Plucky Saints Well and Truly Plucked By Relentless Record-Breaking Liverpool

Plucky Saints Well and Truly Plucked By Relentless Record-Breaking Liverpool
February 1, 2020 Paul Tomkins

 

Prior to this season, the best ever 38-game rolling points tally by any top-flight English club was 102; Liverpool have recently upped it to 104, 106 and now 108. The gap over 2nd place – 22 points – is now also the biggest English football has ever seen. Liverpool are so far ahead that just two wins and 11 draws are needed from here to equal Arsenal’s invincible tally from 2003/04 (26 wins, 12 draws, no defeats). Liverpool can therefore surpass that record, as the reigning European and World Champions (something Arsenal’s great team could not match).

With 33 wins and a draw in the last 34 league games, the Reds have taken 100 points from the 102 available. Never has a club got so close to perfection. People said what Man City were doing recently would never be matched; but currently it’s being bettered. And Liverpool can still improve. (And Mo Salah didn’t even need to take his shirt of today – but any excuse to use that picture again.)

Where would Liverpool be without Alisson? Well, they won all ten games he has missed in the league. Where would Liverpool be without Fabinho? Well, they won every game during his absence from November to this, his first subsequent start, in February. Where would Liverpool be without Mané? Well, they’ve won every time he hasn’t played, plus the game at Wolves, when he went off injured early in the match.

Despite being one of the most spirited, hard-pressing and organised sides to come to Anfield, Southampton left with nothing more than a 4-0 mauling. They created a fair few chances, but didn’t take them, in part because the Reds have the best goalkeeper in the world, in part because of Joe Gomez’s outstanding recovery interceptions, and in part because their finishing just wasn’t good enough.

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