Leo Tolstoy said each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Keen observers of the Premier League may have noticed the same theorem could have been applied to each of the current top six at one stage or another this season. If Leicester City winning the title last term was funny ha-ha, this time the mood has been more funny peculiar.
The six biggest and richest clubs in the Premier League occupy each of the top spots, and Leicester are in a fight not to become only the second side in English football after Manchester City in 1938 to be relegated the season directly after winning the title.
Between them Chelsea (+30), Tottenham Hotspur (+5), Manchester City (+2), Arsenal (+2), Liverpool (+12) and Manchester United (+5) are a mammoth 56 points better off than at the same stage after 24 games last season. The 87 matches they have won collectively are just 11 fewer than the 98 victories the other 14 clubs have managed between them.
Equilibrium has been restored. Yet all is not well, at least on the surface.
Forget the NHS being run into the ground, or the flagging economy post-Brexit, the real crisis in England since August has been at Premier League clubs doing decidedly better than they were last season. That's the story being peddled, anyhow. Panic is infectious.
Over the course of the campaign, it has been passed around as if smeared on a baton, from Arsene Wenger to Antonio Conte to Jose Mourinho to Mauricio Pochettino to Pep Guardiola. It is currently in the joint-custody of Jurgen Klopp and Wenger, like when the music stops midway through a handover in a game of pass the parcel. In this case, the prize is a massive dose of hysteria.
The American author Chuck Palahniuk in his novel Invisibles Monsters wrote: "Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly."
Social media dictates empty rooms no longer exist. We have the whole world in the palm of our hand. Shouty football opinion is fed into our system as though we are hooked up to a drip.
Football has long-since stopped being a passion sated between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, along with the odd midweek game. The match as a physical live experience that provides a vehicle to release frustration has become practically redundant, unless you bring along a homemade banner. Twitter and Fan TV in particular have allowed for the tiniest scab to be picked at relentlessly, until invariably it becomes a weeping sore.
Football has always had an exaggerated sense of itself. There's nothing wrong with that, it's part of the fun, but this season in particular, it's as though every single defeat by one of the top six is painted as a disaster. Losing a game has become the equivalent of failing an exam, as opposed to handing in some homework a little late.
It's as if we can no longer comprehend the concept that two clubs can't win the same game. One has to be the loser with a capital L. As for six not going into four Champions League places at the end of the season, there's going to be protest marches to match anything witnessed post-Donald Trump's inauguration.
The banners will be spectacular. Gary Neville may implode on co-commentary duty alongside Martin Tyler: "Coming up after the break there's an idiot with a banner. And it's live!"
The Premier League has perhaps never had a raft of so many top-level managers. It's fair to say we are holding them to the highest of standards.None of the aforementioned are faultless, yet statistically each of them are either outdoing themselves or their predecessor. The reality of the situation behind the media construct—perpetuated by enough fans to make it seem real—is none of the top six managers will be under too much pressure from their respective club boards.
Likewise, with the exception perhaps of Wenger—and even then it's hard to be sure—the majority of supporters are probably, to varying degrees, more quietly content with their manager than foaming at the mouth.
In a piece written in early January titled "Why are the top six so much better this season than last?" I noted how, "five of the six managers overseeing the leading pack, with Jurgen Klopp the exception, have come in for criticism at some point or other over a season just past the halfway mark says much about English football's insatiable appetite for delivering black-and-white verdicts after each and every game."
It's Klopp's turn now.
There is no way of sugarcoating a run since the turn of the year that has seen Liverpool win just once in 10 matches, against League Two side Plymouth Argyle in an FA Cup replay after a goalless draw at Anfield. Since beating Manchester City on New Year's Eve in the Premier League, they have drawn with Sunderland, Manchester United and Chelsea, and lost to Swansea City and Hull City.
To place Liverpool on a surgeon's table and dissect every folly is as mawkishly fascinating as it is with every other club, but before putting on rubber gloves, it's probably worth pointing out (adopts Alan Partridge voice) Klopp is a bloody good manager. Amid the minutiae cited over where it's all gone right or wrong, it's sometimes useful to illuminate the obvious in neon lights.
He won back-to-back Bundesliga titles with Borussia Dortmund. He didn't do it in his first season, though, in 2008/09. No one expected him to. A sixth-placed finish was followed by one place better the following season.
