While Liverpool continue to tread water in efforts to keep a title defence within the realms of possibility, a return to European action could bring cause for a new lease of life.
The Reds welcome Real Madrid to Anfield for the millionth time in five seasons on Tuesday night and it will be an evening loaded with zest for more reasons than one.
For Arne Slot and his players, it is exclusively business – not least because circumstance simply will not permit anything else at this stage.
It is, however, an opening for something more. Innocuous seasons have turned on much less than glamour ties with continental superpowers and this club know better than anyone of the force that lies behind club football’s biggest prize.
Xabi Alonso and his side present a scary post-Halloween prospect amid our relative league tribulations, but it is far from an insurmountable task given the greeting that awaits them.
Familiar foes
It is always an occasion when the 15-time kings of Europe roll into town, demonstrated last season by fireworks let off outside the visitors’ hotel despite the fixture being almost immaterial in the grand scheme of things.
There should, however, be no red carpet laid out for this one. We are one of the few sides on planet football with no need to be awestruck by the Galacticos, not least because we’ve met them more frequently than Norwich this decade.
Liverpool have a job to do and the cataclysmic nature of the September collapse has heaped greater weight onto the next five fixtures on UEFA’s grandest stage.
We have no reason to make this one bigger than it already is and it certainly isn’t the time for overthinking it. Whether you approved or not, Arne Slot showed with his League Cup team selection that he isn’t willing to let outside noise or external pressures inform his actions in the short term.
The broader mission for his team is as it always should be – to fixate intransigently on the big two. Any Wembley trips in the modern-day calendar are born as much out of chance as they are by squad depth.
You may already have given up hope of reeling in Arsenal – I haven’t – but more desperate situations have yielded ultimate glory in the past and you can find examples just by looking within.
Embracing the acrimony
There is of course an undeniable Trent Alexander-Arnold-shaped sideshow to navigate on Tuesday night.
Many Reds will be licking their lips at the thought of finally being sufficiently empowered to show the former vice-skipper what they really think about his departure, free from the shackles of complication entangled in last season’s rigmarole.
It doesn’t need to and, frankly, shouldn’t be about him. The story was tiresome enough six months ago, absorbing a surplus of energy and air at a time when we ought to have been solely and obsessively consumed by the quest for No. 20.
Equally though, we’d be fools not to allow something like that to fuel us when the opportunity is there. After all, an angry Anfield is the best Anfield.
We rightly mocked Newcastle for turning our August visit into the Alexander Isak show, but it undoubtedly brought a useful intensity and generated a level of spectacle we don’t have to deal with too often – result notwithstanding.
Not all sides benefit from running on emotion – it certainly hasn’t done Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal many favours – but Liverpool know better than most how to harness vitriol and that is what will facilitate the blind hope.
Truthfully, apathy would be the most effective method of communicating any Trent-based disappointment, but apathy simply won’t wash on a European night at Anfield.
A season-defining week
So much of the club’s heritage is built upon success in Europe, which is why we can always allow ourselves to dream no matter how treacherous the waters appear to be elsewhere.
While the incompetence of anyone not named Steven Gerrard in Liverpool’s Champions League winning side of 2005 is often overplayed, the fifth crown came during a period in which we were forced to look upwards at the likes of David Moyes’ Everton.
PSG’s triumph last year despite finishing a lowly 15th in the Swiss system demonstrated once more that this doesn’t require perfection from August to May, a model Real Madrid themselves have profited from within the previous format in times gone by.
Saturday’s win over Aston Villa may only be deemed a turning point if it is backed up, but you’ll struggle to find two bigger tests in the space of six days than the ones we’ve got coming up.
Still, the mood over the November international break hinges on it. What we believe to be possible come the resumption will, rightly or wrongly, be determined largely by what we see this week.
Liverpool don’t need to beat Real Madrid and Man City – like they did last season – and it would be more of a concern if they did at this early stage.
What they do need to do, though, is show their mettle.
The European Cup has never been handed on a plate but if there is one thing we know it is how to muddle our way through and there has never been a better time to reignite 2025/26 than we’ve got ourselves this week.
