Heavyweights clash in dress rehearsal

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/08/2019 (2571 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sunday’s Community Shield will provide a first look at this season’s Premier League title contenders. Yes, there are only two of them, and they’ll begin sizing each other up when they take to the Wembley pitch for English soccer’s ceremonial curtain-raiser.

Liverpool, after finishing just a point back of champions Manchester City in the spring, are in the match because they came second. City would have typically been about to play the FA Cup winners, but they won that, too, as well as the League Cup — a historic domestic treble. But the Reds triumphed in the Champions League, and despite failing to win a first title in 29 years, they left a whopping 25 points between themselves and third-place Chelsea.

It’s a gap — between second-place and third — that is unlikely to shrink this time around, although it could well be City in the former spot come May. Liverpool have never been as well set up to win their maiden championship of the Premier League era, and after facing City, they’ll open the domestic campaign on Friday at home to promoted Norwich. It will be the only match of the day. All eyes are on them already.

And for good reason. Their 97 points last season would have won them the division in 25 of the Premier League’s 27 seasons, and their 22 conceded goals represented the best defensive record in the top flight. Only City scored more than Liverpool’s 89.

In centre-back Virgil van Dijk, they have arguably the best defender in the world and a genuine threat for the Ballon d’Or. There might not be two better fullbacks in England than Andrew Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Goalkeeper Alisson Becker won last season’s Golden Glove and helped Brazil to victory in the Copa América last month.

In attack, the front three of Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah is the most lethal trident in Europe. The likes of Jordan Henderson, Georginio Wijnaldum, Fabinho, Naby Keita and James Milner allow manager Jurgen Klopp the luxury of a variety of looks in the centre of the park. And Klopp, for his part, has a light, upbeat demeanour that has rubbed off on his players.

All that said, there are still two hurdles for Liverpool to scale as they race toward the ribbon.

The first is their own lack of depth. They haven’t made a single senior signing this summer and are vulnerable to injuries hampering their effectiveness at the two extremes of the pitch. A mostly healthy 2018-19 campaign ensured they challenged City from start to finish, but one can only imagine the trouble they’d find themselves in if one of their fullbacks, Mané, Salah or Van Dijk went down, or, disastrously, two or more.

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Last year’s acquisition of Xherdan Shaqiri was a shrewd piece of business, and one they’d do well to replicate before the transfer window closes on Friday.

The second is the quality and pedigree of their rivals. City have posted record point totals in each of the past two seasons and addressed an aging midfield by signing Rodri from Atletico Madrid in July. Just as one generation of champions — including Fernandinho, David Silva and Sergio Aguero — has likely played its best soccer, another, in the likes of Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus, appears poised to grab the baton. Then there is Pep Guardiola, a manager who, better than anyone else, can coax performances from everyone and improvement from unlikely contributors.

Still, City cannot deploy a starting 11 that, when fit, can match Liverpool’s. A few things have to go right for the Reds to win the title, but that’s always the case. At the outset of the schedule, it’s simply easier to foresee slight Liverpool improvement and equally slight City decline over the next few months — a shift, however minuscule, that would nevertheless propel Liverpool to the top of the heap for the first time in three decades.

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Twitter: @JerradPeters