Sometimes it clicks. And in those moments when it clicks for Darwin Nunez, you could be excused for thinking you are watching the best centre-forward in the world, a wrecking-ball of a No 9 whose power and aggression are sometimes accompanied by an unexpected finesse.

Take a look at the two goals he scored away to Newcastle United in the opening weeks of this season, shortly after being sent on with a point to prove; that sumptuous volley on the half-turn, as the ball came over his shoulder, against West Ham United at Anfield; that ferocious strike soon after coming on at Bournemouth in the Carabao Cup in November; that outrageous, impudent chipped finish at Brentford to leave Mark Flekken clutching at thin air; well-taken goals for Uruguay against Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.

But it never clicks for long. Nunez is the definition of a player who blows hot and cold — not just from one month or one week to the next, but often from one minute to the next. Even within those hotter streaks, there are periods when the 24-year-old looks out of place in a team with serious ambitions. There are so many rough edges to his game.

Since mid-March, he has not so much blown hot and cold as blown out completely: nine appearances, just one goal (when he charged down a goalkeeper’s clearance against Sheffield United), numerous chances squandered and a series of performances that have varied between erratic and lethargic.

As has been discussed at length, there are numerous factors behind the collapse of Liverpool’s Premier League title challenge. It would be fair to describe the struggles of Nunez, whose best form this season came when others in the team were playing well, as a symptom of those ills rather than an overriding cause.

But as Liverpool begin to look beyond Jurgen Klopp’s farewell tour and to conceive of a new vision led by Michael Edwards, Richard Hughes and, they hope, Feyenoord coach Arne Slot, there is a serious discussion to be had over Nunez. After two seasons, has the Uruguayan done enough to be one of the cornerstones of Liverpool’s brave new world?

Nunez has scored 33 goals in 92 games for Liverpool. More than a third of those appearances have been from the bench. In the Premier League, it is 20 goals from 61 appearances: 15 goals in 41 starts, five in 20 from the bench. Add 11 assists to the equation and it looks healthy: a goal or assist every 77 minutes in the Premier League this season, a clear improvement on one every 141 minutes in his debut campaign.

The basic numbers look solid enough. Video showreels of his best bits look spectacular. But the concern is the other parts: the reliability of his finishing and build-up play, the sporadic nature of his performances, his curious relationship with the offside rule and the way his output and playing time has faded significantly from March onwards in three of the past four seasons.

Opta’s expected-goals (xG) metric shows a player who, in his four seasons playing top-flight football in Europe, has struggled to convert chances on a consistent basis.

In all but one of those campaigns (his second at Benfica), his goal return has fallen some distance short of his xG. Liverpool signed him on the back of that 2021-22 season in which he scored 26 league goals for Benfica from an xG of 18.4. That is an enormously impressive return, but it remains a distinct outlier in his career. Over his two seasons in the Premier League, he has scored 20 goals from an xG of 27.8.

If anything, the nature of Nunez’s goals — many of them powerful, audacious efforts from low-quality chances — skews the data. In that 14-minute cameo at Newcastle, he scored twice from two chances with a combined xG of 0.4. By contrast, across the home games against Newcastle and Chelsea, he took a total of 18 shots, with a combined xG of 3.0, but didn’t score.

This season, Nunez has taken more shots (104) than any other player in the Premier League despite spending more than one-third of the time on the sidelines. In terms of shots per 90 minutes, his total of 4.73 is by far the highest among players who have made more than a handful of appearances. Next come Fulham’s Rodrigo Muniz (4.44), Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (4.0), Tottenham Hotspur’s Richarlison (3.80) and then his Liverpool team-mate, Mohamed Salah (3.72).

Using Opta’s data, Nunez has missed no fewer than 46 “big chances” in the Premier League since joining Liverpool in the summer of 2022. Haaland has missed more (58), though he has scored almost three times as many goals (56) as Nunez over the same period.

