Liverpool give birth to their twentieth title defence tonight. History’s the midwife, expectation the screaming child. Season number 111 in the top-flight, 64 consecutively, and the club’s 34th Premier League campaign since the replacement of the old First Division.
For the first time since August 2019, Liverpool will be firing the opening salvo. We play first. We get to set the tone. You won’t need any reminding of how the 19/20 season played out, but let’s revisit it anyway: Liverpool *stormed* their way to the league title with the second-highest points total in PL history, ending the campaign a staggering 18 points clear of Manchester City.
It too was a Friday night, when Norwich City rocked up on that mild summer evening. A raucous welcome back in the first competitive fixture post-Madrid. That new Premier League season began to the sound of “Champions of Europe” echoing around Anfield, with a striking mosaic on the Kop featuring the European Cup, a Liver bird, and the number six. Klopp’s side hit their stride just as quickly as the 50,000 or so supporters inside the ground that night, as we pounced into a 4-0 lead by the 41st minute.
A marker was established. You do not want to play Liverpool. That marker quickly became permanent; at the point in which the season was curtailed due to the Covid pandemic, Liverpool had won all but two of their 29 league matches. 82 points by mid-March. If that’s the total after 38 fixtures this time around, Liverpool could well be back-to-back league champions for the first time since 1984. It would’ve done the trick with eight whole points of breathing room, last year.
This current iteration of Liverpool are Champions, that’s important. Well, they are and they aren’t. Given the mammoth turnover this summer, likely up to eight new faces through the door by the end of the window1, the makeup of the squad will be/already feels wildly different to the group that paraded the silver trophy around the city back in May.
Slot’s side obviously lost the Community Shield last week. The defeat told us a lot yet none of it was something that should’ve served as a surprise. Regardless of the quality of your summer shopping haul, it takes time to bed four starters into a side who are, consequently, attempting to reinvent themselves both on-and-off the ball. Liverpool, of course, cannot afford anything other than a strong start to the season and Slot will certainly refrain from pedalling a ‘transition’ narrative, however the truth is that we just most likely are not going to see the absolute best of this team in the opening weeks.
Liverpool losing on penalties, in a charity competition, to the FA Cup winners does not resemble some sort of ‘New Dawn Fades2’ sobering decline. Certainly, it did not represent the unraveling of promise, nor the dimming of a new era. No fading light on the horizon, instead a rising fire.
Anyways, I think it’s necessary for one big tactical preview ahead of the season opener and, crucially, to delve into tonight’s matchup and dissect how those glaring issues from Palace can be solved, just five days on from Wembley. I’ll jump into Bournemouth, too - how different of an outfit they will be from last season’s meetings, how they can be hurt and, indeed, how Iraola’s side could hurt Liverpool.
The Cherries are, of course, in a strange old position. Iraola would’ve dreamt of building on the club’s best ever top-flight season (56 points), however Bournemouth have instead been ransacked as they sit £90m in the green this transfer window. It’s one huge testament to their phenomenal structure and recruitment that a historical minnow of the English game3, with a stadium housing just 11,379, can amass £162m in sales by the way.
They’ve reinvested some of that money well, with the clever additions of Bafodé Diakité (24) from Lille, Adrien Truffert (23) from Rennes, Eli Junior Kroupi (19) from Lorient and Djordje Petrovic (25) from Chelsea. It seems as though Leverkusen forward Amine Adli (25) will be added to that list in the coming days.