On September 22, at 15:00 pm London time, Liverpool ushered in the sixth round opponent of the Premier League at Anfield Stadium, Leeds United, who ranked fifth in the Premier League standings last season.
The league has now completed five rounds, but Leeds United, which has lost its meritorious coach Bielsa and many core players, has been very miserable in these five games.
In the first game of the new season, Leeds United played 0-0 with Burnley, the newly promoted team that returned to the Premier League.
But anyone who watched that game would know that the reason why Leeds United did not lose was because of luck.
Against Everton in the second round, Leeds United faced the consequences of purging Bielsa and selling off core players to raise funds.
After the game, Everton gave Leeds a 4-0 victory.
This score cast the shadow of relegation over the hearts of countless White Rose fans.
Sure enough, in the third round of the Premier League, Leeds United ran into the more powerful Leicester City, and once again suffered a bloodbath, losing 6-0.
Perhaps bottoming out, Leeds United had their first win in the fourth round, beating Crystal Palace 1-0, and then tied with Brighton 2-2 in the fifth round.
Leeds United currently have 4 points, ranking 14th in the standings.
But both the fans and the media have already foreseen that among the three teams that will be relegated this season, there is a high probability that Leeds United will be the one.
Because after Bielsa left, the Leeds United club was completely in crisis, and scandals broke out in the dressing room every day.
And the 36-year-old young coach that Leeds United boss Andrea Radrizzani poached from League One cannot control the Leeds United dressing room at all. He is just a temporary head coach.
In addition, Bielsa's ideas were still used in tactics, which caused the team's offensive and defensive thinking to be inconsistent, chaotic, and popular.
In this game, Klopp made a rotation for the first game of the English League Cup four days later.
Mo Yang, Mane, Salah, Van Dijk and others were collectively rotated.
At first, Mo Yang thought Klopp was a little arrogant and risky, but after the game started, Mo Yang no longer had this idea.
In the 4th minute of the game, Jota received a direct pass from Chamberlain's ribs, then cut inside laterally, causing chaos in Leeds United's defense and then pushed into the far corner, successfully rewriting the score to 1-0.
In less than three minutes, Firmino successfully pressed Phillips to win the ball and then drove it straight to the right rib.
After Shaqiri got the ball on the right side of the penalty area, he quickly swept in front of the goal, causing chaos and allowing Koke to score an own goal.
Seeing Leeds United's chaotic offensive and defensive transition rhythm, Mo Yang felt quite uncomfortable.
A good team was torn to pieces by a businessman.
A few days ago, Bamford, Phillips and others called him to complain, and he thought things might not be that bad.
But now it seems that it is only worse!
Now he can understand why Bamford, Phillips, Cork and others have thought of leaving Leeds United.
Because no player wants to stay in such a team, because you can't see any hope.
Mo Yang feels that if Leeds United continues to develop like this, relegation will be a certainty.
At first, Mo Yang thought that Leeds United would only sell Bai Lele, Maguire and Maddison. However, he never expected that Andre Radrizzani would even bring Dembé and Saint-Maximin.
Sold.
Now that Leeds United is like this, he can be said to have suffered the consequences.
On the sidelines, watching the team without his old friend become like this, Klopp felt quite sad in his heart.
In the end, Klopp gave Leeds a 4-0 score.
This was still the case when Klopp asked the players to be cautious, otherwise God knows whether they would have won the big score of 6-0, 7-0, 8-0.
Later, the media focused on exaggerating the chaos at Leeds United, and even openly criticized Andrei Radrizzani for affecting Leeds United due to his personal financial crisis.
The Times went even further and opened a column directly using this as an example, analyzing in detail the pros and cons of a sole proprietorship of a club.
Even Leeds United fans started making trouble, but in the face of capital, fans can only be motivated but powerless most of the time.
…
On September 26, in accordance with the regulations of the English League Cup, Liverpool officially joined the competition from the third round.
Like the Champions League, Liverpool's luck in the League Cup draw this year is not good, it can even be said to be extremely bad.
Because Liverpool was drawn against fellow Premier League giants Chelsea in the first game of the EFL Cup, so they were really unlucky.
