Liverpool Still Inarguably the Best Team In Europe
Winning 8 of 10 Champions League games, plus total Premier League domination, is inarguable
Look Liverpool, you’re not gonna win the league. You’re not good enough. Don’t be silly. You’ve got a new manager who is the next Erik ten Hag, and who is going to also clearly fail as he’s replacing a legend, and that means he’ll be like when Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger left, but even worse as he’s the next Erik ten Hag.
Okay ... so you might win the league, but you fucked up in the Champions League and the FA Cup, you total *losers*!
I wrote something along these lines – that the adjustment to Liverpool being incredibly good has led to claims that Liverpool are now less incredibly good (whenever there’s a game in which they are not incredibly good) – before the PSG game, which then went fairly close to how I expected: Liverpool would be much better, PSG would be not as good, but I still saw it as a coin toss as to who would progress; and interestingly, Liverpool lost every actual coin toss in the process.
Liverpool Still the Best
Since 2022, PSG have spent around €700m on players, some of whom they’ve since sold or loaned out (including one who cost more than Liverpool have ever paid for a player, unadjusted for inflation). That doesn’t include the fortune paid for Achraf Hakimi in 2021 that, with football inflation, would be around €100m now.
They are perhaps the most privileged club in world football, for various reasons.
They have an excellent team, but given the context, they bloody well should do. They had so many advantages over Liverpool, including a league so weak they could rest the team at the weekend, and funding that’s through the roof.
Even with Liverpool’s 16-point lead (which could have been down to 10 if Arsenal won their games in hand, as of Saturday when Slot picked his XI, and down to seven if Arsenal were to win at Anfield), the notion that Liverpool should have gone weaker against Southampton is just mind-boggling.
It’s always an option, for sure; but there is no right or wrong answer unless you just use hindsight bias.
Lose to Southampton at home with a weaker XI, and if Arsenal get a boost from it and win at Man United, then suddenly people would talk about Liverpool bottling the league.
As I noted before the second leg, Liverpool have already played 40+ games, many super-intense due to the greater number of strong (and physically powerful) Premier League teams, and the super-tough draw the Champions League in the group and the knockout, and five extra ‘Premier League’ games in the League Cup, meaning that if Liverpool, also coming off the back of five manic, must-win league games in 15 days, were not as sharp or fresh as PSG, then ... no shit, Sherlock!
This is not a farmer’s league, after all, but as I showed, the best in Europe by far, based on Club Elo rankings from just before the PSG game, with a comparison for 2016 when the English league was weak:
Liverpool are still ranked #1. In total, 11 teams are from the Premier League (44%), and only two from the French league, and one of those is down in 20th.
And of the ones faced, Liverpool have beaten thirteen of those 25 teams at least once this season, and in some cases twice.
Including all those games, plus RB Leipzig who were top of the Bundesliga when Liverpool went there (but removing PSV as it was the Reds’ reserve side in a dead rubber), the 25 games saw a phenomenal 72% win rate, and an average elite xG Difference per game of +1.16, and an even better goal difference per game.
If Liverpool struggled against a fresher, faster, costlier PSG who were able to peak at the right time as their league is a sham, so be it. Those are the vagaries of knockout football, and terrible luck in the draw. The best team doesn’t always win the Champions League, as it takes just one bad game; or a bad penalty shootout (and even then, none of Liverpool’s penalties were bad, but the keeper guessed the right way).
The above table, based on the Club Elo Index top 25 (plus RBL), therefore does not include the 3-0 win at Old Trafford, and further wins against Spanish and Italian sides in the Champions League (plus, the unlucky-not-to-win home game versus Man United).
That would take it to 21 wins from 29 games, and only three defeats, and one of those (at Spurs in the cup) was a typical Stuart Attwell farce.
That is staggering form against the 25 best teams faced, and the form against the rest is excellent too (high win percentage, even better xG Difference).
PSG Are Uniquely Positioned
Hence, if Slot had rotated more at the weekend, it may have helped; but if Liverpool dropped points against Southampton, it would not have helped.
PSG, with the French league having collapsed in various ways (but where they just get richer and richer), have everything in their favour to dominate European football for years to come.
And that’s before a suspiciously PSG-favouring ref from Romania who would have fit in well with classic iffy days of Euro-bribery, where even his coins looked suspect and plastic, with his compatriots on VAR blind to anything that would legitimately help Liverpool.
Still, judging Liverpool against PSG in the spring, where one has greater advantages, is not the same as judging both teams over the course of a season.
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