🔍 The Parable of Liverpool

I’m guessing that you, like me, probably still have questions from the World Cup draw. Why does Gianni Infantino keep casting himself in sketch comedies? Regardless of the motivation or legitimacy of the award, who approved the actual design for the peace prize? And did anyone brief Wayne Gretzky?

Regrettably, I’m not in a position to provide answers to these. But there are certain things I learned over the course of my weekend in New York and Boston for not one, but two amazing Men in Blazers live shows.

One: Boston may be the perfect size, shape and layout to be a World Cup city. Scotland, England, Norway and whoever else is playing there are going to have a great time. (New York will be great, too, but New York does not need reassurance.)

And two: the advice of the readers of this newsletter is wise and sound. Esther Lee recommended I go to Toscanini’s in Cambridge for ice cream, and she was right. Jeff Faucette suggested having “The Fancy” at Mike & Patty’s, and he was right, too. John Wesley correctly steered us to The Phoenix Landing, a fine Liverpool bar. We managed to find a great Vietnamese place, Cicada, of our own accord.

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions, and I’m only sorry I couldn’t get to more of them. I’ll do my best to atone for this when I’m back in the summer, by which stage I’ll hopefully have stopped having to write about how terrible everything is at Liverpool. It feels to me like we certainly aren’t there yet. ❤️

Throughout English football’s long and rich history, the list of teams that have become metaphors is remarkably short. In all that time, no more than a handful of clubs have been afforded that honor, if that is the right word, which in the vast majority of cases it definitely isn’t.

The most familiar example, of course, takes the form of an adjective: Spursy. It is most commonly applied to the team which inspired it, obviously; it is an insult to be deployed whenever Tottenham snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

But it has, in recent years, attained a broader meaning, too: it can be hurled at any club that discovers an unwanted tendency to fall short of expectations. It is a sufficiently established part of the lexicon that everyone, immediately, understands its implication.

The same goes for another phrase: Doing A Leeds. It is slightly depressing to think that the roots of that term now stretch back almost a quarter of a century, to the days when Leeds United spent heavily and recklessly to build a team to compete in the Champions League but ended up in deep financial peril instead.

As a club, Leeds has been around for more than 100 years. It has won the title three times; in the 1970s, it was denied a European Cup only by refereeing that can comfortably be described as controversial. The collective imagination, though, now associates Leeds primarily – maybe solely – with the hubris and delusion of that period around the turn of the century. To “Do A Leeds” is to throw good money after bad. In football’s mythology, Leeds effectively stands in for Icarus.

There are a couple of others. Generally they are if not negative, then cautionary: any team that looks like it might lose its cool in a title race will, at some point, be reminded of the example of Newcastle United, a piece of lore that dates back to 1996. Very occasionally they are positive: since 2016, Leicester City has been a ready synonym for fairytale, not just in England but across Europe.

There is a very good chance that, in time, there will be another added to that list: the summer and immediate, bitter winter experienced by Liverpool will come to stand, I think, as a warning to fans to remember that the relationship between football on paper and on grass is a complex, fragile one. It will act as a reminder that sport is not an equation or an algorithm. It is a parable that teaches us there is no such thing as winning the transfer window.

Experience, by now, should teach us that Liverpool is nothing if not devoted to its search for new nadirs. The assumption might be – especially in light of a gritty win against Inter Milan in the Champions League – that the impromptu interview offered by Mohamed Salah in the bowels of Elland Road last Saturday will prove to be the low point of Liverpool’s season.

It felt that way after the defeat to Manchester United, though, and the loss at home to Nottingham Forest, and Arne Slot’s side’s breezy dismissal at Manchester City. The pattern is apparent: Liverpool has made it abundantly clear that things can always get worse. 

Still, witnessing one of the greatest players in the club’s history coolly and deliberately setting the world on fire was particularly striking. It is only a little more than six months since Liverpool was lifting the title, and Salah was sitting on a throne, a scepter in his hand. It is not quite four since Alexander Isak arrived to complete the most expensive transfer window in Liverpool’s history and – at least by gross outlay – in Premier League history, too. There were then, as there are now, still bouquets of flowers laid outside Anfield, testament to a club mourning Diogo Jota, but it would be disingenuous to suggest there was not a sense of excitement, too.

It was, as it turned out, misplaced; it was misplaced because signing players is, in many ways, the easy part. Crafting them into a coherent whole, blending them into a team, is not only more delicate, it is also to some extent an act of alchemy. None of the players Liverpool signed in the summer are bad. Even Milos Kerkez. But they have contrived, together, to make the team far, far worse. 

Salah’s interview might seem disconnected to Liverpool’s summer spending. In some lights, it has been interpreted as something close to insubordination, an inexcusable act of willful damage to manager and team, a temper tantrum that speaks to the cosseted egotism of the modern superstar. In others, it is an understandable act of self-defense, one of the finest players in Liverpool’s recent history offering a justified rebuttal to a manager who has made him a scapegoat for his own failings. It is not impossible to feel that it is, in part, both of these things. 

Whichever interpretation you prefer, though – whether you basically agree with both the act of Salah’s interview and the content of it – all of it can be traced back to Liverpool’s summer window: its scale, its nature, its composition. At the root of Salah’s dissatisfaction, after all, is the incontrovertible truth that a team long designed to get the best out of him has ceased to do that. It is possible to see in Salah’s decline the baleful inevitability of aging. But it is also possible to hew to his view, which is that the squad changed too much, too quickly, and that he is less a culprit than a victim. (Or, again, we could remember that two things can be true at once.) 