The campaign after that in 2010/11, he won the Bundesliga, which Dortmund retained the following season courtesy of a then-record 81 points. Dortmund also beat Bayern Munich 5-2 in the DFB-Pokal final to secure the double that year. Consecutive runner-up spots and a seventh-placed finish concluded his time at Dortmund, which also included German Super Cup victories in his final two campaigns.
It's a remarkable story, and it's important to remember that's precisely what it is. Stories in a traditional sense tend to have a beginning, middle and end. In the Premier League, it's as though people want the end before passing through the other two parts. The concept of steady growth seems alien to English football at present, and it's an ugly development.
Would sixth- and fifth-placed finishes in his first two campaigns at Liverpool sate the appetite of supporters, and perhaps more pertinently the media? Given the club are fifth now and the noises being made aren't exactly harmonious, it seems unlikely.
Few people expected Liverpool to seriously vie for the title this season. They are a point better off than Manchester United, and only one, three and four shy of Arsenal, Manchester City and Spurs, respectively. There's an argument to say Klopp is a victim of overachieving in the first part of the season. Whatever, it seems a little hasty to allow a bleak month or so to overshadow the five excellent ones that preceded it.
There's no doubt he has his players onside, and that's not always easy when you are asking them to run so much. Counter-pressing may be in vogue, but it's one of the hardest things to get right. It requires endless fine-tuning on the training ground and unity and trust between the players performing it. Klopp again faces accusations of draining his players by working them too hard, but that they have so readily bought into the manager's vision says much of the power of his personality.
It was only in December that Guardiola was waxing lyrical over a manager he didn't always see eye-to-eye with when the pair were together in the Bundesliga at the same time.
"Maybe he is the best manager in the world creating teams who attack the back four, with this amount of players, this intensity, with the ball and without the ball," he said, per the Guardian's Paul Wilson. "When he [Klopp] speaks about his football being heavy metal, I understand completely. It is so aggressive. For the fans it is really good."
That's not to say finding fault with Liverpool requires a fine-tooth comb.
He has made mistakes. All managers do. Yet given the financial straightjacket, in relative terms, he is made to wear courtesy of the manner in which Fenway Sports Group choose to run the club, it seems a manager who largely eschews big-name players in favour of those willing to buy into his team ethos is a perfect fit. Liverpool have the fifth largest budget and are fifth.
Sprinkled among the detritus of a season being chipped away at is a pair of defeats to Southampton at the semi-final stage of the EFL Cup and a humiliating home loss to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup.
It is a malaise that has lasted over a month, and one that deserves scrutiny. It has ended Liverpool's interest in both domestic cup competitions and effectively left them scrapping for a top-four finish, despite having finished the year as arguably the most credible challengers to Chelsea for the title. A New Year's resolution to close a six-point gap on the leaders now more requires a Christmas miracle. The difference is 13 points and counting.
The sight of Hull striker Oumar Niasse sealing his side's victory after racing on unopposed to a straight ball from back to front painted a bleak picture for Liverpool and Klopp in their last league game. Schoolboy defenders across the country would balk at having their own efforts held up in comparison.
Klopp's decision to loan Mamadou Sakho to Crystal Palace when his other options at centre-half are Dejan Lovren, Joel Matip and Ragnar Klavan seems a bold one. Two clean sheets in 10 games, both against Plymouth, tell their own story.
It's here where the real paradox of Klopp's time at Liverpool kicks in. On the front foot and on song, they are capable of playing some of the best football seen in recent Premier League years. It's hypnotic. They are still the division's top scorers. Yet at the back it's as though in between matches Klopp forgets to coach how to defend set pieces and balls into the six-yard box. They are no better defensively than they were under Brendan Rodgers.
As the tweet below shows, Klopp is not averse to moving large numbers of players in and out as he looks to mould a squad in his own image. Having had three transfer windows to play with, there's no doubt his back four should be more balanced—as should the goalkeeping situation—but with time history suggests he will make decisive and bold moves in terms of personnel. It seems unlikely Klopp has a paper-thin squad through choice.
After Saturday lunchtime's potentially season-defining clash (see, hyperbole really is infectious) against Tottenham at Anfield, the fixture list is no less forgiving. Liverpool play Arsenal, Manchester City and Everton in three of the five matches that follow. Klopp will remind his players they have not lost against any of their top-six rivals this season, taking 13 points in the process.