Nunez’s shot map for this season captures the problem. The red dots show the goals, the black dots show the unsuccessful shots and the bigger the dot, the better the chance according to Opta’s xG model. The two most striking things about Nunez’s shot map are the number of large black dots close to the opposition goal and the number of tiny black dots more than 30 yards out. From 23 attempts from outside the penalty area, Nunez has scored twice — and one of those was that goal against Sheffield United.

The problem is that so many of his close-range finishes seem so untidy, so rushed and so lacking in composure. In isolation, the two he has hit straight at goalkeepers from similar positions in recent Liverpool defeats — denied by Crystal Palace’s Dean Henderson and Everton’s Jordan Pickford — would be easily forgotten.

When they are just the latest entries in a compendium of glaring misses, they are harder to excuse.

And when several of those “big chances” have been missed when his team are trailing in games — notably against Palace and Everton and away to Luton Town in November — it not only magnifies the incident but raises questions about temperament. The best centre-forwards have an ice-cold composure in front of goal. The majority of the time, Nunez seems like the opposite of that.

Former Liverpool forward Michael Owen received plenty of flak in February when he suggested on X that Nunez’s wonderfully taken goal at Brentford underlined a flaw as well as a strength.

It was an “incredible” finish, Owen said, but he added, “To even consider that finish is madness. (In terms of the probability of scoring) it’s a one-in-10, two-in-10 finish at best. Learning to slot, dink or go around the GK (goalkeeper) is a far more productive way to score and will increase his chances to four or five in 10, thus massively increasing his end return.”

Spool forward to Wednesday night and Owen was indignant after seeing Nunez leather the ball straight at Pickford from close range in the first half of the Merseyside derby. “I cannot defend that in any way, shape or form,” the one-time Ballon d’Or winner said on the Premier League’s global television feed. “He can finish sometimes, but to go from one extreme to another and be seven yards out and blast it straight down the middle is just not good enough. It’s a bit of play that you just don’t see world-class players doing.

“I cannot get my head around how you can finish like that one night (against Brentford) and be so calm and calculated and confident in one of the most difficult finishes known to man — it was impossible, virtually, what he did — and then get in a simple situation here (against Everton) and just put your head down and blast it as hard as you can. I cannot fathom it. It’s that extreme and then it’s this extreme.”

In Owen’s view, it comes down to “fundamental, basic things in front of goal”. But sometimes it’s about fundamental, basic things away from the goal. Such as staying onside.

Nunez has been caught offside 30 times in the Premier League this season, again more than any other player. To put it another way, he has been flagged offside once every 66 minutes he has spent on the pitch. To put that in context, he has been caught offside more often than Manchester City (once every 92 minutes).

Haaland has been caught offside just twice all season. That’s once every 1,091 minutes. And while there are obvious differences in style — both between the players and between the teams — one of the biggest differences is their ability to read the play before running onto a through ball. Both are quick enough not to need to set off early. Haaland times his runs brilliantly. Nunez? Not so much.

This is what is meant by “rough edges”. It applies to build-up play too. Some feel that Nunez’s all-round threat outweighs any concerns over his finishing, such is the fear he sometimes spreads through opposition defences — the “agent of chaos” and all that. But it was not always a convincing case earlier in the season — and it certainly hasn’t been the case lately.

There are times when Nunez gets it right, as seen with the goals he laid on for Curtis Jones and Cody Gakpo in the space of three minutes in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg against Fulham in January and some of the goals he laid on for Salah earlier in the season. But when it comes to link-up play, there are too many poor decisions, heavy touches and too many shots when a more patient, subtle approach is needed.

Klopp was happy to accept a relatively low goal return from Roberto Firmino because the Brazilian helped make Liverpool such a cohesive unit with and without the ball, bringing the best out of Salah, Sadio Mane and later Diogo Jota.

In many ways, Nunez is the anti-Firmino. He is an individualist rather than a team player. He is energetic and all-action but at times ineffective in the counter-press. He is trigger-happy but lacks accuracy. His shortcomings are easy to gloss over when he is scoring goals. When he is firing blanks, as has been the case lately, that becomes harder.

