“The game is finely balanced,” said a straight-faced Steve McManaman before kick-off, and your sides would have been sore from the laughing. Liverpool just the two up from the first leg and the odds on Villarreal keeping them scoreless in the second marginally larger than your hopes of winning the EuroMillions.
Outside the ground, BT's Seema Jaswal found some Liverpool fans who begged to differ with Macca's opinion, all of them super confident that the Yellow Submarine would be left floundering on the ocean bed come full-time.
“Where have you travelled from,” Seema asked one Scouser.
“Flom Liverplool to Blenidlorm from Blenidlorm to Villavillaleeel,” she said, evidently very much enjoying the occasion, but declaring that she never makes predictions before predicting that Liverpool would win comflortlalbly.
Back pitchside, Jake Humphrey had Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen and Peter Crouch for company, Michael's neck aching from trying to make eye contact with the lads, our host marvelling at the friendly atmosphere in the stadium, but probably wishing that the BT cameras would move swiftly away from the 'UP THE F***ING REDS' banner.
It was bucketing down, he told us, but you know Jake, nothing dampens his enthusiasm, not even when he’s emoting about the good things happening at Saudi-owned football clubs. And his enthusiasm for Rio’s interview with Virgil van Dijk knew no bounds.
Rio: “Do the Liverpool players talk about being immortal?”
Virgil: “No.”
Virgil came over as the most confident man on this earth, a touch arrogant, perhaps, but you would be too if you were Virgil. The only time in the course of the interview that he looked rattled was when Rio asked him how he could get better. “That’s not possible,” his flaring nostrils replied.
Jake revealed that Michael had apologised to Rio in the bar the night before for deciding that Virgil was the greatest centre back he’d ever seen, Rio the runner-up in his poll. Rio was both aggrieved and humbled, but Peter told us that the chat between the pair lasted two hours, so you sensed it ended with Michael and Rio telling each other that they loved each other verly vlerly mluch. One of those conversations. You know yourself. All good.
Off we went.
And Villarreal scored after two minutes, 50 seconds.
And then again five minutes before half-time.
To quote the poet Alexander of Ferguson, “football, bloody hell”.
"At the moment," said Darren Fletcher, "Liverpool are being sunk by the Yellow Submarine".
Jake and the lads were ashen-faced come the break.
“All four of us can’t quite believe what we’ve seen,” he said, having spent the bulk of the build-up telling us how the population of plucky little Villarreal would fit inside Anfield, with a couple of thousand seats to spare, and how chuffed plucky little Villarreal were to have Liverpool visiting their plucky little town and their plucky little stadium.
“We definitely have to eat our words, we were convinced Liverpool would overpower this team,” said Rio, who has never met a non-English team he reckoned wouldn’t be overpowered by one from Blighty, no matter how plucky.
"The chance of a quadruple hangs by a thread," Jake gasped, although with Luis Diaz coming on, the thread looked brawny enough.
Second half?
Well, nothing finely balanced about it. Liverpool decided to stop this nonsense and win.
Fabinho. Diaz. Mane. Done and dusted.
That Diaz lad?
Porto must be currently rocking in a darkened room, wondering why they only asked for €45 million for the fella. At this stage, his left ear lobe is worth more than that. Liverpool’s recruitment staff should be named Team Midas.
Emergency over. “This fantasy season continues,” as Darren put it.
Back in 1999, they said ‘The Treble’ would never be done again. “For sure,” Jürgen said to himself, “it’ll be the quadruple next time.”
Six games to go. Six wins, accompanied by a little Manchester City blip, and they’ll be home and hosed.
“You’ll never walk alone,” bellowed the Liverpool fans from the stands of Villarreal’s plucky little stadium. Or, possibly, in a straight line, in the case of that woman who travelled from Blenidlorm.
Drunk on success, this lot. No end to it.
