Liverpool vs. Manchester United: Is the Premier League seeing a passing of the 'mentality monster' torch? – CBS Sports

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If there is a problem with Jurgen Klopp’s habit of giving a good, memorable quote it might be how his particular bons mots tend to boomerang back towards him. Liverpool’s greatest period might have come when they cooled down the pressing and upped the control, but, whatever the pace, his side was still viewed through the prism of the “heavy metal” label he had memorably ascribed to his Borussia Dortmund team in 2013.
Similarly, one rarely goes a week without seeing Liverpool assessed against the “mentality monsters” tag their manager first began applying three years ago. Books, banners and bric-a-brac aplenty are emblazoned with the legend, perhaps the two words that best describe the Klopp golden age. Such is their resonance that it is no great surprise to see these two words bleed out beyond Anfield.
The word mentality was used on seven different occasions in the eight minute broadcast section of Erik ten Hag’s press conference before Manchester United’s trip to Liverpool on Sunday. Given that his side had battled back from a goal down to knock West Ham out of the FA Cup in midweek, it was perhaps no wonder that Ten Hag was asked if he had developed his own mentality monsters. The Dutchman was not biting, his response anodyne enough to perhaps keep him off the back pages. “Our mentality is, in general, very good. We have many leaders who set the standards, who control the standards, who correct if necessary. We are happy with this process but it can always be better.”  
It is easy to see why that particular question reared itself ahead of Sunday’s match. The 3-1 victory on Wednesday was the sixth occasion this season where United have been trailing only to secure victory. Three of those have come since the World Cup, most notably the stirring fightbacks to overcome first Manchester City and then Barcelona in the Europa League (you can catch the entirety of Manchester United’s Europa League run on Paramount+). Such results are hardwired into the DNA of Manchester United with their history littered with too many examples to count: Nou Camp 1999, Fergie time, “lads it’s Tottenham.” It is not enough to win and to win in style, victory must be secured in the most dramatic of fashions.
If any player was going to bring the thrills, spills and silverware back to United, it is perhaps no great surprise it was an import from the Real Madrid team who won a Champions League entirely through the medium of baffling resurrections. Casemiro has been everything Old Trafford hoped for and more; the rhythm setter who has gone on to superstardom (except, unlike Phil Collins, his entire output since leaving his band is not utterly irredeemable). More than the progressive passing, the tackles and the aerial prowess, the Brazilian has imposed his mentality on teammates who play with the certainty of spring nights at the Bernabeu.
When he entered the fray against West Ham on Wednesday night he went so far as to call out set plays for Bruno Fernandes. Football does not do quarterbacks, no player dictates the terms of a game quite like an individual in the NFL or NBA. If they did, however, they might look like Casemiro in this United side: ball winner, set piece weapon, tempo setter, emotional core.
United’s resolve has grown around midfielder Casemiro while Liverpool’s has just about crumbled. Where once Jurgen Klopp’s side might have responded to setbacks by shrugging off their concerns and diving back into the fray, they now seem to step deeper into the mire. No one seems more reflective of that than the Reds’ own Brazilian anchor. Fabinho’s decline may be startling but the explanation is simple. Since moving to England in the summer of 2018, the 28-year-old has played 15,323 minutes of club football in addition to another 1,220 for his national team. That’s nearly 184 full games. In 2021-22 alone, he played the equivalent of 41 90-minute games as he and his teammates took every competition in which they were involved down to the final kicks of the final game.
The same is true across the entire team. It’s not as if players like Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Andrew Robertson have lost their drive. They just look knackered. Van Dijk, for instance, played more minutes than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues between the start of the season and the end of the World Cup. For proof one need look no further than Fabinho, who after finding himself in and out of the team in January turned in his most impressive performance in some time in a win over Wolverhampton Wanderers in midweek.
“It’s obvious,” said Klopp. “Everybody could see he wasn’t at his best, and now everybody can see he’s getting back. That’s exactly what we need. Things like this happen and you can’t always explain it, so I was so happy with the last game as it was exactly how we used to have him.”
As Ian Graham noted at this week’s Financial Times Business of Football Summit , Klopp’s men have not become a bad side overnight, no matter what results might suggest on all too frequent occasions. This has been a season replete with what the club’s outgoing head of research termed, “large elements of luck or unexplained variants.” Liverpool were bad against Real Madrid. They weren’t lose 5-2 bad. Similarly, they might sit sixth in the table that really counts, but their expected goal difference (xGD) of 10.4 puts them in the Premier League’s top four. Notably, they lead Manchester United by the barest of margins.
United is trending in the right direction — over their last 10 league games they have put up shots worth 20.1 xG while allowing opponents efforts worth 11.3 xG — but for all the rush to herald Ten Hag as the man who awoke the slumbering titan, there are still questions to be asked about what this time might look like as Casemiro and Raphael Varane age, or when Marcus Rashford’s volcanic streak cools down. The latter seems like it ought to be a matter of time given that his 18 goals in the Premier League and Europa League since the World Cup have come from shots worth 11.4 xG. That even Klopp seems to delight in Rashford’s scoring form is a reminder that no one deserves this purple patch more than the man who kept school children fed, but there are no guarantees in this sport that players will continue to get what they have earned.
That perhaps is a reminder of how brief United’s rise has been to earn them such lofty tags. Six defeats turned into wins is an impressive enough return but when Klopp began calling his team “mentality monsters” they had won the Champions League (wrenching a spot in the final from a Barcelona side they trailed by three goals to after the first leg) and were romping their way to a first Premier League title in 30 years. It will take a lot more than an EFL Cup and a run of wins in the Premier League for Ten Hag’s men to compare to that side.
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