Will Liverpool End Van Gaal's Dominance in Fierce United Rivalry?

Jurgen Klopp says it’s “the mother of all games” but it’s impossible to escape the fact it comes in a little-brother competition. It says as much about the current seasons of Liverpool and Manchester United as it does the clubs as a whole. Thursday’s Europa League tie, after all, is not just the first time the two historic rivals have met in Europe. It is also the first time in decades that such a second-tier competition has such high-stakes significance for both teams. 

Emphasising that is the likelihood that this will also be the first season in which both sides will finish outside the top four since the 1980/81 season, a campaign in which Liverpool still won the European Cup. The last time it happened before that was in the 1970/71 season. 

Over the past 40-plus years - really since Liverpool began the first of the clubs’ two periods of hegemony in 1973 - one of them has always had a bigger goal to come. It has defined pretty much all of their cup meetings. Not this time. Realistically, the Europa League is the best route back into the Champions League for both, while also offering a trophy to properly signpost this campaign with something tangible. 

It is not the trophy they would have prioritised at the beginning of the campaign, but this is where they are. Then again, the reason that is the case is because it’s also a little difficult to say where they are as teams. What performance they will offer in a given game is as hard to predict as what league position they will finish in. 

Consider the last few weeks alone. Liverpool went from the two flat performances against Augsburg and then the League Cup final defeat to Manchester City, to suddenly switching it on against the same opponents in the league. Liverpool beat Manuel Pellegrini’s side 3-0 and also limited them to just four shots - a remarkably low ratio for an attack of that calibre, and especially one that peppered 20 at Simon Mignolet’s goal in 120 minutes at Wembley. 

From there, they then showed grit in the late 2-1 win over Crystal Palace. They hammered 20 shots against Alan Pardew’s team, eventually finding a way through, even if it was a controversial one via Christian Benteke’s penalty. Either way, Liverpool seem the team on the up, except there are two things that complicate that. 

Firstly, it is just a week since United seemed on similar form. They had cut loose against Midtjylland, winning 5-1 in the Europa League, before convincingly beating a title contender in Arsenal in a 3-2 win. They then followed that with a late win against Watford, just like Liverpool’s against Palace, even if the only acrimonious aspect there was that Quique Sanchez Flores’ side somehow missed so many chances. Watford had 13 shots, but couldn’t actually take any of them. 

Perhaps that was a sign of things to come as, within days, United were back to their underwhelming worst in that 1-0 defeat to West Brom. They had seven shots in that game, but could only hit one on target. They weren’t even any good in prosaic possession, with a pass accuracy of just 72%. 

It seemed to keep in with a trend of Louis van Gaal’s time: United always suffer a bad result - and, more worryingly, a bad performance - just when they seem on the cusp of moving onto another level, in this case the Champions League places. 

Now, they’re back where they were, so Van Gaal will hope to fall back on another trend of his time: he keeps beating Liverpool. If he does so again in this game, it will be another first: United have never beaten their great Anfield rivals five times in a row.

The problem is that the oscillating nature of their seasons’ means it’s impossible to even put too much stock in that. That is one big reason why these two clubs are where they are. That is why this secondary-tier competition brings such a big game for both.

Who do you think will gain the upper hand at Anfield tonight when Liverpool host Manchester United? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below