After a midweek of mixed results for English sides in Europe, the Premier League returns tonight with another batch of mouth-watering fixtures. Tonight, Saints take on Bournemouth in a battle for South Coast supremacy, while tomorrow Leicester welcome Spurs to the King Power Stadium in what should be a test for both teams top-four credentials and Manchester City will hope to put last weeks defeat to Norwich behind them by gubbing winless Watford at the Etihad. One game, however, stands out above the others, both in terms of history and the potential for excitement.
The rivalry between Chelsea and Liverpool is a modern one, stemming from a period when the two sides played each other with ludicrous regularity. Between January 1st 2005 and April 14th 2009 there were 23 meetings between the sides, that's one game every 9.69 weeks, or one game every 7.6 weeks of the active football season. In amongst that glut of fixtures were THREE Champions League Semi-Finals, a League Cup Final and an FA Cup Semi-Final. It was the first of the European semi-finals that most fanned the flames of the rivalry. Luis Garcia scored what Jose Mourinho consistently refers to as the ghost goal, ignoring the penalty that might have been awarded in the same incident and the one-hundred-and-eighty minutes of football during which his team managed just two shots on target. Then in 2014 came Jose's revenge, THAT game at Anfield, with Liverpool chasing the title amid a wave of optimism that looked unlikely to break. Mourinho had other ideas though and scuppered his favourite foes with a perfect game plan, goals from Demba Ba and Willian and a little slip from Steven Gerrard that the Chelsea fans have not yet tired of singing about. Mourinho never would win the European Cup with Chelsea, while Liverpool are still awaiting that first league title since 1990.
Chelsea vs Liverpool, a rivalry built on familiarity.
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All of that, of course, is mere history, what matters most is the here and the now. For Chelsea, the game provides Lampard with an early chance to test his young team against one of the top two sides in the country. Since a misleading four-nil defeat at Manchester United on the opening weekend, Chelsea have remained unbeaten, even if leads have been squandered against both Leicester and Sheffield United in their two home games thus far. Last time out, the pieces looked to have finally fallen into place for Lampard with the five-two shellacking of Wolves although the manager will have been unhappy with the two goals conceded late in the game.
For their part, Liverpool sit atop the table with a 100% record but that statistic does not tell the whole story. They have kept just a solitary clean sheet over the five games and all their opponents have found ways to threaten a goal in which Adrian, a decent Premier League keeper, is no match for the imperious Allison. Throw in a flat midweek defeat to Napoli that contained an actual error by Virgil van Dijk plus the unsightly spat between two of the divisions top strikers at Burnley a few weeks back and all is perhaps not as well as it first seems at Anfield.
There is recent evidence to consider when looking at this fixture, the two having met just over a month ago in the European Super Cup. That game was only Lampard's second in charge of Chelsea and yet the Blues pushed Liverpool all the way to penalties via a very unnecessary period of extra-time. Since that sweltering night in Instanbul Chelsea have improved beyond measure whilst Liverpool have shown a shakiness at the back not in evidence since the arrival of van Dijk. Sunday will be a big test of both these sides and with two potent forward lines up against less than solid defences, it could provide entertainment on a grand scale.