Jamie Carragher didn’t mince his words in the Sky Sports studio after Liverpool’s 2-0 defeat by Everton in the Merseyside derby on Wednesday night. Having said there is a question to be asked about Mohamed Salah’s future — 32 this summer, with only a year left on his contract and a new manager arriving — the former Liverpool defender added that he is “at the stage now where I don’t think there’s a question to be asked” about Nunez. And he didn’t mean it in a positive way.

Carragher spoke about having spent the past two years “wanting him to do well because there’s so much you like — because he gives everything, he runs, he causes trouble, he gets the odd goal, gets assists”.

“But we’ve all been in squads,” he said, “where someone comes in and for the first year we say, ‘OK, he’s getting up to speed, he’s improving, he’s getting better.’ And it looked like he was at the start of the season, but it has just ground to a halt.

“And you’re looking at it now and after two years, I don’t think there’s going to be a massive improvement in him. I think what we’ve seen in the two years, that’s what he is. He can cause trouble, he can be erratic in his finishing. It’s not going to improve. I don’t think it’s going to be enough to win the biggest trophies, so I think there’s a big decision to be made on him this summer.”

It won’t be Klopp’s decision. But the outgoing manager has not seemed thrilled by his centre-forward lately. In three games where Liverpool desperately needed a goal — 2-1 down at Manchester United, 2-0 down at home to Atalanta, 1-0 down at home to Crystal Palace — Nunez was substituted between the 59th and 68 minutes. In the next two games, away to Atalanta and Fulham, he appeared only briefly from the bench.

Out of sorts at Everton on Wednesday night, particularly after his first-half miss, he surely would not have lasted the 90 minutes had either Jota or Cody Gakpo been available.

Is two years long enough to make a judgment on a player, as Carragher suggests? Not always. If it was, a 28-year-old Didier Drogba might have been ushered out of Chelsea in the summer of 2006 rather than staying on long enough to score 33 goals in year three and going on to become one of the most feted players in the club’s history.

Drogba was that kind of player. Like Nunez, he could be a fearsome opponent, but there were also periods — even after his breakthrough — where team-mates and successive managers appeared ready to give up on him.

Interestingly, two of Nunez’s former Uruguay team-mates could relate similar experiences in Europe. Luis Suarez performed wonderfully for Ajax but was still seen as an inconsistent, erratic player, just short of elite level, until towards the end of his second season at Liverpool, aged 26. Diego Forlan was 25 when he left Manchester United to little fanfare after scoring 10 Premier League goals in two and a half seasons, but he flourished in La Liga with Villarreal and Atletico Madrid.

Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins is having the season of his life at 28. Bournemouth’s Dominic Solanke likewise at 26. “Everyone’s path is different,” Solanke told The Athletic recently, reflecting on his own experiences.

But at the moment it is hard to take issue with Carragher’s suggestion that Nunez’s inconsistency “is what he is”. It is telling that the forward lost his starting place in the final weeks of last season and started just one of Liverpool’s first five games Premier League this term. Klopp has consistently backed him and sung his praises without ever appearing entirely convinced by him.

Jurgen Klopp’s faith in Darwin Nunez has wavered of late (James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)

The big question now is whether Nunez survives a summer of sweeping changes at Anfield: the return of Edwards, the arrival of a new sporting director, a new head coach and, without question, some difficult decisions about how to freshen up a squad that surpassed expectations for much of the season but has been found wanting when the stakes are highest.

If Liverpool need to sell players to raise funds this summer, then Nunez is an obvious candidate. There will always be a market for centre-forwards who are proven, to whatever degree, at Champions League and Premier League level.

The flip side of that is, for Edwards, Hughes et al, there are not too many obvious, affordable top-class centre-forwards out there who would come with a guarantee of offering more. Nunez’s experiences, as well as the difficulties endured by Nicolas Jackson at Chelsea and Rasmus Hojlund, underline the risks involved in simply going for Europe’s latest flavour of the month.

