If Liverpool wins the Premier League and no one is in the stands to celebrate it, does it count? Well, yes, but there's nothing quite like winning the club's record-tying 20th first-division title in front of a roaring Anfield crowd, as Liverpool found out on Sunday. Despite getting the Premier League trophy monkey off its back in the COVID-delayed 2019-20 season, Liverpool finished this season, the first after Jürgen Klopp and the first under Arne Slot, in style, shrugging off some cup disappointments with the one trophy that, for this club, means more than any other. Thanks to a comprehensive 5-1 victory over middling Tottenham, Anfield got its long-awaited party on Sunday, and now Liverpool once again sits atop its historic perch as the most successful club in English soccer history.
Let's start with that perch: By clinching the title, with four matches left to play mind you, Liverpool now has as many first-division trophies as Manchester United. While United has one more combined trophy in the FA and League Cups, Liverpool has six European Cups to United's three. That discrepancy didn't matter much while the Reds were dragging behind in league titles, but today it's safe to say Liverpool is the island's top dog once more. In that vein, this season could not have been a more fitting exhibition of dominance. Through 34 matches, the club lost only twice—an early defeat to ascendant Nottingham Forest and a surprising 3-2 loss to Fulham on April 6—and drew seven times.
Liverpool has had better seasons; even if the team were to win its final four matches, those 94 points couldn't match the 97 from 2018-19's second-place finish, or the 99 from the aforementioned title win in 2019-20. This year Liverpool didn't need to be quite as dominant as it has been, since Manchester City shit the bed domestically and Arsenal was ravaged by injuries. Still, though, the Pool Boys showed no complacency. Liverpool went 26 straight matches without defeat in between those two losses, building enough of a lead to make the title run-in something of an anticlimax; the club won the trophy so early that it fell on an FA Cup semifinal weekend, with Manchester City beating Forest at the exact same time as Liverpool was dominating Tottenham.
But in the eyes of Liverpool fans, the lack of a dramatic ending will hardly be any kind of blemish on what has been an amazing season. Even after Tottenham took an early 1-0 lead, courtesy of former Red Dominic Solanke in the 12th minute, there was no real worry that the title celebrations might be delayed a week. Liverpool only needed a draw to clinch it, and Luis Díaz leveled the score just four minutes later. By the time the goals started pouring in for the league's best offense, any bit of niggling worry had evaporated. This was Liverpool's Premier League season week in and week out, and though there were moments of doubt, the end result had been clear for some time.
A big measure of the credit must go here to Arne Slot. The Dutch manager came over from the Eredivisie's Feyenoord in the summer, with the gargantuan task of following Klopp, who gracefully (and a bit awkwardly) chanted his replacement into the job as he exited it last May. (Slot returned the favor, similarly with an awkward cadence, on Sunday.) The two managers are quite different in temperament—Klopp, a ball of chaotic energy; Slot, calm and cerebral—and in tactics, as Liverpool shifted from the whirlwind of full velocity soccer under Klopp into a more controlled form of domination under Slot.
But, like Klopp, Slot hit the ground running, taking a squad mostly intact from last season's third-place swoon, making one key personnel change that made a huge difference. Ryan Gravenberch will (understandably) not get the kind of accolades that Mohamed Salah or Virgil van Dijk are in for, but he was arguably Liverpool's most important midfielder throughout the season. Coming off a disappointing first year at Merseyside, Slot shifted him into a deep-lying role, which Gravenberch took to almost flawlessly. The partnership between Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister solidified what had been Liverpool's weakest line, and help the team rack up points at a pace its faltering would-be title rivals couldn't match.
A league-winning season is long and full of moments, and Slot's Liverpool provided moments galore:
- The 3-0 win at Old Trafford against United, Slot's first big test passed with flying colors
- Both 2-0 wins against Manchester City, cathartic even with City's season-long doldrums taken into account
- The 6-3 victory against Tottenham three days before Christmas, a fireworks show of attacking brilliance
- Darwin fucking Núñez scoring a stoppage-time brace to beat Brentford on Jan. 18, following the worst stretch of play in Liverpool's season
- Virgil van Dijk's late winner against West Ham just two weeks ago, a result that served as well as any as the moment where Liverpool's title hopes became all but mathematically certain
I could go on, and I will likely relive the goals and euphoria that came from this smoothest of transitions for a good while. Even as Liverpool faces some questions this summer—while Slot's insistence on mostly keeping the same roster worked out, there will have to be reinforcements, especially with Trent Alexander-Arnold's seemingly inevitable exit—and as there might be a bad taste lingering in the collective mouths of the club and fanbase (the memories of losing the League Cup final to Newcastle and getting knocked out of the FA Cup by lowly Plymouth Argyle have to sting still, though the Champions League loss to Paris Saint-Germain is easier to live with), Slot came in and did what it took Klopp years to accomplish, and what previous managers simply couldn't at all: Win the damn Premier League.
I'm saying it again: Liverpool is the Premier League champion, this time with no distractions or delays. Anfield burned red on Sunday, and the party won't end until long after the season finishes for real—there is, after all, a trophy celebration to be had, as much as I enjoyed the cardboard version that stood in for the real thing on Sunday. I'm not sure anyone could have asked for more from what was supposed to be a transitional season, the reins passing from one club legend to an outsider now well on his way to Liverpool immortality. That outsider, and his players, understood the challenge ahead of them, and the end result is as sweet as anything the Pool Boys have experienced in this decade of revival.
