Liverpool could end Manchester City with Odegaard helping put pressure on six-pointer
Can we officially rule Manchester City out of the title race if they come a(nother) cropper at Anfield on Sunday? Feels naughty even to think it, but 11 points is a heck of a gap even for second-half-of-the-season City to reel in.
Game to watch: Liverpool v Manchester City
Donât know about you, but if we were picking a ground where we had to go to play a must-win game to prevent our disorientating and apparently total loss of form escalating into a season-ending catastrophe then Anfield might not be our first choice.
That, though, is the task facing Pep Guardiola at the most beleaguered he has ever been and a team that has lost the entire run of itself. A five-game losing streak saw City crash out of the Carabao, drop some irrelevant but narrative-heavy Champions League points and most importantly lose three Premier League games in a row, the last of which surely represented a career low for everyone involved.
The good news is that City have since managed to snap that run of defeats by battling bravely to a 3-3 home draw against Feyenoord in the Champions League after blowing a 3-0 lead in the final 15 minutes. Youâre still thinking about the bad news, arenât you?
We genuinely have no idea how Guardiola even goes about starting to get his and his playersâ heads into this game, but we have to trust heâs come up with something. Ordinarily, Anfield is a place where even Pep and City leave relatively happy if theyâve got a point to take home with them. But not this year. Not now. Even a point here would leave City still languishing eight adrift of Liverpool and, depending on how other results have gone, potentially as low as fifth in the table.
That wonât do, will it? Yet defeat is entirely unthinkable. An 11-point gap really does take City into the arena of the unwell.
It seems odd the focus being so squarely on the visitors for a game at Anfield, especially when Liverpool have so impressively eased themselves into the eight-point lead they currently enjoy, but also itâs just life, isnât it? The team collapsing in on itself after years of sustained dominance is just far more exciting to watch than the one being quietly, efficiently excellent.
But what an extraordinary chance Liverpool have here. Their biggest rivals of recent years at an all-time low while Liverpool under Arne Slot have already reached the kind of calm assurance where Champions League wins over Real Madrid appear routine because they are.
Liverpool donât need to win this game, but what a message it sends to absolutely everyone else if they do.
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Team to watch: Aston Villa
Sky Sports may have pulled a Homer with their Super Sunday choices last week, with Ipswich v Manchester United suddenly becoming a much bigger draw than anyone could have expected thanks to Ruben Amorim and, it really quite irritatingly and rudely turned out, Ed Sheeran.
Not so lucky this time around. Chelsea v Aston Villa is an absolutely fine early Sunday TV game, but it does now turn out that either of the other Europa/Conference-shifted games might have been more tempting.
United-Everton is obviously worth watching, because one thing United absolutely now are under Amorim is watchable. One, because they play much more fun football than they did under Ten Hag, two, because âfunâ doesnât always necessarily mean âbetterâ, and three, it is for quite some time now just going to be interesting to see which members of his square-peg-laden squad he is going to try and hammer into his round 3-4-3 holes this time.
And Everton⊠well, weâre worried about Everton. They have lost their way a bit at a really bad time given the sadistically cruel December the fixture computer has dealt them.
Then thereâs Tottenham-Fulham and with it the prospect of the most obvious punchline in the history of the sport. But often the fact you can see the punchline coming from a mile off is what makes a joke even funnier, isnât it?
Instead we get Chelsea v Villa. Like we said, thatâs fine. Itâs not a bad game, is it? Just perhaps a bit less scope for amusement. Chelsea are just really quite good now. There is no doubt some absurd chaos around the corner because itâs what they do, but on the field not so much.
Villa, though. Very quietly and without really telling anyone, they have stumbled into something of a crisis of their own.
They didnât win a single game in November in any competition, and didnât win either of their last two games of October either. The early buzz of Champions League excitement has rather given way to the realisation â similar to the one Newcastle felt last year â that the added burden really is quite draining.