Perhaps Klopp and his staff have missed a trick with Nunez, whether technical or psychological. Perhaps another coach, like Slot, will find a way to get more out of him. And perhaps given the lack of affordable top-class centre-forwards on the market, the logical thing would be to wait and see what happens with Nunez under a new coach with a fresh approach. Nunez will turn 25 this summer, his English is slowly improving and he might benefit from a new start on Merseyside.

But there is no guarantee of that. If anything, the past two seasons have heightened the feeling that Nunez’s inconsistency is something he will not just grow out of. It seems to reflect something in his nature. Sometimes it clicks, but it rarely stays clicked for long.

(Top image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

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Jurgen Klopp believes Arne Slot is a smart choice as his successor as he told the incoming Liverpool manager: “You’re getting the best job in the world.”

Liverpool are working to finalise a compensation package with Feyenoord for the Dutch coach, who has two years remaining on his contract.

A compromise is expected to be reached with Slot having made it clear that his heart is set on taking over at Anfield.

“I didn’t read anything but I was told that Arne said something,” Klopp said on the potential of Slot becoming his successor.

“I am not involved in the process. What I like a lot about it is if he is the one then he wants to take the job — he’s desperate, excited, let’s go for it.

“I like the way his team play football and all the things I hear about him as a guy. Some people I know, know him, I don’t know him yet.  Good coach, good guy.

“If he’s the solution for the club then I am more than happy. It’s not up to me to judge but it all sounds really good to me.”

Asked what Slot would be inheriting at Anfield, Klopp added: “Best job in the world, best club in the world.

“Also it looks like I help with not leaving on a high so space for improvement, let me say it like that. Great job, great team, fantastic people. A really interesting job.”

GO DEEPER

Slot wants Liverpool job, 'confident' agreement will come

Wednesday’s defeat to Everton effectively ended Liverpool’s hopes of winning the Premier League title, but Klopp is keen to ensure his final season doesn’t just fizzle out.

Cody Gakpo will return to the squad for Saturday’s trip to West Ham United after missing the Merseyside derby to attend the birth of his son.

“Little Samuel is born. According to Cody, everything is fine. Mum well, boy well, father well and back in training yesterday,” Klopp said.

“I can’t remember ever being as disappointed and frustrated as I was after the Everton game. I blame myself 100 per cent because we were not in the mood. We lost pretty much all the decisive battles.

“I am pretty sure Arsenal and Man City now see it as a two-horse race now. But I am not in the mood to raise the white flag.

“The boys are incredible footballers and I have the job to create a situation where they can be the best version of themselves and that is where I have failed. I didn’t see any version of that in the Everton game.”

GO DEEPER

'He makes players believe in him' - Dirk Kuyt and what he learnt from Arne Slot

(Nikki Dyer – LFC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

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One of the closest, most enthralling Premier League title races in many years is careering towards a climax.

Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City played out crucial games on consecutive nights this week — and The Athletic went to all three to survey and convey the emotions of three very different clubs and fanbases.

An Arsenal fan briefly comes up for air between substantial munches of a doner kebab: “The internet is gonna be a f****** joke tonight.”

Welcome to The Emirates. They are a different breed here; still rabid football fans all the way to their inner core, but perhaps with slightly different priorities on a matchday.

The number of selfies being taken in front of the giant Arsenal lettering opposite the Hornsey Road roundabout, for example, is well above average for your typical football ground.

One man films a staged video of his friend slowly walking towards the camera outside the ground, club-shop bag in hand, shades on. They both watch the video back to make sure it looks good, then they wrap their freshly purchased red and white scarves around their necks. Job done.

There are still all the normal football pre-match sights and sounds. Alcohol, meat, cigarette smoke, anticipation.

“We’ve still got an hour to drink,” one fan informs his mate. “An hour?” he replies. “You’ll be wearing one of them mate,” he cackles as he points to a passerby wearing a protective cast boot.

It does, though, feel pretty normal around the ground. Should it? Arsenal are top of the Premier League with five games left. They haven’t won a title for 20 years.

