As records loom for Liverpool, the greatest season produced by an English club remains Manchester United’s Treble-winning campaign.
Jurgen Klopp’s team might yet emulate it. Judging by their midweek defeat at Gillingham, Shrewsbury Town could well succumb to the kids at Anfield on Tuesday.
Liverpool could then field a first eleven at Stamford Bridge in the fifth round, if Klopp has hauled his toys back into the pram by then, and go on to win the FA Cup.
The Premier League is done and dusted and there is no squad better equipped to win the Champions League.
Imagine that.
Lift the major domestic trophy with a record-breaking points total - they are only nine points shy of United’s winning tally in ’99 and have FOURTEEN fixtures still to fulfil - then claim a triumph at Wembley and DEFEND the Champions League.
Considering they already have the Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup, that would eclipse Sir Alex Ferguson’s achievements of 98/99.
Now that is what you would call knocking someone off their ****ing perch.
Never mind what the FA Cup has become, it remains part of a Treble that was almost mythical until United pulled it off.
The wonderful Liverpool of 1976/77 came close but did not quite make it (denied, ironically, by United at Wembley.)
Yet Liverpool’s hopes of emulating United’s feat and trumping it with the manner of their achievement now rest with a bunch of boys and with Neil Critchley.
Klopp and Liverpool have taken rotation to new levels. Never mind resting players, how about managers?
Of course, he has a point. We all get it.
What we should not get is that Klopp is playing silly games with the opportunity to make this Liverpool team the stuff of legend.
Who cares how many points they win the Premier League title by? One, as United did in ’99 or 31 as Liverpool might well do this season.
Win an Olympic gold medal by the width of your vest or by the length of a home straight, it does not matter.
Defend a European Cup success? Real Madrid have done it six times, Benfica once, Inter once, Ajax twice, Bayern Munich twice, AC Milan once, Nottingham Forest managed it and, of course, Liverpool have already done it.
But a Treble (sorry, THE Treble) from an English club? Only Liverpool’s bitterest rivals have managed that.
It is, though, not just about the Treble.
It is about the FA Cup. Just because it might have been devalued by others - clubs and authorities - it does not mean a venerable, grand old institution such as Liverpool has to follow suit.
It is not as though romance, tradition and history have never played a part in Liverpool’s thinking.
It has helped them through three fallow domestic league decades.
Football means more to Liverpool, they say - unless it means the manager and his grown-up players turning up for an FA Cup tie.
Certainly, the FA Cup once meant more to Liverpool, which is why the success of 1965 was considered by Bill Shankly to be the greatest moment of his managerial career.
Shankly’s last FA Cup game as Liverpool manager was the 3-0 defeat of Newcastle United in the 1974 Final.
Wonder what he would make of Liverpool and Klopp fielding the kids in a tie at Anfield?
Since English football was privileged enough to welcome him, this is Klopp’s first mis-step.
It will not bother Liverpool fans. If Klopp told them the Anfield grass was red, they would agree.
It will not bother Liverpool’s owners. This remarkable season has put Klopp way beyond question.
Anyway, Fenway Sports Group would not care about Liverpool’s emotional connection with the FA Cup.
That the highest Anfield attendance was almost 62,000 for a game against Wolves in 1952 will mean nothing to them.
That was for a fourth round FA Cup match.
Klopp has turned next week’s fourth round FA Cup match into a novelty kickabout between kids and lower league journeymen.
To repeat their modern-day mantra, this means more, Liverpool tells us.
What means more? Doing everything you can to grasp the once-in-a-lifetime chance of surpassing the achievements of that 1999 Treble-winning United side or giving yourself and your players a couple of extra days’ half-term holiday?
I think we can guess what Shankly would think.
