Chelsea to end Liverpool’s season or can Jurgen Klopp’s ‘wounded animals’ revive title ambitions?

ARE Chelsea poised to effectively end Liverpool’s season or can Jurgen Klopp’s ‘wounded animals’ end Anfield losing streak and revive their title ambitions?

Liverpool will hope to avoid a fourth straight home defeat when Chelsea visit this week.

AHEAD of his side’s trip to Liverpool this week Chelsea manager Antonio Conte urged his players to be wary of ‘a wounded animal’.

The intent was to guard against any complacency when meeting a woefully out of form but still dangerous opponent, but could as easily be read as a crafty slight on Jurgen Klopp’s team.

For this Liverpool side, so full of swashbuckling style the last time the sides crossed paths and for the majority of the first half of the season, has pulled up lame in recent weeks. Some wounded animals need of putting out of their misery rather than fearing.

The rest of the division may look on and scoff at the suggestion that Liverpool’s situation is worthy of derision or soul searching. And suggest there are worse places to be than fourth in the league with an internationally vaunted manager and having just secured long term the services of one of the league’s best players in Philippe Coutinho.

Jurgen Klopp has come in for criticism from some Liverpool fans of late.

But in a damaging month Liverpool’s swagger has undoubtedly deserted them. Out of the EFL Cup, albeit at the semi-final stage to an impressive Southampton, they have now departed the FA Cup in swift fashion, Klopp’s policy of blooding youth in the cup competitions having survived two scares against League Two Plymouth but failed against organised and confident Championship opposition in the shape of Wolverhampton Wanderers.

To cast Liverpool as in crisis is the currency of radio phone in hysterics. And yet, with a limp home loss to struggling Swansea added to the mix, that’s three straight home defeats. For some historical perspective, should Chelsea win in Liverpool’s backyard and make it four losses on the bounce there, it would be the first time that had happened at Anfield since 1923.

More damaging than unwanted records, however, would be the truth that with February only just arrived, and trailing Chelsea by 11 points, Liverpool would no longer be playing for silverware, the bid to secure Champions League football next year their only remaining target. The Klopp revolution has struck its first hurdle, the German admitting that the mood had changed, while maintaining that the quality had not.

The last time the sides met Liverpool were unstoppable — much has changed since.

If Liverpool are wounded, Chelsea, in stark contrast, appear in the rudest of health. Early season defeats to Arsenal and Liverpool, the latter a 2-1 home loss in mid-September, saw Conte visibly angered by the performances. A tactical tweak to three at the back offered an instant correction, injecting the cohesion he said his side had previously lacked. They travel to Anfield having won 17 of their last 19 matches.

And so the title favourites’ arrival on Merseyside comes at difficult time for Liverpool. The absence of Sadio Mane, away on African Nations Cup duty with Senegal, has exposed a fragility to Liverpool’s previously effervescent attack. Without his intelligent running, the space for Coutinho, when fit, and Adam Lallana to pick holes in opposition defences has been restricted. The depth of Liverpool’s squad has been revealed as lightweight, an admission evident in Mane being rushed back from Gabon to be in contention to face Chelsea. Desperate to have him back, it is by no means certain he will instantly pick up where he left off in a game of this magnitude.

Sadio Mane has been rushed back from international duty to face Chelsea.

In one sense Klopp, coming in for serious criticism for the first time in England, after a love-in prompted by his engaging personality and commitment to ’heavy metal football’, has been a victim of his own success.

Having lifted Liverpool from a torpor and overseen dramatic and thrilling victories over a number of the big beasts in the Premier League, expectation levels were raised. From where they were to where he has taken them is probably a par achievement. Yet Liverpool fans, who last had a champion side in 1990 are hungry for success. And in Klopp allowed themselves to believe they had found a messiah to follow to the summit of the league at breakneck pace.

The German’s misguided belief that his kids could do the job against lower league opposition, and stubbornness in refusing to change his mind despite repeated evidence to the contrary, has added to the disquiet. Defeat to Chelsea will only amplify that. But in reasoned, clear headed assessment the work he is doing remains positive. Patience, the rarest of commodities in English football, is needed. He has enough credit in the bank to rightfully demand it.

“This is still a very good squad, and I am still quite a good manager even though we have lost the last three games,” Klopp said after the defeat to Wolves at the weekend.

“That doesn’t change, but the mood around us has changed. I have absolutely nothing good to say about the last defeat, the only good thing about the game is that it is over. Now we have the chance to win the next game and we must keep faith.”

The chance presented to Chelsea is of a much greater prize than a redemptive shift in form. Beating Liverpool in midweek would effectively do for one of their title rivals. A positive result four days later against Arsenal and their claim on the title will be more compelling still.

“After three defeats you are very angry, and we must know this. We have to play our football with good intensity and then we will see what happens,” said Conte.

“When you play at Anfield it’s very difficult for teams.” True enough. In the current climate, however, that assessment possibly rings truer of the hosts than it does the visitors.

Originally published as Chelsea to end Liverpool’s season or can Jurgen Klopp’s ‘wounded animals’ revive title ambitions?