Looking like more league misery ahead of long-suffering Liverpool

Inside Track with John McIntyre

IT’S hard to credit that a team might only lose one game in a 38-match league campaign and still not end up as champions, but that’s the agonising fate potentially ahead of Liverpool with only two rounds of the English Premiership remaining.

Under the passionate Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool have been a model of consistency since last Autumn, suffering only a lone defeat in their 36 league games to date, while their current points total of 91 would have been enough to win every title in the Premiership era bar last season.

And yet, their long-suffering supporters – aching for a first league title in almost three decades – know the Reds’ destiny is out of their own hands. Champions Manchester City may have suffered four league defeats, but have less draws on their results card than Liverpool.

It’s enough to give Pep Guardiola’s squad a one-point advantage as the Premiership reaches a climax. Manchester City face a home tie against in-form Leicester before rounding off their campaign against a Brighton team which looks as though it’s about to avoid the relegation noose after their battling weekend draw against Newcastle.

In fact, the Magpies are next up in an away fixture for Liverpool, with the Anfield men concluding their programme with a home tie against Wolves, the team which knocked them out of the FA Cup and has defied pre-season predictions by doing so well – currently seventh in the table – on their return to the top flight of cross-channel football.

Early last week, the maths were the same . . . Liverpool trailing Manchester City by a point, but the title holders faced two difficult games in five days. First up was the eagerly-awaited derby clash with Manchester Utd followed by a visit to Turf Moor where Burnley tend to prove obdurate opponents.

Liverpool fans would have been entitled to feel there was some prospect of Manchester City slipping up in one of those fixtures, but Sergio Aquero and company got the job done on each occasion as the club closes in on a fourth Premiership title. Win their last two games, it doesn’t matter what Liverpool do.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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