Liverpool’s over-hauled midfield may have got the most column inches since the summer, while an attack featuring Mo Salah is always going to grab the headlines, but it’s a watertight defence that has got so many punters betting on them securing a second league crown this May.
Nearly two-thirds of the way through a season that has seen the Reds lose only twice – both times in North London – their obstinate and well-organised back-line boast the joint-best defensive record in the top-flight having conceded on just 22 occasions. That works out at a goal every 94 minutes.
It’s an impressive ratio that sharply contrasts to Liverpool’s much leakier incarnation last season, a defence that was breached several times over at Brentford, Brighton and Wolves, and what makes their present parsimony all the more noteworthy is how it has been achieved despite injuries taking a toll.
From early December, Jurgen Klopp has been deprived of Joel Matip to a long-term lay-off while Ibrahima Konate, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson have also spent time on the treatment table.
Indeed, the only member of their first-choice back four to not encounter fitness issues at this juncture is a revived and rejuvenated Virgil Van Dijk.
Which frankly, and somewhat simplistically put, pretty much explains all of the above.
It explains the eight clean sheets, two of which were attained against teams prominent in the Premier League top four odds. It explains their lofty league position.
Pertinently, it also explains how Liverpool have managed to maintain one of their best defensive records in recent seasons despite having an over-hauled midfield learning week-on-week how to protect it.
Should Jurgen Klopp’s men go on to lift the league crown a million words will be written to elucidate the journey but really it will all boil down to a very straightforward fact. That the world’s most accomplished defender finally got his mojo back.
Where he lost it nobody knows but the why is fairly easy to deduce. Such is the towering Dutchman’s importance to both his club and country it made him undroppable and flogged to exhaustion over a sustained period of time there was always going to be repercussions.
Over one especially gruelling 18-month spell, that included the World Cup in Qatar, Van Dijk played a staggering 91 matches.
So it was that mistakes began to creep in along with uncharacteristic lapses in concentration. For swathes of last season, watching him play brought to mind a scene in Superman III where Clark Kent has lost his superpowers and is beaten up in a diner. He spies his own blood and is aghast at the sight. He is for the first time mortal.
Such poor displays couldn’t last of course, nor the crisis of confidence that accompanied them, and sure enough towards the tail-end of last season we began to see again the Van Dijk of old.
His swagger returned. So too, the ease in which he shepherded forwards towards safer ground. His innate reading of crosses became innate anew.
Furthermore, add in a summer of rest and what we have now is arguably the finest version of the defender yet witnessed, a summation likely shared by his manager.
“Everybody can see Virg is back and it’s obvious,” Klopp recently said, following another dominant outing. He then added two words that perfectly sum up Liverpool’s reliance on their captain and colossus. “Thank God.”
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to Alamy*