This place should be brimming with feverish expectation. And yet, the dead-behind-the-eyes robotic football machine that is Manchester City dictates that whatever Arsenal do tonight is irrelevant, in Premier League parlance.

At least, that’s how some Gunners fans see it.

Arsenal fans prepare for their team’s match with Chelsea as best they can (Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)

“The Villa defeat was obviously gutting but otherwise we’ve been basically perfect since the turn of the year,” season ticket holder Jamie says, referring to Arsenal’s otherwise outstanding record of 12 wins and one draw (0-0 at the Etihad) in 2024.

“We’ve only been behind in one game since last year and that was the Villa game. It’s ridiculous, really, how perfect you have to be to beat City. I know we had that run around Christmas (four points from their last five matches of 2023) but yeah, I’m proud of us, we’re pushing them closer than last year.

“I just feel the pressure is off now. If City win every game from now on, they deserve it and we’ll be back next year, we’re growing, on an upward curve. I’m not sure you can say the same for City, (Kevin) De Bruyne is probably less influential and (Erling) Haaland isn’t scoring as many. And Liverpool will obviously change a lot this summer. We’re all good.”

It’s a philosophical attitude, one that seems to reflect a club comfortable in its own skin.

There isn’t much skin on show as 60,000 people amble into the stadium. People wear hats, scarves and parka jackets. It’s 6°C on April 23.

The cranky sound of AC/DC song Hells Bells fills the enormous red bowl inside. With its talk of high temperatures, it feels like a piss-take.

After a plod-along run of two defeats, one draw and a laboured win over Wolves in their previous four, the question in the air is if Arsenal still have the minerals for this title fight.

The answer comes within 30 seconds. Red swarm over blue like it’s the 1997 General Election all over again, Kai Havertz is sent through on goal (although is marginally offside) and the next few minutes are a blur of aggressive tackles, jinky movement and nimble passes.

The crowd is immediately fully engaged and Arsenal are immediately in front.

Leoandro Trossard celebrates scoring Arsenal’s first of the evening (Charlotte Wilson/Offside via Getty Images)

By way of retort, Chelsea, with their 58 per cent possession and higher xG in the first half, play with a freedom that spells danger — Nicolas Jackson and Conor Gallagher flashing balls across goal that elicit nervous, leaning-back, pursed-lipped oooohs in the home stands, then spontaneous applause en masse by way of encouragement. Arsenal are a more united bunch these days.

Greater teams — with the emphasis on team — would prey on Arsenal’s fragility, but not Chelsea.

The freedom they are playing with also extends to their defenders, who run in odd directions and blame team-mates for their own mistakes.

Mauricio Pochettino, for the time being, is a picture of calm amid the storm of an unceasing first half. Mikel Arteta buzzes around his technical area like a wasp who has accidentally sniffed some chilli powder.

At half-time, Rollin’ by Limp Bizkit is inexplicably played in full. It feels like the early 2000s again, a sentiment Arsenal take literally as they regale their glory days by demolishing Chelsea over the next 25 minutes.

The loudest cheer is for the third goal, orgasmic groans at Martin Odegaard’s wand-ish through ball, then euphoria as Havertz finishes it off.

As the goals fly in, the giddiness elevates. All four sides of the ground are on their feet and the noise is overpowering at times. As a stadium, an entity, a feeling, this place is unrecognisable from three years ago. There is a tangible feeling of unity and delirium.

“Who put the ball in the Chelsea net? Half the fucking team did,” they sing. Technically only three of them have scored, which is 27 per cent of the team, but you get the sentiment.

The ultimate indignity arrives in the final minutes as they shout ‘ole’ at a rare sequence of Chelsea passes.

“You have to react and face the moment,” Arteta says of Arsenal’s return to form. “And the moment is beautiful. We’ve been working for it for nine months.”

Arsenal’s players are restrained, but the fans are not (David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

On the pitch at full time, the celebrations are fairly restrained. Outside the ground, this is not the case.

People aren’t just walking away chatting about the match; they’re singing, hugging and dancing. There is an incessant buzz of unfiltered, intoxicating joy.