Chelsea's biggest signings in this summer transfer window are Kepa Kepa, who is suspected of being taken advantage of, worth 80 million, and midfielder Jorginho, who is worth 51.3 million.
Both signings were reached at the request and under the auspices of Chelsea's new coach Maurizio Sarri.
As for Conte, this guy directly attacked Chelsea's senior management at the media press conference after losing 1-2 to Arsenal in the League Cup last season.
He openly vented his dissatisfaction to the media, claiming that every signing after he took over Chelsea was actually handled by Chelsea's senior management, and he had no right to speak.
Following these remarks and the fact that Chelsea failed to compete for fourth place last season and lost their place in the Champions League, Abramovich fired him directly and hired an Italian head coach, Maurizio Sarri.
In the first six rounds of this season, Chelsea, under the leadership of Maurizio Sarri, swept away the decline in the second half of last season and became extremely strong, winning six consecutive games. It is also the only team in the Premier League that has maintained a complete victory so far.
In these six league rounds, Chelsea's opponents were not weak, but they scored a total of 16 goals and only conceded two goals against Arsenal.
Chelsea is also the team that has conceded the fewest goals among the 20 teams in the Premier League so far, which shows how strong its defensive capabilities are.
Therefore, this gives Klopp a headache.
Because after playing Chelsea in the EFL Cup, Liverpool's opponent in the seventh round of the Premier League four days later was Chelsea again, and Liverpool was still playing away from home.
So this makes Klopp a little hesitant as to whether he should give up the EFL Cup.
Klopp doesn't want to be overtaken by Manchester City or other giants like last season, and then they can only passively chase. He doesn't want to experience that kind of suffering again.
As for when gathering at the beginning of the season, Klopp said that he should try his best to win every championship. It was just a goal and an encouragement.
In the end, Klopp adopted a semi-rotation strategy and chose the league.
As a result, when the game started, Klopp found that he and Maurizio Sarri wanted to go together, and Chelsea also rotated most of the lineup.
Kante, Jorginho, Kepa and others were all absent. Klopp, who wanted to take a closer look at Jorginho, who was recently described by the English media as having world-class midfield potential, was disappointed.
In this game, Mo Yang was still put on the bench by Klopp. The starting players were Lallana, Fabinho and Milner.
Klopp also left only Mane on the front line, and the center position was Sturridge, the oldest player in the team.
Ever since Liverpool won the Champions League, this guy has made up his mind to stay at Liverpool and retire.
On the back line, there are Matip and Lovren, as well as Klein and Moreno.
In the first half, although the two sides played vigorously, both Chelsea and Liverpool could only see the flowers but not the results.
The most eye-catching one was Buffon, who saved Chelsea's wonderful shots many times.
In the second half, in the 58th minute, the fans hoped to see the goal finally arrive.
Chelsea's Fabregas and Azpilicueta were playing with fire on the left side of the penalty area.
Facing Milner's pressing, Azpilicueta turned around and shot the ball, but directly passed the ball to Mane on the outside of the upper left corner of the penalty area.
Then Mane quickly handed the ball to Chamberlain on the sideline of the penalty area in front of him.
Chamberlain quickly cut inside and hit the goal, allowing Caballero to save the ball to the back post, where it landed just behind Sturridge, who was missed by Chelsea.
Veteran Sturridge did not miss this God-given opportunity and immediately took an overhead kick with his back and kicked the ball into the goal.
After this goal was born, it was not until the 80th minute that Chelsea used their positioning outside the right side of the penalty area to allow Emerson to score a header.
Then Mo Yang came on the stage, and Chelsea reacted quickly, quickly replacing Kante and guarding Mo Yang tightly.
Under Kanter's persistence, Mo Yang still sent out several wonderful offensive arrangements and penetrating through balls.
But they couldn't stand it. Shaqiri and Mane each took turns performing happy football.
Then the law of retribution will take effect if you waste an opportunity.
In the injury time of the game, Chelsea replaced Hazard.
As a result, Chamberlain and Moreno, who made contributions in the second half, were hit by Hazard's left and right tumblers outside the left penalty area, and finally broke through the gate guarded by Buffon with a powerful shot.
Since then, Liverpool lost 1-2 to Chelsea, and the EFL Cup ended at the beginning.