Champions Liverpool Get Chelsea’s Guard Of Honour

Emerging to their first guard of honour of the season, newly-crowned Premier League champions Liverpool begin their title procession in tomorrow’s main event away to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

The Reds officially moved back to the top of the English game alongside Manchester United by pummeling Tottenham Hotspur 5-1 last weekend, while the Blues scored one fewer in Thursday’s Conference League battering of Djurgardens IF.

It was always a case of when rather than if Liverpool would reclaim their place at the top of the English game, even when former flame Dominic Solanke momentarily silenced the Kop by heading Tottenham into a shock lead against his erstwhile employers last weekend.

However, as they have done consistently since the perpetually serene Arne Slot took the reins, Liverpool thrived in the face of adversity, responding with five unanswered goals when they only needed the one to take home the crown with four matches to spare.

From matching Man United’s record of 20 English top-flight titles, Slot becoming just the fifth manager to win the Premier League in their first season – and also the first Dutchman to do so – and equalling a scoring feat that had stood for 129 years, Sunday’s slaughter of Spurs was a day for special celebrations and special statistics galore.

The Anfield faithful will soon witness their first-ever Premier League title lift in person, five years after Jurgen Klopp’s COVID team hoisted the crown aloft in a deserted stadium, but Slot’s crop still have a couple of goals to fulfil, most notably taking eight more points to breach the 90 barrier.

May tends to be very merry indeed for the new champions, who have remarkably avoided defeat in each of their last 20 Premier League games played in the final month of the season, although there are no prizes for guessing who their last such defeat came against.

Seven years on from overcoming Liverpool at Stamford Bridge in May 2018, Chelsea now face their seventh game against the side that have already been confirmed as Premier League champions, although just one of their previous six such contests has ended in victory.

That sole success came against Manchester United in the dying embers of the 2012-13 campaign, but Enzo Maresca’s men have some wind in their sails amid a three-game winning run across all tournaments, boosting their end-of-season aspirations both domestically and continentally.

Barring a catastrophe at home, the Blues will compete in the Conference League final after thrashing Swedish upstarts Djurgardens 4-1 in Thursday’s semi-final first leg, which came after back-to-back Premier League triumphs over Fulham and Everton.

Thanks also to Brentford’s win over Nottingham Forest on Thursday, the fifth-placed hosts have Champions League qualification in their own hands, and not since August’s defeat at the hands of Manchester City have Chelsea failed to score in a home game in any competition.

Maresca’s men have since registered in 24 straight matches at Stamford Bridge, although a Nicolas Jackson strike at Anfield in October was inconsequential in a 2-1 defeat, one that extended Chelsea’s winless run against Liverpool into the double figures.