The scenes are so rhapsodic they bring to mind the end of the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, set amid Arsenal’s 1989 last-minute league title win at Anfield, when fans poured onto the streets back home.

“I feel like I’m walking out of a festival and we’ve just watched the headliner,” one fan says to his friends. Everyone is high on Arsenal.

A group of three lads are dropping the c-word (champions), while another is shouting about goal difference.

At the Tollington pub, the chant on repeat is not about the title, it’s about Chelsea getting battered. Whatever happens in the next three and a half weeks, this night will not be forgotten anytime soon.

With Liverpool stumbling through Jurgen Klopp’s Last Dance, they shouldn’t mind that Everton are their next opponents.

It might be a local derby, where form is supposed to ‘go out the window’, but this fixture has been massively skewed towards the Reds since the turn of the century.

They have beaten Everton 28 times since 2000; the Toffees have won just five.

“You wouldn’t get chips like that at Anfield,” a father tells his lad as he passes him one outside the Blue Dragon just a few feet from Goodison Park, with the chips in question being proper chips, and the insinuation being Everton are the proper club. Or the people’s club, as they say in this part of Liverpool.

If Everton are a proper club, then lord knows what a disjointed one looks like in 2023-24. It has been a season of upheaval and strife and the visit of their neighbours is not necessarily being relished.

Klopp stands impassively as he surveys the opening minutes of his final Merseyside derby, his feet encased by fluorescent orange trainers.

Jurgen Klopp assesses the scene ahead of his last Merseyside derby (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)

Perhaps he’s just taking it all in, his last visit to the grand/creaking/traditional/outdated (delete as applicable) old stadium, arguably unique in English football (there are other ancient grounds, but not of this size). Or perhaps he just knows what’s coming.

Liverpool are submissive and compliant to the point of BDSM as they fail to cope with an Everton side who look like they’ve been locked up in darkness for the last week, caged and made to listen to the Z-Cars theme tune on repeat.

As with Arsenal, the tone is set within the opening minutes, but on Liverpool’s part this means meek surrender. The wobbly wheels are in motion. They win 25 per cent of all duels in the opening half an hour, a ridiculous statistic.

If The Emirates is an arena, a colosseum, Goodison is 38,000 people shouting into an empty tin can. It’s being sat in a wheelie bin while burly blokes beat the outside of it with baseball bats.

There is an unceasing air of frantic desperation in their pleading yells for their team to tackle, to pass, to shoot, to block. No Premier League fanbase gets off on an agricultural sliding tackle more than at Goodison. Nowhere else is more spittle rasped for the tenacious blocking of a powerfully struck opposition shot.

When the merited opener arrives via Jarrad Branthwaite’s left foot, Liverpool’s fans begin to fear the worst.

Everton are willing to hoof the the ball out of play to clear a corner when they have all 11 players behind the ball… in the first half. Liverpool are not.

The rabid home team are seemingly prepared to do and sacrifice anything to win this football match. Liverpool are not.

“Games likes these, the bare minimum is fight,” Virgil van Dijk says later. “We were lacking that at so many moments.”

Liverpool are creating chances, but they are losing all the key moments; missing chances (or shooting straight at Jordan Pickford), conceding chances and losing tackles and loose balls.

Jarrad Branthwaite’s shot squirms under Alisson (Daniel Chesterton/Offside via Getty Images)

The game is being played almost exclusively in Everton’s half. “We’re going to see record possession statistics for Liverpool in this half,” one home fan says.

But his fears are not realised. Dominic Calvert-Lewin heads home a second, the roof comes off. One man sat in the home seats does not move, remaining seated and wearing a wry smile, if not a red shirt.

Hope is lost in the away end. Defiance is not in their repertoire tonight, they are too despondent for that.

They are told their “support is f***ing s***” and can only retort with muted sarcastic applause from a few hundred of them.

Nerdy statistical models would have Liverpool winning this 19 times out of 20. But the Opta supercomputer does not allow for Sean Dyche wearing a tracksuit.

