Liverpool are losing the plot ... or are they?

Liverpool are losing the plot. The pressure is getting to them. Or so the story goes in a world prone to overinterpretation.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp gestures during the EPL draw with West Ham. Picture: AP

Liverpool are losing the plot. The pressure is getting to them. Expectation is weighing on their shoulders. As for Jurgen Klopp, he is clearly in a state of high anxiety. To be frank, it is some wonder the team made it on to the pitch on Monday, given the prevailing heebie-jeebies.

Last week, of course, Manchester City were the Don Fox of late-night football, missing the English Premier League equivalent of a conversion from in front of the posts, falling apart away to Newcastle United. Pep Guardiola was under the cosh, the pressure from, at that point, a jaunty Liverpool was telling and, well, you know how difficult it is to retain the title.

I am guessing we will be enduring quite a bit of this kind of overinterpretation in the coming weeks, a classic accompaniment to any moderately close title race. We like to impose stories on fluctuating events, to draw profound inferences about character and composure from each passing game. We crave a coherent story we can tell ourselves and our children, so instead of describing the latest game as “one of many”, or seeing a result as a blip, we zero in on courage and resolve, panic and meltdowns.

City should be used to this. In the title run-in of 2011-12, the most pulsating of my lifetime, they were lauded as “brave” and “resolute” after seizing victory against Queens Park Rangers in the dying seconds of the final game. Roberto Mancini was hailed as a wonderfully staunch manager. Few reflected upon the fact that, but for QPR needlessly wasting possession, Sergio Aguero might never have got his matchwinning chance, and City could have blown the title, bottlers and chokers evermore.

Or take Steven Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea that many claim cost Liverpool the title in 2013-14, a freak event. Instead, it became a metaphor for a team falling apart, slipping up, exposing all sorts of frailties.

Twenty-five years earlier, when Michael Thomas scored to win Arsenal the title in the closing seconds of the 1988-89 season, it was all about heart and character and not at all about the fortunate ricochet off Steve Nicol that sent the ball into his path.

Randomness is simply not permitted to encroach upon the analysis of football. Look at any given season after the event and you will see clubs performing approximately to trend, based upon the underlying strength of the team and manager. Around this trend, however, you will also see fluctuations above and below the line of best fit. It is these fluctuations, driven by noise and randomness, that operate as the kernels of moral panics, overinterpreted stories and related epiphenomena. This is football’s soap opera.

It is always worth remembering that any game is influenced by luck, largely because of the rarity of the principal event: the goal. According to the economists Chris Anderson and David Sally, about half of goals are the result of luck — a chance rebound, perhaps, or a ricochet. Yet it is psychologically hard for fans, particularly the hardcore kind, to accept that randomness can exert a powerful influence over events of such emotional significance. Much more satisfying to impose concrete narratives.

A classic manifestation of this is the manager of the month competition, certainly among the most absurd institutions in sport. Here, a panel solemnly determines which chap is worthy of a portentous ribbon for basically presiding over a blip. Indeed, so often do teams perform less well in the period after their manager has won the award (effectively, returning to trend) that some commentators have given it a name: the curse of the manager of the month. Statisticians have a more persuasive description: regression to the mean.

Look back over recent months and you will see that Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and City have been seized by panic at some point, only to “rebound” or “rediscover their mojo”. Spurs were flying high at Christmas, with five straight league wins, including a 6-2 thrashing of Everton and a 5-0 triumph over Bournemouth. Mauricio Pochettino was toasted over many turkey buffets as a genius. They then lost 3-1 to Wolverhampton Wanderers and, all of a sudden, the wheels had come off. Typical Spurs. Classic bottlers. Don’t have the stomach for the fight.

As for Liverpool, they have won 13 of their past 17 league matches. It just so happens that they have drawn the past two (including 1-1 away to West Ham United) but suppose that those draws had occurred not consecutively but towards the beginning and end of this run. Suddenly, the same overall trend would be less “lumpy” and stories of meltdowns and panics would seem rather less seductive.

Most neutrals would probably agree that, at present, Liverpool and City, in first and second respectively, are roughly equally likely to win the title (with Spurs a longer shot). If you dispute this assessment, you can make a large wager with just about any bookmaker. Liverpool have key players missing but are three points clear. City are probably the better team but are not without weaknesses. It is going to be an intriguing run-in.

Of course, mental strength, tactical acumen and the like will play a key role. Liverpool will feel the weight of history having not won the EPL, a long-term trend in itself, and not without significance. City will be desperate to defend their crown and Spurs, if they can reduce the five-point deficit, will be equally aware of the magnitude of what is unfolding.

Do these observations about the importance of composure and character contradict the idea that randomness will also play a part? Do they show that chance isn’t important? Not at all. In football, as in life, events occur at the juxtaposition of noise and signal, contingency and agency. The point isn’t that we must choose between one or the other but that we are inclined to overinterpret the latter at the expense of the former.

This is why football teams are the modern incarnation of Wacky Races, the wheels coming on and off with every game, and why managers and players can be fearless and spineless, often in the same week. Give it till Saturday and we will go through the same charade all over again.

Whatever else you may say, it makes for a hell of a storyline.

THE TIMES