Liverpool beat Manchester United 7-0 on Sunday, but that won’t count for much if they slip up against Bournemouth.
Following Liverpool’s 7-0 demolition of Manchester United on Sunday, the Reds have leapt past Newcastle into fifth and sit just three points back of Tottenham with a game in hand. They can say they’re solidly back in the top four race. They might even be the current favourites to earn the final Champions League place.
Also, they demolished Manchester United by a score of 7-0, the joint heaviest defeat in the history of their historic rivals and the previous three occurrences coming in 1926, 1930, and 1931, making it not just their biggest defeat in the Premier League but their biggest in 92 years. For Liverpool, though, the question now is what comes next.
“Hopefully we can use it in the right way but you can’t get too confident or overconfident,” said captain Jordan Henderson. “There are different tests along the way from now until the end of the season that will come and you need to stay positive, stay ready, stay hungry, and that will give us a good chance to finish the season well.”
Liverpool’s next test is Bournemouth, and the challenge there will be to show the same kind of determination and sharpness against a side the Reds will be favoured to beat—given the last time the sides met the Reds won 9-0 and got manager Scott Parker fired. They can’t afford anything resembling overconfidence or to slip now, though.
On the flip side, if the risk against Bournemouth appears to be taking a result for granted and letting up, subsequent matches against Real Madrid in Europe and then Manchester City, Chelsea, and Arsenal in the league represent just about the most difficult four game stretch one can imagine any side in Europe having to face.
It’s hard to imagine those games ending with the kind of scoreline Sunday’s did in the Reds’ favour, but setting aside Europe the minimum goal likely has to be to take at least a neutral record and four points from those three league games—assuming they can do what they have to to first win this weekend’s match against the Cherries.
“To win games you’ve got to keep clean sheets and we’ve kept a few of them in the Premier League over the past few weeks,” Henderson added. “We need to continue that, and if you do that you always give yourselves a chance of winning games. Hopefully we can build on this and get a bit of momentum to finish the season off well.”
