As Liverpool brace themselves for a mammoth few weeks after the break, fans have every reason to get themselves fired up about what lies around the corner.
This will do, won’t it?
New beginnings can be daunting, but the manner in which Liverpool’s fresh approach has been overwhelmingly embraced since the summer has been to everyone’s credit.
This could have been an unravelling, there were ample excuses for it to be so. Externally, onlookers were falling over themselves to count the Reds out of a title race and reduce them to their own undetermined little box.
Arne Slot had every reason to flick through the Premier League managerial textbook of mitigation and buy himself some time, churning out waffle about transitions and five-year plans.
Instead, his tone from the outset has been a bullish one. The Dutchman has welcomed the notion that there are no hiding places at a club like Liverpool – sprinting with the baton rather than tentatively glancing over his shoulder.
It is only the start and bigger tests are to come, but the footballing world could soon quickly run out of ways in which to downplay the new boss’ early work.
Anfield reawakened
For all the perfectly legitimate glorification of the pragmatic, cut-throat style Slot has brought to L4, it is by no means necessarily conducive to the carnage it often takes to ignite us.
If the last few weeks have demonstrated anything, it is that the Kop can always be trusted to do its job – with or without an orchestrator.
Seasons can spring to life when you least expect them. The 4-1 victory over Luton back in February illustrates this perfectly, and the recent comeback win over Brighton can act as a similar tonic for 2024/25.
In times gone by, we would have allowed that one against the Seagulls to get away from us. There were no indications on or off the pitch in the first 45 minutes that we had the stomach for the fight, but Anfield flexed its muscles after the interval and the rest is history.
The atmosphere against Xabi Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen followed suit on a night when dropped points were far less consequential, and the impressive 4-0 thrashing of the German champions set us up swimmingly for Aston Villa.
No supplementary encouragement was required at 8pm on the Saturday night before an international break, but Man City’s timely stumble before kick-off certainly didn’t do us any harm.
Atmosphere chat can be tiresome. When things are going badly it can lead to finger-pointing, and when things are more positive it affords us something to moan about. Unfortunately, it is human nature.
Ultimately, the eight days before the Reds went away served up a fitting reminder of the power Anfield will always hold. No amount of frankly unhelpful discourse will conceal that for long.
Seamless handover
We have every right to be overjoyed with the start. Make no mistake, racking up 15 wins from 17 to commence the sequel to one of the greatest Liverpool tales ever told is the stuff of dreams and should be treated as such.
There was, however, never a need to prematurely disregard any hopes of success in this campaign or labour the significance of the structural changes.
Picking up where one of the club’s most successful ever managers left off brings pressure that can promptly snuff out the ill-equipped, just ask David Moyes.
Slot was having none of it, rightly so. He opted, alternatively, to focus on the benefits of inheriting a squad in such fine fettle and in the kind of shape many were guilty of underestimating.
Among those setting the bar lower than it arguably belonged was ourselves. I heard countless times in the summer from Liverpool fans willing to bite off hands for a top-four place and a cup run.
Perhaps we just needed a gentle reminder of what we were capable of. Perhaps we had simply enabled the pain of Jurgen Klopp’s last dance to cloud memories of the riches we had sampled prior.
If Arsenal are allowed to cite an ostensible injury crisis as grounds for an underwhelming start, perhaps it would be no bad thing to rewind the clock to a conceivably sliding doors top-of-the-table ding-dong with Pep Guardiola’s Man City.
The Reds went into the contest a point clear of their neighbours at the other end of the M62 and one shy of Arsenal having played a game less.
It was a game with colossal implications, and we undertook the assignment without the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold, Diogo Jota, Alisson, Curtis Jones, Ibrahima Konate and more, while Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson were restricted to substitute appearances.
Sustaining a title challenge into April amid a casualty backdrop of that nature is the mark of an elite side, that remains the case. The new manager has done an astonishing job and exceeded all realistic expectations, but he hasn’t waved a magic wand.
What next?
We know only too well how little the opening exchanges can mean in the grand scheme of things. No prizes are dished out in November and, as far as the honours in May are concerned, there is no room for back-patting.
Fortunately, Slot has had little interest in back-patting from the off. He insisted before the Aston Villa game that he is “not surprised” by the start his side have made and talked in his very first interview about wanting to make improvements on last season’s third-place finish straight away.
Liverpool found themselves top at Christmas for three consecutive seasons from 2018/19 and just a point off the summit during midnight mass last year. It used to mean something before the enterprise became as exhausting as it is now.
Our experiences – both bad and good – continue to define us and act as marker posts for the bigger picture.
Each battle scar teaches us something different and – despite having done it just once in the last 34 years – we know more about what it takes to win the league title now than ever before.
The only way to make any of this count is to continue in this vein, and the upcoming visit of the current champions will represent the most significant examination so far.
It feels like an enormous opportunity, given how the last two weekends have gone – one with potentially season-defining ramifications. But you sense there is no danger of the boss letting his players get ahead of themselves whatever happens.
That’s the playbook. Those same people who were desperate to count us out in August are suddenly equally eager to label us favourites, we’ve been here before.
We’ll stick to the box we were consigned to for now. One step at a time.
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