester United will likely be the most-watched Premier League fixture this season and the Northwest derby remains the most historically significant rivalry in English football. It’s the headline act of the most commercially successful top flight the beautiful game has to offer, yet Saturday’s instalment provided anything but the excitement, entertainment and drama the Premier League has become synonymous with.
In theory, Liverpool vs Manchester United should be the Premier League’s billboard, encircled with flashing multi-coloured lightbulbs like a porn star’s mirror, enticing even more followers to the English game. But if you showed Saturday’s 12.30pm kickoff to a Bundesliga, La Liga or Serie A fanatic in hope of persuading them to jump ship, they’d think the Premier League vessel was sinking into the abyss.
In reality, the Premier League is arguably the healthiest it’s ever been, barring perhaps the European dominance of the mid-2000s. Six clubs have the talent, the resources and the managers to win the title in any given season and the competition between the rest of the division is so fierce, at least one of the rank and file is ready to take advantage whenever the big hitters aren’t up to the task – as we saw from Leicester City a few years ago.
A Champions League winner in Rafa Benitez is managing a club who were in the Championship last season – that’s how vibrant the English game is right now.
Of course, we’ve seen plenty of underwhelming Northwest derbies before. In fact, it’s traditionally anticlimactic in terms of quality and goals. Their 51 meetings in the Premier League to date have produced an average of 2.5 goals per game – the average from 2009/10 onwards in the English top flight has been just shy of 2.8.
But the Anfield clash on Saturday, just the third scoreless draw ever between the two clubs in the Premier League, was particularly poor for the lack of ambition shown by both sides in a fixture so intrinsic to their respective seasons, that stems to the very core of the English game.
Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho should both hang their heads in shame, and not just because both decided to pin the blame on the opposite number when journalists quizzed the reasons behind such an unmemorable affair. Klopp complained Mourinho only ever came to Anfield with the intention of leaving with a single point; Mourinho argued his side couldn’t impose themselves on the game offensively because Klopp refused to sub off one of his three hardworking midfielders.
“They played 90 minutes with (Emre) Can, (Jordan) Henderson and (Georginio) Wijnaldum and I thought playing at home, seven points behind us, they are going to change. They never did. They changed man-for-man in attack. They kept their three midfield players in the centre of the pitch and I had no chance to answer.”
The pathetic residue it boils down to is quite simply; we couldn’t attack because they weren’t attacking. That’s the joint explanation from two managers widely revered as amongst the best of their generation, who’ve won league titles and European titles, who aim to better at least two of the big six by qualifying for the Champions League as a bare minimum this season, who’ve spent roughly £473million on new players during their current appointments.
“I think Man United came here for the point and they got it. We wanted three points and didn’t get it. I’m sure if we played like this, you could not do this at Liverpool. Obviously for Man United it is OK. It’s quite difficult when a top-class team like Man United has that defensive approach. You’re not going to get 20 chances.”
They know how to go about their respective season aims better than I do and come the end of the campaign, at least one of the two might see that as a decent point in the final tallies. But both managers have passed up an opportunity to win a match that would have significantly altered the balance of power in the Premier League table in their favour, simply because it’s easier and safer to draw than lay down a haymaker so early in the season.
Instead, both managers and both teams shadow-boxed for twelve rounds, waiting for the judges to rule it a no contest, as if there was a tacit agreement to walk away with one point apiece.
Some would argue that’s inevitable with such high stakes on the line and a manager of Mourinho’s pragmatic calibre involved – in fact, we saw the exact same result during last season’s infamously dull ‘Red Monday’. But there was an instrumental difference this time around; both teams were there for the taking, both teams have been built closer towards their managers’ images than they were twelve months ago and both men in the dugouts had reasons to go for victory which far exceeded their justifications for a draw that didn’t just disappoint because of the scoreline, but because of the unambitious, cautious and negative mentality shown throughout.
Manchester United visited a side who had only conceded less goals than bottom-placed Crystal Palace and Watford before this weekend, who have won just one game across all competitions since August and who had their vibrant frontline significantly weakened by the international break. Sadio Mane was injured playing for Senegal, while Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah travelled to the other side of the world and back again.
A team that intends to win this season’s title, had already scored seven goals in three away games and had the front-runner in the Golden Boot race before last weekend spearheading the forward line should approach such an encounter looking to exploit a clearly vulnerable defence, confident they won’t be caught out by a reduced attack.
Instead, United played the entire match with ten men behind the ball, mostly in their own half. They had 38% possession, just six attempts at goal and the aforementioned Golden Boot contender, Romelu Lukaku, touched the ball just ten times in Liverpool’s half.
Klopp shouldn’t be getting off lightly either though. United may have set up only slightly less defensively than last season’s encounter at Anfield but Liverpool were still the home side and barring the typical red rush we’ve become accustomed to seeing from them in the first half an hour of games, Klopp’s side did very little to truly test a team that quickly made it clear they didn’t want to take part in a multi-goal thriller.
All of Klopp’s substitutions came in the final twelve minutes and none changed the structure of the team. As much as Klopp complains, he didn’t make any decisions to genuinely change the dynamics of the match and he let Mourinho leave with a point. That is despite the fact United were arguably even more weakened than Liverpool heading into Saturday, with Paul Pogba, Marouane Fellaini, Michael Carrick, Marcus Rashford and Eric Bailly all injured, and were yet to test themselves against any of the big six so far this season.
It was an opportunity to embarrass United, to put their scintillating start to the season in a new context of being mere flat-track bullying (the average 2016/17 league position of United’s opponents during the first seven games was just 11th place), to punish a weakened team and to claim a victory over bitter historic rivals that would have not only boosted Liverpool psychologically but also moved them to just two points behind the Red Devils in the table. Klopp didn’t simply fail to take that chance as his players dwindled and toiled – he actively refused to.
It’s the same case with Mourinho, who seemed to leave Anfield under the impression the result suited him far better. The Portuguese has made a career from taking a point against major rivals on the road and spinning them into victories, but on a weekend in which Manchester City obliterated Stoke 7-2 to go two points clear at the Premier League’s summit, a scoreless affair on Merseyside was anything but a win.
It’s left United trailing a team playing better football, who will almost certainly beat them on goal difference and who have already beaten two of the big six, including a win over reigning champions Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. The impact of those games could be huge this season; with the big six likely to be in a league of their own and the top few creating another mini-league within that, the title could well come down who does best out of those closest to them in the table.
In many ways, the game highlighted the difference between City and United’s title credentials at this moment in time. One team are aiming to escape big away days with a point, hoping their rivals will eventually mess up – the other are determined to carve up everything in their path indiscriminately. Liverpool, meanwhile, create their own paradox; they want to be a big club, but don’t take the chance to act like one when it comes along.
In truth, that was a poor point for both teams, one that doesn’t serve either particularly well, and one that embarrasses what’s meant to be the best top flight package in the game today. The biggest game in English football shown last on Match of the Day. That tells its own story of how dire it truly was.