Liverpool and Chelsea FC: reliving ‘The Slip’, two years later

With Chelsea FC’s 2015/16 campaign all but over, let’s take a moment to relive Steven Gerrard’s infamous slip that took place almost two years ago.

When the sun rose on April 27^th, 2014, it certainly looked as though Liverpool were going to win their elusive, first Premier League title. They had three matches left to play, and sat five points clear of second place Chelsea FC, and six points clear of third place Manchester City, who had a game in hand. Arsenal were in fourth.

All that was really required of the Merseysiders to continue their unlikely march to the title was a simple point from that day’s match against Chelsea. The match was at Anfield and Chelsea’s starting eleven included Tomas Kalas and Mohamed Salah, and did not include the team’s leading goal scorer that season: Eden Hazard.

Chelsea’s primary focus was on the following week’s Champions League semi-final showdown with Atletico Madrid. With the league title seemingly out of reach, the Blues’ main goal against Liverpool was to not sustain any injuries that would prove detrimental to their European hopes.

The Reds’ focus was squarely on the league. Throughout that season their success had been defined by a relentless, near-reckless approach to attacking their opponents.

Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge terrorized defenders with telepathic interplay, and even Steven Gerrard enjoyed a late-career renaissance spraying passes from a deeper midfield role. For a neutral, it could be seen as thrilling stuff.

There was much discussion in the media’s build-up to the match on the contrasting styles between the two clubs. The line of thought in many places was that Liverpool were exciting and Chelsea were boring. Even one of Chelsea’s sponsors had that opinion.

Liverpool were also seen as a much-welcomed throwback to an era before money came in and flushed away the purity of the sport. Chelsea were viewed as the royal blue water that did the flushing.

As a Chelsea supporter, it was frustrating to see these reductive narratives. The numbers may have been modest by today’s standards, but Liverpool hardly seemed shy about bringing an influx of money into the game when they became the first club in England with a shirt sponsorship in 1979.  Unless you view Hitachi as the gold standard for electronics purity, it’s hard to get too sentimental over kit sponsorships (sorry, Samsung).

Debates over the entertainment value of certain tactical approaches can be similarly difficult to pare down to a single narrative.

Some swooned over Spain’s intricate passing and possession-centric style of play during the 2012 World Cup, while others just slept as the Spaniards strung a series of 1-0 victories together en route to the trophy.

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Because of these types of discrepancies, how entertained some sections of the football media are over a team’s style is an odd metric on which to base that style’s merits.

When you added the history (wait, Chelsea have history?) between the clubs to these shoddy narratives, you got a very real and very hostile dislike between the two sets of supporters that was simmering to its boiling point.

The match kicked off and it was clear from the beginning that Mourinho had set his team up to defend almost comically deep. It was as if he had read every word of the pre-match media commentary concerning his tactics and desired for his players to embody every last bit of it.

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Chelsea had fielded a weakened lineup and were deploying the exact opposite tactics you use when you’re trying to score goals. The task in front of Liverpool was to simply not lose a match against a team actively not trying to score.

It’s difficult to speculate on how much then-Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers bought in to the suggestions that his side were crusaders for a ‘right’ kind of football. There was, however, a documentary that quite famously revealed he has a portrait of himself hanging up in his own house.  That interior design work suggests a man that is at least a little concerned with his own self-mythology.

A point was all that was seemingly required from Rodgers’ team, but they showed a brash initiative to go for more. Chelsea looked to have been content to allow Liverpool’s players to idly whittle away 90 minutes passing the ball back and forth, but Liverpool were not satisfied with that. Their attack surged forward throughout the first half, while Chelsea retreated deeper and deeper towards their own goal.

What happened in stoppage time of that first half is an event that will reverberate in song throughout Chelsea pubs and terraces for years to come.

Steven Gerrard’s slip was an instantly-iconic bit of Benny Hill-esque slapstick. Even from a Chelsea perspective, it almost seemed too cruel to happen to a player as celebrated as the Liverpool captain. Almost.

The attacking bravado that Liverpool possessed – a bravado that was so lauded in the media – was their downfall. At the time of Gerrard’s slip, Liverpool’s center backs, Martin Skrtel and Mamadou Sakho (whose pass to Gerrard prior to the slip was, uh, not great), were pushed up right alongside the midfielder instead of being behind him offering cover. This allowed for no resistance to Demba Ba as he stampeded for Chelsea’s pivotal opening goal.

In the second half, the Blues defended like it was 2012 and Liverpool watched their title challenge ricochet off Chelsea’s parked bus and vanish beyond their reach. There was even a fun Fernando Torres-assisted Willian goal to enjoy at the end.

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Chelsea didn’t win a title that day, but halting Liverpool’s quest for one was almost as sweet. The debate over which tactics are entertaining and which ones aren’t is probably one that will never end, but I think it’s pretty obvious which team’s supporters were more entertained that day.