Welcome to the First Biggest Game of the Year
It’s trite but it’s true: The sands shift every minute in the Premier League. Recall Virgil van Dijk, one moment standing on the empty Selhurst Park pitch, issuing what sounded at the time less like an analysis and more like a eulogy. “We are, in the last four or five years, spoilt,” he admitted after a listless and joyless day out against Palace, with Naby hooked at halftime and Trent yanked at 70 minutes.
After “winning all the trophies that were available… to have this bumpy season is a shock for everyone,” he said, speaking for every nerd wearing red sitting in the stands and at the pub as well as his teammates.
And then there he was a few days later, nodding in a goal and leading a second-half revival that saw the Reds keep their fourth-straight clean sheet in the league – with a detour to Paris to collect an official best-in-the-world award in between. “This club belongs in the Champions League,” he declared, daring to spell out the path to victory against old foe Manchester United.
Reversals that fast give you whiplash. Instead of recovery time, Eric ten Haag’s revitalized Red Devils visit Fortress Anfield tomorrow in one of a series of Very Big Games coming our way over the next six weeks.
The “northwest Derby” (and, with the poor Toffees sliding down into dismal chaos, maybe there’s something to both Kostas Tsimikas and The Anfield Wrap referring to this classic fixture as just “the derby”) is never a small deal, offering opportunity for effrontery to last a lifetime. “I wouldn’t watch Liverpool if they were playing in my front yard,” a not-mad Roy Keane once said, more than 15 years after the last time he tied a boot. Despite his late-blooming nice-guy act, we all know what Gary Neville thinks (not that we care).
But after sweeping all six points from last year’s weird and aberrant side Man U side, and after suffering whiplash from the up-and-down-and-down again year we’ve had, it is hard to overstate the portentousness of this latest edition. Not that it needs to be said, but: a win puts Liverpool into fifth, past vanishing Newcastle and just three points behind an aimless Tottenham – who just lost to Wolves – with a game in hand.
Now is also a good moment to remember this was always going to be a liminal season. New faces came in, a club legend went out. No glasses, constant questions about the ownership. But in the same week we prepare to bid adeus and obrigado to Bobby Firmino, here is Virgil demonstrating comfort and command wearing the captain’s armband and speaking on behalf of the entire side – and speaking directly to everyone who supports it, who might have turned off televisions in disgust or (I know you’re out there) placed a harmless side bet against it.
“Everyone was behind us and with us when we became champions, when we won the Champions League, when we won the League Cup and FA Cup and became Club World Cup champions,” he said. “Those are the easy times to be with us but you also have to be with us now and that’s the good thing, to see that and to see what this club is made of.”
A club with real history -- what we are blessed to enjoy -- is made of fixtures like these, played at times like these, contested by players like these, supported by people like us.
