Liverpool: Rafa Benitez’s return to Anfield on Boxing Day is likely to stir memories of an unsuccessful Liverpool challenge for the Premier League title, but Jurgen Klopp is trying to focus on the present.
Klopp’s Liverpool hold a four-point lead at the top of the table as Benitez, the club’s manager between 2004 and 2010, visits with his relegation-threatened Newcastle United side, Wednesday.
There is a strong sense this could be the season that the English league trophy comes to Anfield for the first time since 1990, although recent history is offering mixed messages as to whether that will happen.
First, the good news for Liverpool: in eight of the past 10 seasons, the leaders on Christmas Day have gone on to win the Premier League. Now, the bad news: on the two occasions it did not happen, the Christmas leaders were Liverpool. In 2008/09, Manchester United won the title; in 2013/14 it was Manchester City.
The late collapse to miss out in 2014 was perhaps the more immediately painful experience for Liverpool fans, but the failure of 2009, under Benitez, maybe offers more reason for regret. Both cases offer lessons that the Merseyside club, however, appear to have absorbed.
Mohamed Salah, after a quiet start to the season, is thriving after being switched from a wide position to a central attacking role. His total of 11 Premier League goals is only one fewer than Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the competition’s leading scorer.
Yet despite that quality, avoiding the fate of the 2008-09 Liverpool team, managed by Benitez, might still need a little luck to go the way of Klopp’s men.
