(Football news) Arne Slot’s juggernaut holds a gargantuan 23-point advantage over their long-time rivals in the top-flight table as the Reds continue their pursuit of stardom while Ruben Amorim’s troops peer nervously over their shoulder.
As Arsenal, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest scrap for the best-of-the-rest badge, Liverpool are yet to suffer the dreaded dip in form that some have foreseen for Slot’s crop, who ended 2024 as they mean to begin 2025 by putting five unanswered goals past West Ham United on December 29.
Luis Diaz, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Diogo Jota, Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo all made the London Stadium nets bulge to propel Liverpool to a fourth win on the spin in all tournaments, as well as prolonging their unbeaten run to a monumental 23 matches since their one and only blip thus far.
Not since Nottingham Forest’s mid-September success at Anfield have Slot’s men come out on the wrong end of the scoreline, a wonderful run of winter form that has left Liverpool six points better off than Arsenal at the summit, with a game in hand to boot.
Seldom failing to make their attacking forays count, Liverpool enter Sunday’s game aiming to score at least two goals for the 12th Premier League game running, and each of their last three victories has seen the league leaders find the back of the net three times or more.
Defensive vulnerabilities on the road in particular did rear their ugly heads for Liverpool over the festive period, but shutting out West Ham in the capital saw Slot’s team end a four-game run without a clean sheet in all competitions, and they have officially overtaken home specialists Brentford as the best-performing team in the land on their own patch.
As Liverpool rejoice in a four-match winning sequence, their feeble foes are coincidentally conducting their post-mortem of their fourth successive defeat, having been thoroughly outwitted and outplayed by a fired-up Newcastle United on their own patch on December 30.
A nightmarish first half saw Alexander Isak and Joelinton flaunt their aerial strengths before the humiliating early substitution of Joshua Zirkzee, whose change did precede an improvement in performance levels from Amorim’s side, but not enough to overturn the early deficit.
On the back of their third straight league loss at home—a fate that had not befallen them since 1979—the words Manchester United and relegation are now being used in the same sentence unironically, as Amorim’s strugglers are just seven points clear of the drop zone in a lowly 14th position.
Having also failed to breach Bournemouth and Wolverhampton Wanderers’ nets, Man United are at risk of losing four consecutive league games without scoring for the first time in almost 116 years, and they have never been beaten in four straight top-flight games in a single season during the Premier League era.
However, breaking unwanted club records has been the theme for Man United during the Erik ten Hag and admittedly short-lived Amorim eras, although the head-to-head record does not make for as grim reading as some may think.
Indeed, Liverpool have only beaten Manchester United in one of their last four contests and could only draw this fixture 0-0 last season—despite having an astounding 34 shots—but that win for the Reds was a 3-0 Old Trafford trouncing in September, where Salah produced one of his customary Mancunian masterclasses.
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