Former Liverpool striker Emile Heskey believes that Manchester United showed the rest of the Premier League how to play against Jurgen Klopp’s Reds.
“It’s the sign of true champions when you’re not playing so well and are still getting results,” he told the Daily Express.
“The thing is, Manchester United were uncovering a real weakness in Liverpool, which shows how to play against them.
“I don’t think they freeze at Old Trafford, I just think you’ve got to give Man United their due credit. They set up correctly, they stuck to the game-plan and it worked.
“Everyone knows that when you play against Liverpool there’s going to be a lot of space in behind the full-backs and they exploited that, and that’s exactly where the goal came from.”
The one thing Heskey fails to take into account is the sense of occasion – the North West Derby isn’t just another game of football – so I disagree with him here.
For as long as I can recall, Liverpool v. Manchester United has been the biggest fixture in the domestic calendar, and players are aware of this.
This is something Heskey should know, having played in his fair share of the games, and it’s this pressure that likely got to our players in Manchester.
Admittedly United did play defensively which is a known way to combat against our ‘heavy metal’ brand of football, but that’s a risky move for other teams in the league.
Our fierce rivals have a few players that could punish Liverpool, but there are teams that just don’t have the same fire power and they’d struggle to scrape a goalless draw, if they play the way United did at Old Trafford.