No room for slip-ups as Liverpool start season-defining fortnight with long-awaited visit of Leeds

Five games from now, Jurgen Klopp’s side will know exactly which trophies they’re aiming to lift this term

Mohamed Salah celebrates after scoring in Liverpool’s win over Norwich at the weekend (AFP/Getty)

For the teams at the top end of the game, there comes a point in the season which makes the turn from possibility into reality: a span of matches that dictate if the foundations of the campaign can really lead to trophies, top-four finishes or other objectives.

Liverpool are facing one such juncture in the coming fortnight – a run of five games, across four competitions, which will largely set up how many pieces of silverware they can be optimistic about challenging for in the business end of 2021/22.

Indeed, one trophy is up for grabs this weekend. That’s the League Cup final against Chelsea, the most minor of the quartet available but one that both managers very much want to see locked away – given both Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel faced domestic cup final disappointment just months after joining their respective clubs.

Before then, it’s this first fixture and the long-awaited game in hand over leaders Manchester City, against Leeds United. On the other side of a trip to Wembley comes an FA Cup fifth round, another big Premier League game and the Champions League last-16 second leg.

Two weeks from now, the best-case scenario might see the Anfield faithful celebrating one cup, in two more quarter-finals and just three points off the top of the table, mere weeks after plenty were ready to hand the championship back to Pep Guardiola’s side.

It doesn’t always work out the way clubs hope, of course. Certainly not to that extent of a 100 per cent success rate and it will be a long time yet before Liverpool fans forget the infamous words of Gerard Houllier in 2002: his “ten games from greatness” quote came with the Reds a point off the top in the league with five to play, plus ahead after the Champions League quarter-final first leg. They lost the second leg, were knocked out and suffered defeat to Tottenham domestically, finishing seven points off Arsenal in the end.

Not so great, as it turned out.

We’re two decades on and there are only half the number of games in a potentially decisive run this time – and an awfully long way to go after that anyway – but this side is also far more consistent, far more tactically astute, far more full of proven winners than the ‘02 vintage.

But the Premier League has a habit of culling optimism and halting the perception of momentum just when it’s least expected, and just when another victory would be most rewarding.

Man City’s weekend defeat to Tottenham leaves the door open for Klopp’s team to make it a two-horse race (again), but perhaps more pertinently this midweek Anfield fixture puts the sides on level pegging again in terms of matches played. The game in hand has been two months in coming, but after the final whistle goes there will no longer be gaps in that column – Liverpool will be either six, four or three points off the pace, and that is all.

When the title favourites lose, optimism among the challengers exponentially increases, perhaps ridiculously, given they had nothing to do with it themselves.

Similarly, a defeat for the same challengers in their own very next game has a disproportionate effect on morale in the opposite direction, far more so than if they had won that fixture and lost, say, two weeks later. The points tally doesn’t change, but the mood does, the feeling usually being of a “chance wasted” or the players having “bottled it”.

That’s all external noise, though, as coaches and players will so often have you believe.

On the inside of the dressing room it’s simply about the next game, the next opponents, the next chance.

Klopp embraces his players after the Norwich win (Liverpool FC/Getty)

And for Liverpool it’s Leeds, and a side who encapsulate that wildly swinging mood in the Premier League better than any other – as was evidenced again at the weekend in a single half of football.

Kicking off the second half they were two goals down and had already made all their subs, staring into the abyss. Then came the most unexpected of two goals in under a minute and Marcelo Bielsa’s side were back, they were turning their season around against their rivals – all the usual dramaticism. Then they Leeds’d the hell out of the final 20 minutes, lost 4-2 and are four without a win, five points above the drop zone.

There’s a very small margin for error in the title race in England these days and Liverpool do have to make the most of the chance presented to them.

But consistency is everything. Their ambitions right now stretch beyond just making the most of City leaving the door ajar.

Leeds at Anfield is only the first date in a two-week span that will line up just how successful the season might be.