By Simon Meakin
Liverpool get ready to host Watford at Anfield this weekend, so it's time for another sideways look at the weekends game. Simon Meakin does not disappoint.
Okay.  Now we’re getting into dreamland territory.  A 14 point lead over City is, lets not beat about the bush here, HUGE.  No team has ever come from that far behind to win the League Title, apparently.  Although whether this is one of those 1992 was Football Year Zero, nothing that happened before the Premier League ever actually happened type of stats I’m not sure.  I also don’t know whether this factors in the days of two points for a win (you try overhauling a 14 point deficit when that means the team above you has to lose seven more games than you – or come up with an unfeasible amount of draws).  Referring back to my Man City blog post (or is that blogpost?  Where can I find a millennial, snowflake grammar pedant please?) how far back where we at Christmas in 1981? 
That was also an exceptionally cold winter, so it may be we had a few games in hand at that stage (in the days when top flight pitches didn’t resemble bowling greens and under-soil heating wasn’t de rigeur - I seem to remember the Baseball Ground in particular spent half the season resembling either the Mississippi Swamp-lands or the Siberian Tundra).  I was living in Shropshire at the time, where the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in England was broken twice in the space of six weeks. 
The memories of playing in defence against Wilfred Owen Primary School, wearing just a thin short-sleeved top in what was basically an away game in Narnia, is still burned into my brain (we lost 5-1 despite having Guardiola-esque levels of possession due to the fact that once they had broken our high press (or in less high-falutin' terms, got over the half way line, they simply waltzed through our frozen solid back four).  Even the time I took an overnight coach through the Andes which no-one bothered to tell me effectively meant travelling in a mobile fridge-freezer on wheels and my coat and sleeping bag stuck in the luggage compartment didn’t come close.
Anyway, back to the game this weekend. We are at times playing some glorious football.  The goals against Everton were an absolute joy to behold (Okay, the Everton defence was also an absolute joy to behold from our point of view).  The ball from Trent, the ball from Lovren and Origi’s touch, Mane’s pass for the first.  And the fact that three days later we cruised past Bournemouth with virtually an entirely different front six. 
Unlike the past couple of seasons we’re also not so reliant on our usual front three.  The goals are coming from all over the place.  When Keita scored against Bournemouth it meant that every single outfield player who had played a minute of football (bar the Carabao Cup teams) had scored bar Joe Gomez (although Klopp then messed that stat up slightly by then sending Curtis Jones on who astonishingly somehow failed to score in the entire 14 minutes he was on).
I’m not writing Leicester off by the way, before Gary Lineker takes umbrage and throws crisps at me.  The Boxing Day game is shaping up to be massive.  Win that and the Holy Grail might possibly finally be in reach. 
But, before then we’ve the small matter of Watford to beat.  I make it sound like that’s all we’ve got to do.  I suppose there is also the small matter of becoming Champions of the World, while simultaneously making sure our Under 12’s take out John Terry and his Villa chums.  And all this after a trip to Salzburg when we did our usual leave it to the last game to actually qualify for the knock out stages. 
I have to admit, I had the sort of horrible feeling about that match that Han Solo had when they ended up in the Death Star sewage system with the walls closing in and tentacled things trying to drown them (I always wondered as a kid how they actually got out of there.  There didn’t seem to be a convenient set of steps).  Luckily Red Bull didn’t have a be-tentacled danger-man, so we are safely through.
Watford themselves are clearly struggling and - on paper - this looks to be the biggest home banker of the season.  Particularly given our last three home games against them have ended up 6-1, 5-0 and 5-0.  The first of those 5-0’s happened to be my son’s first ever visit to Anfield, at the age of 8, to watch Mo Salah run riot in the snow and bag four goals (it was the first time I’d ever seen someone score four at Anfield as well, and he goes and manages it in his first game). 
This all happened when the country was in the grip of the “Beast from the East” (insert your own joke about some big ugly centre forward from Norwich or Hull because I couldn’t come up with one). I’d never given it much thought before but it turns out the Kop faces North East.  I can safely say it was the coldest I have been at a football match this side of Wilfred Owen Junior School (although watching Hereford v Wigan in a fourth division match at the old Springfield Park - featuring future Everton managerial maestro Roberto Martinez with a full head of hair - runs it close). I basically missed the last twenty minutes desperately trying to massage my son’s legs to prevent a full on millennial snowflake meltdown (given he was the temperature of an actual snowflake at the time he would argue he had good grounds to be fair).
Watford of course famously came steaming up from the old fourth to the first division in double quick order under the guidance of everyone’s favourite England manager, the late Graham Taylor (a man who must wish he had been knocked out of the Euro’s by Norway, Luxembourg, Equatorial Guinea, or any team that didn’t sound a bit like a vegetable). At least Roy Hodgson did the sensible thing and got beaten by Iceland and no-one ever remembers that do they?.  And not forgetting the stardust supplied by their Chairman.  Ladies and Gentlemen Mr Elton John!  In my mind I always remembered Elton sporting ludicrously oversized comedy glasses in pretty much every picture of the pair of them together. But, a Google search shows that Elton disappointingly seems to be wearing quite sensible glasses (maybe picked up in a two for one offer at the Watford branch of Specsavers after blowing all his money on cocaine and Wilf Rostron). 
One of the funniest interviews I’ve ever read was of Elton in a music magazine a few years ago where, he supremely grumpily reflected on his ridiculous lifestyle in the 1970’s, which veered from drugs binges, to needing a full-on articulated lorry to deliver him to his own birthday party dressed as Marie-Antoinette. His dress had been the size of a hovercraft. Then there was the time he turned up at a match one Saturday to find the whole ground singing “Don’t sit down, while Elton’s around or you’ll get a penis up the a*se (the kind of chant that might possibly get clubs in a spot of hot water these days, and quite rightly so). 
Today’s chairmen have a lot to live up to really. Although, maybe, dressing up like Marie Antoinette and getting a boardroom full of Japanese Salary-men to sing about penises might help Ed Woodward seal the deal with Manchester United's new avocado partner.
Time to sign off for Christmas with the match prediction.  A third consecutive 5-0 given we’ve finally remembered how to keep clean sheets.  Weather a bit more clement (possibly a light drizzle). Salah restricted to just the three this time, Keita to bag his third in three matches and a free kick from Trent.  The club head off to Qatar (I’ll stick my neck out and predict no Christmas snow there) to be crowned world champions (where I really hope we get to play New Caledonia’s finest Hienghene Sport – although I somehow doubt it) and I’m heading off to whack on some Roy Wood and Wizzard, knock back some Bailey’s and have a row with the in-laws.  Merry Christmas!