That is the risk, of course, in trying to do as much in one summer as Liverpool; in building something new, you can destroy the old. Liverpool’s expenditure felt splashy, exciting at the time; as a window, it had the air of a flexing of muscles, a deliberate attempt to position the club as a nascent superpower.

But it has not played out like that. It is a personal theory that the number of players who left – especially in the circumstances following Jota’s death – changed the finely-balanced ecosystem of the locker room. We can allow Liverpool’s front office a little bit of leeway here; they were on unfamiliar ground as they dealt with that tragedy, too. 

More damning is that we are almost halfway through the Premier League season and it is both still a mystery how many of the new players are meant to fit together and absolutely evident that they have not been able to dovetail with the remnants of what Liverpool were. This was always going to be a season of transition. As things stand, it looks as though it has been botched.

Liverpool’s recruitment, all that spending, has not worked for anyone. The sweeping changes have diminished the established players; their struggles have ensured that the new arrivals cannot settle, cannot shine.

They have built a team that is all compromises; in trying to conceal self-inflicted weaknesses, Slot has lost the control and composure that were his greatest strengths. Salah, clearly, does not see why the club tried to fix what was not broken. The players, new and old alike, seem unclear as to what they are trying to do. There is no shortage of heart, as they proved in beating Inter Milan. There is, though, a shortage of understanding, and now faith.

It is still possible, of course, that it all works out. Maybe with Salah, more likely without. In a year, or two, or five, it may be that Florian Wirtz looks like a masterstroke, that Hugo Ekitike is a phenomenon, that Isak – unrecognizable from the player who graced Newcastle – has remembered what he is doing on a football pitch.

But the distance they have to travel, the chaos and the fury of this season, should act as a salutary reminder – in Liverpool and far away from it – that spending money can cause as many problems as it solves, that a successful team is a fragile, elusive thing, that football does not work in straight lines. It should enter the lexicon, so that any team that embarks on such drastic, such expensive change is wary of “Doing A Liverpool.”

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In a way, you can only really stand back and admire. Real Madrid’s loss to Celta Vigo last weekend was only the second defeat Xabi Alonso’s team had suffered in La Liga all season. Real had only lost once in the Champions League up to that point, too. And yet it was still enough to prompt at least three days of speculation over whether Alonso – a beloved former player, very obviously talented coach, appointed only in May – was about to lose his job.

That is maybe slightly reductive: Real, it should be pointed out, has now won just once in five La Liga games, after a run of disappointing draws against relative minnows Rayo Vallecano, Elche and Girona. Alonso’s team had to come from behind in two of those games. In the process, Real has surrendered its lead at the top of the table. 

Still, the whole thing feels like a pretty on-the-nose encapsulation of Real’s great strength (to the club) and weakness (to everyone else). 

Alonso’s issues started because of a growing rift with Vinícius Júnior, who has objected to sometimes being substituted and who has reportedly delayed signing a new contract because of his relationship with his coach. 

The logical thing to do in that situation, of course, is for the club to support the manager. And yet that would be hollow, because as soon as results turn just a little, Real’s patience wears thin. It is difficult to know, in that sort of environment, how any manager with ideas beyond keeping his players and, more importantly, president happy can survive. It is much harder, though, to see how Real can ever change.

Rog and Rory react to Mo Salah's post-game comments and discuss how the player, Arne Slot and Liverpool can move forward from here. They also break down Arsenal's loss to Aston Villa and ask if Mikel Arteta's men are cracking under pressure again atop the table. Plus, they talk about City's uneven performances and wonder how Pep will utilize Rayan Cherki throughout the rest of the season.

Watch on YouTube or listen here.

In general, as you know, we like to point you towards games that might not necessarily have attracted your attention, but there are also times when, well, you just kind of have to watch the latest Marvel movie.

In that spirit, the two fixtures which stand out this weekend are both from the Premier League: Salah’s last stand (maybe?) for Liverpool against Brighton (Saturday, 10 a.m. ET, Peacock), and a welcome return for what might be England’s most frenzied game: Sunderland against Newcastle, the Tyne-Wear derby, and a day of great fear for horses (Sunday, 9 a.m. ET, USA).

I’ve been contemplating this question from Jacob Geiger for so long that it is no longer accurate. “You wrote earlier this year about the compression we're seeing in the Premier League table,” Jacob said, which suggests he’s been paying attention. “The same seems to be true in the Championship as well, with just six points separating third from 17th at the moment. Any thoughts on what's causing that same tightening effect one division down?”

Technically, this is no longer true (and that is my fault) but the pattern holds: there are just six points between fifth and 16th, which is still pretty compressed. To an extent, this isn’t new: the Championship is always a little bit like that. It’s what makes it fun.

If it’s more pronounced this year, though, I would guess (and only guess) that it’s partly a consequence of the stasis we’ve seen in the Premier League – because the same teams tend to go up and down, those that remain are reasonably easily-balanced – and partly because so many teams, even in the second and third tiers, are now so well-run.

They have access to elite coaching and expertise and, crucially, they have enough money to attract an ever-increasing quality of player. But this is very much a theory in progress; if you want to help me workshop, feel free to let me know. All other questions, ideas and feedback are welcome, too. I really appreciate all of them.

Take care,
Rory

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