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Liverpool’s hard-fought win over Wolves caps a decade of transformation in one of football’s great glow-up stories

Liverpool suffered a 1-0 defeat to Wolves nine years ago, leaving them three points above the relegation zone. On Sunday they beat them to end the decade 13 points clear at the top

Melissa Reddy
Senior Football Correspondent
Monday 30 December 2019 08:14 GMT
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Jurgen Klopp hugs Andrew Robertson after beating Wolves
Jurgen Klopp hugs Andrew Robertson after beating Wolves

Roy Hodgson had waited six months for his name to be chanted at Anfield and when it finally materialised on 29 December 2010, it was dunked in derision.

Wolves were the visitors that Wednesday evening, recording a victory over Liverpool for the first time in 27 years via a Stephen Ward strike.

The result left the Merseysiders 12th in the league, just three points above the relegation zone and was greeted with an ironic chorus of “Hodgson for England”, sprinkled with demanding cries of “Dalglish”.

The shortest-serving permanent manager in the club’s history then used his post-match press conference to berate the fanbase. “Ever since I came here the famous Anfield support hasn’t really been there,” Hodgson said.

“I have to hope the fans will become supporters because we need support. It is not for lack of trying that we are not winning matches. Maybe we are lacking quality and confidence, but the negativity doesn’t help.

“It was a sad way to end 2010 and a sad way to play the first game for a few weeks in front of our own supporters, when we were anxious to show them we could climb the table.”

The inevitable happened 10 days later. Hodgson, the wrong appointment at the wrong time for the wrong club, was sacked to be replaced by Kenny Dalglish.

Fast forward and Liverpool closed off the decade with a 1-0 victory over Wolves via a Sadio Mane strike on Sunday evening in one of football’s great glow-ups.

It signalled a year without defeat at Anfield in all competitions, stretching their unbeaten league spell at the ground to 50 fixtures and leaving them perched at the summit – 13 points clear.

“We’re champions of the world’ was the chorus this time around and Jurgen Klopp used his post-match press conference to salute the club’s supporters for not prematurely throwing a party on account of their position.

“I think our fans are exactly like the team is: they are not interested in the moment, they don’t want to celebrate now and stuff like this,” the European Cup-winning manager.

“They take it like it is. They dig in in a game like today and today I liked it a lot how the fans were: really in the game, this was a game when the crowd can be nervous and they weren’t, so that’s good.”

It can be easy to forget the mire Liverpool rose out of in the midst of all their success in 2019 – a club-record league tally, lifting a sixth European Cup, the Super Cup and Club World Cup – because this version of the club feels so far removed from that one.

Mediocrity has been replaced by exacting standards and the fractures that existed have been supplanted by, to borrow from the famous banner on the Kop, ‘unity in strength’.

Sadio Mane scores Liverpool's winner against Wolves

The win over Wolves was a snapshot of this, despite not being vintage nor particularly enjoyable. It was the club’s ninth fixture in December and only their third at home during a month which included an all-or-nothing Champions League trip to Salzburg, two matches in Qatar to seal their status as world champions as well as a top-of-the-table tussle at Leicester City last Thursday.

Liverpool scorched the division’s second-placed side 4-0 and only made one change to the starting XI against Nuno Espirito Santo’s side, partly due to a growing injury list featuring Xherdan Shaqiri, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Fabinho, Joel Matip and Dejan Lovren.

Klopp had stated pre-match that his players “have a ‘no-excuse culture’ running through them” and despite labouring against Wolves, it was job done again.

The visitors, who deserve enormous credit for their display given their exertions less than 48 hours earlier against Manchester City, were the more proactive side in the second half having been fuelled by what they deemed to be unjust VAR decisions.

Simon Hooper, in the video review hub at Stockley Park, correctly noted that Adam Lallana used his shoulder instead of his arm to assist Mane’s goal, which referee Anthony Taylor had initially chalked off. Pedro Neto’s equaliser was ruled out shortly after for a marginal offside by Jonny in the build-up and Wolves were fired up by their frustrations after the break.

“They were really aggressive, really angry with us as well, we had nothing to do with that situation to be honest, but that’s how sometimes in sports it happens,” Klopp said.

“That’s how they came out of the dressing room; I can imagine what Nuno said at half-time, everybody is against us so let’s fight back – easy motivation.

“They came out, pressed us a little bit higher, we were not fresh enough in mind to adapt to that immediately and caused ourselves some problems in the build-up. Ali wanted to make the game quick, but 10 other players didn’t want that and he threw the ball still there, that didn’t help.

“We calmed everything down a bit again, we controlled it more, then they made some changes, brought on fresh legs, we tried to react, it was an open game now.

Liverpool ended a phenomenal year with a win over Wolves

“Not too much threat, but there were a couple of situations and Ali had to make a save or two.

“If it would be easy to win that number of games a lot more teams would have done it. It is not easy and you have to fight with all you have. Sometimes we have more and sometimes less and the boys do that all the time, so I couldn’t be more proud of what they did again. To get that result over the line is just impressive and I am really happy about it.”

The lack of comfort and complacency from Liverpool’s players is inherited from their manager. “Everybody asks me how was my 2019; my 2019 was brilliant but it’s not important because we count seasons not years so the 2019-20 season is not over,” Klopp said after his team made it 55 points from a possible 57.

“We are halfway there, we still have 19 games to play and probably 18 or 19 of them will be like this Wolves one, for different reasons. We will now face teams who fight to stay in the league with all they have, or for the Champions League and European spots that are reopened again.

“We have to be ready. Who cares about points in December? We just created a basis which we will work with from now on, that’s all.

“Can you imagine really if you asked me ‘do you think it’s done?’ and I sat here and said ‘yeah, I think it’s done – we’ll still play of course, but I think it’s done’. That would be really crazy. It’s now five, six or seven weeks and you ask that question constantly and as a normal human being I have the same answer because it is not done.

“So discuss it if you want, ask me if you want, but don’t expect a different answer.”

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