All four of Liverpool's league defeats this season have come against sides in the bottom eight. Had losses to Hull City (18th), Swansea City (17th), Bournemouth (14th) and Burnley (12th) been victories, Klopp's men would be just a point behind Chelsea. While accepting every club in the league could say likewise, it's hardly inconceivable this is a wrong Klopp could right in time.
Liverpool's lack of a Plan B when opposition hold a deep defensive line and squeeze space in behind to within an inch of its life, amid accusations Klopp has been "found out" (have his tactics ever been a secret?), is less problematic when facing opposition with ambitions of their own. Spurs won't be gung ho, but they won't just sit and wait to pick Liverpool off, either.
Klopp's perceived inability to think on his feet during games is seen as his Achilles' heel as a manager—great when things are going his way, less so when the tide of a contest changes its course unexpectedly.
Last season's defeats in the Europa League and Capital One Cup finals being a case in point. Liverpool failed to adopt their game plan to cope with either Sevilla or Manchester City. They have become almost sticks to beat Klopp with. Getting to two finals is less cited as a positive, but more a symbol of how far Liverpool still have to go.
It's a strange quirk that Klopp and Rodgers share near identical records in their first 54 Premier League games as Liverpool manager. Each won 94 points from a possible 162 (per Opta). It is also no surprise it is a story that has caught fire on social media. It is largely being presented without comment, but there's a sense an eyebrow is being arched in the background.
The premise seemingly being it somehow demonstrates how Liverpool have at best stagnated under the German. To draw such a conclusion given the numerous variables to consider, without weighing up the context and time period in which these results occurred, and the squads each respective manager inherited (just imagine Klopp working with Luis Suarez), is like a detective bursting on to a crime scene wearing muddy boots and holding a jam doughnut.
It just seems like a fairly arbitrary starting point for comparison between two managers. It's like focusing on the start of a 1,500 metre race as opposed to the end. David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and now Jose Mourinho are judged against what Sir Alex Ferguson left behind, as opposed to how the Scot fared when he pitched up at Old Trafford in 1986.
In turn, a better comparison to make would be the periods before and after Rodgers and Klopp passed each other at the Shankly Gates. For those that are interested, Rodgers' last 54 games in charge of Liverpool netted 93 points from 162. Again the numbers are remarkably similar, but still it's not really something to beat Klopp with.
In Rodgers' three full seasons in charge of Liverpool, he steered them to seventh, second and sixth. When he was sacked in his fourth term in October 2015 they were 10th, though the season was just eight league games old. It's not a disastrous record, and were it not for letting slip a five-point lead at the top of the Premier League with just three games to go in 2014, he would have delivered a first title since 1990. Even Rafa Benitez couldn't do that.
Liverpool scored 101 league goals the season they finished second under Rodgers, the club's most since the 1895/96 campaign and the third highest in Premier League history. Putting to one side the teeth, the tan, the £292 million he spent, the envelope trick, the purchases of Christian Benteke/Mario Balotelli/Rickie Lambert/Fabio Borini and the Shankly David Brent rhetoric for just a minute, he's not quite the joke figure revisionists make him out to be.
At the time, Sky Sports' Jamie Carragher said of the man he played under (via the BBC): "Rodgers can't argue in some ways. He's been there three years, he hasn't won a trophy and they've played Champions League football once. That's not good enough for Liverpool.
"Liverpool are becoming Tottenham. They think they are a big club but the real big clubs aren't concerned about what they do. What are these owners going to do to get the club back to where it needs to be?"
Ahead of Saturday's game between the two clubs, "becoming Tottenham" doesn't seem like such a disastrous scenario. This week, Carragher turned his ire on to the lack of investment the club made on new players in January.
"A major disappointment, whether it was down to the manager or the board, was not getting any reinforcements in in January," said Carragher, per Sky Sports.
"The fact that they haven't reinforced from a position of strength—where they were in the league as the best challengers for Chelsea—has meant they have fallen away. They don't have the squad to match the other teams."
It's fair to say former Liverpool players are not shy to voice their misgivings. Carragher has been joined by fellow ex-Liverpool stalwarts Didi Hamann (mindset issues), John Aldridge (just need to "man up"), Steve Nicol (leaky defence) and Jason McAteer (stop being so nice) in helpfully pointing out just what has been going wrong at Anfield.
Klopp can have no excuses going forward, not now it has all been spelled out for him.
All statistics worked out via the Premier League's official website unless otherwise stated