Liverpool have something of a difficult relationship with Christmas – in particular topping the table before the 25th, with the Reds having failed to secure the title despite finding themselves top at such a point on three occasions in the last two decades.
It’s not a struggle Manchester City are particularly familiar with, however, with Garth Crooks pointing out on BBC Sport that the Citizens’ guaranteed status as the team at the top of the pile hardly bodes well for other title hopefuls: “Being top at Christmas spells real danger for Liverpool and Chelsea.”
With Jurgen Klopp’s men otherwise enjoying a positive campaign, there’s hope yet that such a sign won’t sound the death knell for the Merseysiders’ season and hopes of domestic silverware.
It’s a far from encouraging stat, though our manager will be more than keen, we’d expect, to hammer home the point that there’s plenty of games left to prove such an omen wrong.
With the Manchester-based outfit hitting their stride – impressively so without an out and out striker – it will be a challenge of epic proportions for us to keep the pace with the Cityzens.
Nonetheless, it’s worth highlighting that we ourselves, with a full-strength squad and the benefit of injuries lessening as we approach the new year, are an impeccable outfit and not one to ignore in the long run.
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City do look good but to be fair to Chelsea they have had so many injuries and covid that they were always going to drop a few points (think they just played wolves with 11 players out!). We need to hope our luck doesn’t reverse with them for the second half of the season as I don’t think we’d cope as well with the amount of players missing they’ve had and when Chelsea were at full strength at the start of the season they looked on a par with City. City are the team to beat though so let’s hope they can drop some points soon!