STEADY
The Fiver has always enjoyed revisiting old haunts, injunctions permitting. Modern life cannot stimulate the bittersweet tingle we feel as we wistfully recall the bad times and the worse of our glory days. We’ve even developed a formula for true happiness: Nostalgia = Misery + Time. The same will be true, to some extent, when Brendan Rodgers returns to Anfield. We’ll all remember the good times: the SSS strike force and that astonishing surge to within one sure footing of the Premier League title in 2013-14. The bad – picking a reserve team at the Bernabéu, losing 6-1 at Stoke, pretty much everything from the summer of 2014 onwards – will be washed away by goodwill.
Liverpool and Rodgers have both moved on to happier places. Liverpool are champions of Europe; Rodgers has a brilliant young team that lies top of the Premier League’s Second Division. He also has another chance to make history at Anfield on Saturday, this time by ending Liverpool’s run of 16 straight wins, which is just two short of Manchester’s City’s record for consecutive victories in the most competitive league in the world. A sporadically ludicrous man, Rodgers’ apparent self-regard and predilection for business speak sometimes obscure the fact he might be the finest British coach around. His Leicester are third in the table – both this season, and in the form table since Rodgers took over. Their brat-pack of future stars will not be intimidated by some This is Anfield sign, though they might think it looks particularly totes Stegosaurus.
Rodgers doesn’t play by “the rules” of management. You can’t change a winning team? He’ll change one that just won 5-0 by bringing in the fit-again James Maddison. Liverpool, meanwhile, will be without Joël Matip, but goalkeeper Alisson might be fit to return. Their complacent 4-3 win over Salzburg was not so much a wake-up call as a fire alarm operating within the lug-hole itself, and is likely to concentrate minds before Leicester’s visit. “I think if we want to win we have to play better because we know Leicester, especially this season they are very strong and a very good team,” said Sadio Mané, without moving his mouth or his brain. “It is a lesson for us to be on our toes in the next game. [Jamie] Vardy always scores so we have to make sure this game he will not score and we try to take all our chances – that will be the key.”
Mané’s manager, Jürgen Klopp, was not impressed with the video of Salzburg manager Jesse Marsch’s remarkable, multi-lingual half-effing-time effing team-talk at effing Anfield on Wednesday. “If LFC asked me in that situation, I would leave the club!” he blabbed. “That is the truth. That is all I have say about that.” Klopp did not say whether he was familiar with a previous classic of the genre: 2012’s Being: Liverpool (8.6/10 on IMDb), starring a Mr B Rodgers.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We apologise to [our] guests from Azerbaijan. We have nothing to do with this provocation. We’ll figure [it] out!” – Dudelange say sorry to Qarabag after their Big Vase game was briefly suspended while a drone carrying an Armenian flag flew over the pitch. The visitors ran out 4-1 winners.
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Coming in your ears, it’s Football Weekly Extra!
FIVER LETTERS
“Long time lurker, I started reading when I lived in Finland back in 2013. Which brings me to Jari Litmanen (yesterday’s Fiver). It’s not the mullet that worries me, it’s how he still looks reasonably the same as he did when he played in the first Big Cup final I ever watched, back in 1996, on an old black and white TV. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that Litti is a vampire” – Daniel Jeffery.
“Stamp it out, Fiver. How dare you publish the England squad in detail and follow it with a mere mention of Wales (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs)? As a Welsh woman born and bred but living in exile in England, I am mightily offended. I could write some nasty Welsh swear words about you here, but I will refrain” – Susan Sleight.
“Regarding Ryan Giggs ‘speaking to everyone involved … to make sure we were all singing from the same hymn sheet’ (yesterday’s Bits and Bobs). It’s good to see him keeping other Welsh traditions alive besides non-qualification for tournaments” – Gareth McCann.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Daniel Jeffery.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Dean Saunders has won his appeal against a jail sentence for failing to take a breath test after being stopped by police on suspicion of drink-driving. Judge Steven Everett, Honorary Recorder of Chester, ordered the former player and manager to do 200 hours’ community service. Passing sentence, he said: “The sheer shame is going to live with you for the rest of your life. You should literally hang your head in shame by what you did. You have had your chance, I suggest you take it.”
Things for Ole Gunnar Solskjær to lament: the downturn in Tamagotchi sales, fewer requests for The Rachel and Manchester United’s ongoing lack of fear factor after a 0-0 draw at AZ Alkmaar. “We are not in the 1990s now,” he cheered. “It’s a different era, a different group that we are building.”
More Big Vase news: Arsenal whooped Standard Liège 4-0, W1lly Boly sank Loris Karius’s Besiktas in the final seconds, the Queen’s Celtic gained a measure of revenge on Cluj and the Pope’s Newc O’Rangers slipped up late at Young Boys. “Big moments in the game have gone against us,” sighed $tevie Mbe.
Neil Harris has done one from Millwall after more than four and a half years in charge. “Neil’s achievements ensure he is listed alongside some of the club’s greatest-ever managers,” cooed chairman John Berylson.
Comunicado Oficial dept: Real Madrid insist Thibaut Courtois was suffering from acute gastroenteritis and not an anxiety attack during their Big Cup draw with Club Brugge. “These reports are therefore completely false.”
And from the Newcastle side of things before Sunday’s desperation derby, Bernard Cribbins is urging his team to bounce back against Manchester United. “We had our backsides kicked,” he sighed. “When that happens you have to show a certain degree of pride and make sure you put it right. Mud has been thrown my way since I walked through the door, that’s not going to change. The only thing that can change it for me is results.”
STILL WANT MORE?
Ten of your Premier League things to look out for this weekend.
The Bernardo Silva charge feels like a token gesture when so many other instances of racism in the game are not properly tackled, writes Eni Aluko.
Jordan Nobbs on returning for England at a familiar venue.
When Manchester United had an even worse start to the season. By Steven Pye.
Who needs Harry? Paul Doyle on how Leicester’s defence has thrived despite Maguire’s departure.
Who needs Harry (pt 2)? The Mill mulls over t1ttle-tattle that Kane could leave Spurs next summer.
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