An unconvincing 3-1 home win over Wolves in September is Villaâs only win this season immediately after a Champions League game. And that was their first one. Since then, they have followed European nights with home draws against Bournemouth and a low-ebb Man United and defeat at Anfield.
Itâs a run that could really do with ending, but like City at Anfield they appear to have foolishly decided to attempt it at one of the hardest places in the country currently. They should have played Southampton or something instead. Thatâs what weâd have done.
But too late now. Stamford Bridge it is, where Chelsea havenât lost in nine games since the opening weekend against what was then a very, very different Manchester City team.
As crises go, three points off the top four and almost certain to reach the Champions League knockout stage isnât the worst Villa have faced. But itâs a long time since theyâve looked quite this unsure of themselves.
Player to watch: Martin Odegaard
Interesting, isnât it, that each of the three best teams in the country have that one player who, like Lebowskiâs rug, just tie everything together and make the whole thing work?
Interesting too that those three players are all so different. At City it is, of course, Rodri who cannot be replaced. Heâs easily the least overtly noticeable of the three. Surrounded by more conspicuous players, Rodriâs work is the kind that you notice most clearly â and it really has been clear in the last few weeks â when it suddenly isnât there. The whole machine just stops operating as efficiently, sometimes breaking down altogether.
For Liverpool, itâs still Mo Salah with all the contract shenanigans and prospects for next season that entails. We donât yet know how significant his absence might be for them, leaving us no choice but to speculate that Liverpool would in fact be 13th without him if we work it out in a really, really stupid way.
And for Arsenal, itâs Martin Odegaard. As with City and Rodri, we donât need to imagine what it might look like without him via the medium of nonsense. Weâve already seen it and, yeah, itâs just nowhere near as good.
But you donât ever get the same sense of a player working in the background with Odegaard. He is a true conductor at Arsenal, and they have looked far more their old selves since his return from injury.
Arsenalâs last trip to the London Stadium to face West Ham was a memorable one, and after putting five past Sporting in midweek another big away result on Saturday evening would be no surprise and pile pressure on all those around them who donât play until the following day.
Manager to watch: Ben Dawson
Only three TV games on Saturday and Sunday this week, which is utter woke nonsense. But it does mean we can go anywhere for our manager to watch and apparently there are ways and means to watch games that arenât officially on TV if you know a guy.
And it might as well be Leicester caretaker manager Ben Dawson, might it? Because itâs probably our only chance. Recruited from Newcastle in the summer, Dawson has been leading training this week following Steve Cooperâs departure and before Ruud van Nistelrooyâs seemingly imminent appointment.
Dawson has a tough gig for his first/only game as well, travelling to Brentford to take on the Premier Leagueâs most formidable home record. Sixteen of the Beesâ 17 points this season have come from their six games at the Gtech.
Football League game to watch: Middlesbrough v Hull
The Itâs Not Really Yorkshire Though Is It Derby sees Hull bidding to arrest a four-game losing run that has dropped them into the bottom three while Middlesbrough look to get their promotion bid back on track after their gleeful little run of goal-laden wins over QPR, Luton and Oxford came to a grinding halt against Blackburn in midweek.
European game to watch: Borussia Dortmund v Bayern Munich
The biggest game in German football has an extra dimension here for pitting Dortmundâs flawless home record (P6 W6) against Bayernâs almost flawless away (P6 W5 D1).
Dortmund can also approach Der Klassiker with a bit more belief than appeared likely a few weeks ago. After a run of four defeats in five games across all competitions, Dortmund have stabilised under Nuri Sahin and have now won four of the subsequent five.
They absolutely must win this to retain even an outside interest in a title race that appears to be going in a much more predictable direction than last seasonâs Leverkusen-inspired outlier.
Despite their home excellence, Dortmund are already 10 points adrift of a Bayern side still propelled by the never-ending goals of Harry Kane but yet somehow having now also broken the curse. It really will be something if heâs still on this list come May.
