Sunday 23rd April, 2pm
Liverpool @ 8/15
Spurs @ 18/5
Draw @ 5/1
view odds
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, and then suddenly.”
Ernest Hemingway, there, wittily noting the two stages of financial collapse in his 1926 breakthrough novel The Sun Also Rises.
There have been several high-profile Premier League teams who have flirted with collapse this season too.
Liverpool, for example, at various points of the campaign, have exchanged pleasantries with Lady Collapse; have leaned-in and whispered a few lascivious compliments into her shell-like ear; have taken her sweaty hand into theirs…only to be dragged off to safety at the last minute – away from her insidious orbit – by well-meaning, more sober acquaintances.
There is no way to disguise the fact that it has been a disappointing campaign for Liverpool overall, though. In recent seasons only a cigarette paper has separated them and Manchester City. But right now there is a hefty buffer comprised of several old phone books.
A late rally has prevented the situation from being significantly worse. It has not been a collapse on the scale of Jürgen Klopp’s previous cataclysms at Dortmund and Mainz, for example. Some face has been salvaged, and some brand of European football is now very much within reach.
Over the last few months it looked like Tottenham Hotspur had timed their dalliance with collapse very poorly. Never one to say ‘no’ to someone else’s cast-offs, they had walked Lady Collapse out of the club, stumbled into a taxi, and found themselves swaying in the evening air outside an insalubrious, neon-rimmed, beach-front ‘bed and breakfast’.
At which point they realised they had lost their credit card.
Despite the situation looking thoroughly irreversible – particularly following their thrashing at the hands of Newcastle – a stirring second half showing against Manchester United on Thursday night showed that, perhaps, there was a chance they could reclaim some dignity from the episode.
Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspur at 4:30pm on Sunday is then, all of a sudden, intriguingly poised. Was Spurs’ resurgence against Manchester United a result of a new-found sturdiness? Have they finally located their rudder? Or was it merely a consequence of their opponents profoundly running out of gas following their protracted FA Cup semi-final showing?
And exactly how well are Liverpool playing? Although they too were able to come to their senses when facing Manchester United, are they really fully revived? Or have they merely been fortunate to encounter teams mired in a greater state of distraction than themselves?
Once a few of those questions have, to some extent, been answered; we turn our attention to another attractive, fulsome fixture: Arsenal v Chelsea at 8pm on Tuesday night.
When Frank Lampard’s car keys were fished from the managerial fruit bowl, the stakes were low. The season had been effectively written-off. Super Frank would get the fans back onside, pick-up a win here-or-there, and everyone would dust themselves down and look forward to next year.
But Chelsea haven’t just engineered a brief, lustful tryst with Lady Collapse; they have properly fallen for her, asked her to move in, and have even set-up a joint back account.
Concerned friends are walking away shaking their heads in disbelief; James Corden, however, who may have had a hand in introducing the pair, is finding it all absolutely hilarious – thinks the situation is ‘mint’, and is peppering the Whatsapp group with epic ‘bantz’ and mile-long rows of laughing emojis every fifteen minutes.
The last team Chelsea need to face right now is an Arsenal side hell-bent on revenge; keen to re-establish some momentum; desperate to prove that they are actually still in the title race. And that they are absolutely not bottlers.
At least, for Chelsea, there is no chance that they could collapse financially. Either gradually or suddenly. But the way things are going…well, who can possibly say?
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