Liverpool daring is shot in the arm for English game

LIVERPOOL has captivated audiences with 96 goals in 35 English Premier League matches this season.

TO listen to Jose Mourinho, you would think that this Barclays Premier League title race is being determined by refereeing decisions. It is not. It is being settled — or on course to be settled — by the type of daring, adventurous football that has blown through the English game like a breath of fresh air.

Liverpool have scored 96 goals in 35 Premier League matches this season. What is more, they have done so while playing a brand of football that has captivated audiences. As Brendan Rodgers, their manager, described it, drooling over the impact made by Raheem Sterling and Luis Suarez in their 3-2 victory over Norwich City, it is about “wonderful invention, creativity, courage and arrogance on the ball”.

Those qualities should be celebrated, particularly in England, where they have frequently been drummed out of players and of teams at the expense of power, grit and rigidity. That Rodgers is producing this kind of football and these kind of results with a core of English players who were around or some way beyond the fringes of the national squad this time last year — Jon Flanagan, Jordan Henderson, Daniel Sturridge, Sterling — is even more uplifting.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Mourinho can do to try to hold up the Liverpool bandwagon when he takes his Chelsea team to Anfield next Sunday. It is a challenge that should appeal to him from a tactical and a competitive viewpoint, but in recent weeks he and his team have appeared preoccupied by the Champions League while slipping to lame defeats at the hands of Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Sunderland.

Indeed, it would be interesting to find out what Mourinho, beyond those absurd post-match press conferences in which he tries to blame every Chelsea slip-up on a refereeing conspiracy, really makes of the way his team are being outgunned in the title race. He continually lays their relatively poor strike rate — 67 goals to Manchester City's 88 and Liverpool's 96 — at the door of his strikers, but all too rarely this season, even with Eden Hazard and Oscar on the pitch, have Chelsea played with anything like the sense of joy and creativity that defines the Merseyside club's approach.

Mourinho has a point, undoubtedly, when he says that Liverpool's title challenge has benefited from their lack of involvement in European competition — yesterday saw only their 40th game in all competitions this season, while Chelsea and City have played 52 and Arsenal 54 — but it avoids the flip-side of that argument. Whatever competitive advantage Liverpool might have earned in the second half of the season, it can hardly be said to cancel out the competitive disadvantage that comes with Champions League qualification and the ability to attract a quantity and quality of player that have often proved beyond the Merseyside club's budget and allure in recent years.

That Liverpool are playing like this with a group of players who looked wholly inadequate in the first half of last season, is one of the great stories of the Premier League era. The sentimental value of their first league title since 1990, should it happen, would be considerable, but, even when you strip away the nostalgia that surrounds any Anfield success, it would be an extraordinary feat in the oligarch era.

No team have begun to match what Liverpool have done since the turn of the year. Indeed, since their 2-1 defeat at Stamford Bridge in late December they have taken nine more points than Mourinho's team, scoring 20 more goals, and 14 points more than City, albeit having played two more games.

All of it has been achieved with a sense of freedom that, like Everton's blossoming under Roberto Martinez, offers such a positive lesson for English football. To nitpick and to focus on perceived or imagined advantages — whether it is refereeing decisions, lack of European football or indeed Everton's astute use of the loan system — smacks of woeful lack of appreciation. For Liverpool to become champions in this way, rather than the more functional style of the Houllier or Benitez era, would be inspirational — not just them but to English football.

The Times