Cliches abound in Liverpool-Man U showdown

Opinion

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This article was published 15/12/2023 (633 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sometimes, a well-worn cliche is all that’s needed for a big game preview.

There are analytics, sure, and by and large they make up the skeleton of a team’s body of work, but then not everything needs an X-Ray to reveal what’s plainly evident.

“Look at it again. I want to know for sure that it isn’t a cat.”

“Sir, that is a dog, it has always been a dog, and not a single Manchester United player could crack the Liverpool XI.”

That last bit was the cliche, by the way. (Thanks, doc). See? No imaging required.

Come Sunday, when he picks his side to face the Premier League leaders (10:30 a.m., DAZN), there isn’t a single selection United manager Erik ten Hag can make that will have his Liverpool counterpart, Jurgen Klopp, even remotely jealous.

Goalkeeping? Alisson every time. Defence? Even with Joel Matip out long-term, the Reds have at least two replacements they’d tap before thinking of Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof. Midfield? “Sir, it’s still a dog.” Attack? Not even worth a mention.

When at his best, Marcus Rashford would be the exception, but the soon-to-be-former England forward has thrown more gloves in the air than scored goals this term. His body language has been so poor that he’s presumably displaced Anthony Martial as marshal of the sad-face parade.

Yet, he scored 30 goals last season and was one of English football’s form players after the World Cup. There’s elite talent there – everyone’s seen it – so, a good coach could help him recapture it, right?

You’d think so.

What makes this particular “they don’t have player who could walk into that team” cliche so accurate is that, while it’s hardly unheard of for a squad of underdogs to combine into more than the sum of its parts (it’s what a team is), this Manchester United group are somehow even worse than they should be.

Ten Hag, when he arrived at the club last summer, was supposedly bringing with him a pedigree of individual and tactical coaching – and Dutch coaching – that would, at minimum, make something of a team out of the scattershot recruitment (“No, John Murtough, you are not David Gill.”) going on above his pay grade.

Well, needless to say it hasn’t exactly worked out like that.

United never seem to improve; they fall apart at the slightest adversity. And it invites another cliche: “What exactly do they work on in training?”

Of course, they’re only half the cliche formula here. The other is a squad that seems to go from strength to strength.

Following a season in which they finished a disappointing seventh, Liverpool did three things well. They made targeted signings, most notably Dominik Szaboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister. They also allowed a number of players to leave on free transfers and gleefully took £52 million from Saudi Arabia in trade for Fabinho and Jordan Henderson.

Most impressively, however, is how they simply allowed their young forwards to develop, gel with Mohamed Salah and then take the Premier League by storm. They might have panicked over Darwin Nunez, Cody Gakpo and Diogo Jota, but instead they’ve been rewarded for their well-placed confidence.

Going into Sunday’s Northwest Derby, Klopp has a squad of players even Manchester City would struggle to displace. To look at them, you might even lean on another cliche: “They’re a team that likes to play football.”

United, meanwhile, have a manager who might well “have lost the dressing room,” centre-backs that perform “schoolboy defending” and a team persistently “on a hiding.”

They lost this fixture 7-0 last year. Not quite “a cricket score”…

Nope, no analytics required for this one. Football cliches might be tired and groan-inducing, but it’s because of matches like this that they exist in the first place.

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