“F**k off to Norway, the city is ours,” rings around Goodison (a dig at what they see as Liverpool’s tourist-heavy fanbase). As the whistle blows on an iconic Everton performance, the line “and if you know your history” from It’s a Grand Old Team must be one of the most thunderous noises heard in English football this season.

Fourteen years of no home victories over Liverpool, the fact that survival is all but secured, that Liverpool’s title bid has been seriously dented, and Klopp’s farewell party severely sullied, plus the points deductions, the fury, the injustice, it all pours into that noise.

“You lost the league, at Goodison Park,” is the refrain being sung over and over, more so outside the ground as people literally jump into each other’s arms outside the Winslow.

Liverpool’s fans have long since scarpered, the away end emptying within a couple of minutes at full-time.

The post-match quotes are telling. Calvert-Lewin says Everton were happy to let Liverpool have the ball because “we never feared they were gonna really hurt us”.

Van Dijk criticises his team mates. Klopp apologies to his supporters and says that historically City and Arsenal don’t drop the number of points they’ll need to for Liverpool to stand a chance now. His words don’t say the title dream is over, but his face does.

Klopp and Van Dijk after Liverpool’s potentially costly defeat at Everton (Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

“We were rubbish,” Neil Atkinson of The Anfield Wrap sums up succinctly.

“I’d rather have lost 4-2, but we didn’t have that card to play, there wasn’t a point where we thought they could make it a mad game. They didn’t have that gear. All I saw coming was the fact we had to score first.”

The Athletic’s naivety around whether this was still a “friendly derby” for Liverpool, at least in comparison to the rivalry with Manchester United, is very quickly dismissed.

“It’s absolutely horrendous losing to Everton,” Neil clarifies. “I’m always hugely perturbed when we lose to them. It doesn’t happen very often.

“Klopp looks tired. You wonder now if he felt (when announcing he was leaving) his race was run… maybe we can see this manifesting itself more now than we could at the time he announced it.

“If he’d looked this way in November, people would have understood it more. He now looks really rather grey.”

And all the while they sing in the pubs around Goodison: “You lost the league, at Goodison Park, you lost the league, at Goodison Park.”

Yep, they probably did.

There are two football teams playing at the Amex but the focus is directed at just one. Manchester City are in town.

“Fancy bus, innit?” a Brighton fan says to her friend as they walk past City’s coach which has five 10ft-high trophies emblazoned across its side. They both have their picture taken by it.

“I like (Jack) Grealish for England but not City,” another Brighton fan says.

Brighton are concentrating on City… and so are City. For them, Arsenal and Liverpool’s results are irrelevant if, as everyone expects, they enter ‘closer’ mode and win all their remaining fixtures.

Guardiola stepped off the Man City team bus knowing a win at Brighton was essential (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

“I didn’t watch either game this week,” City season ticket holder of 30 years, Mike Hammond, says, but not from a position of irrelevance. “It’s just no good for your mental health, I can’t be doing with it,” he adds.

Mike is, as he puts it, a legacy fan. From Maine Road, to League One, to the Etihad and the Champions League trophy. Hell of a journey.

But while Arsenal have a party and Liverpool stretch their emotions thin like butter scraped over too much toast, how are City’s fans feeling about the possibility of another Premier League title?

“You get a mix,” Mike says. “Some are presumptuous, they’ll say; ‘Yep, been here before, we’re at our best now and it should be straightforward’. Most are pretty realistic and, yeah, to be honest, most think we’ll do it.

“I thought Arsenal might not drop any points but that Villa result has made a big difference. We’ll have to win every game to win the title, but we’ve done that before.

“I’m not massively confident, tonight won’t be easy. We’ve struggled a bit with Brighton, they’ve got a good system that we struggle with sometimes.”

Brighton’s fans don’t share Mike’s lack of confidence in a City win.

“What are you doing missing this? We could have been 3-0 down by now,” a woman jokes as someone walks in late to sit next to her with two minutes on the clock. No, that comes in the 34th minute.

City had been well below their best when edging past Chelsea in their FA Cup semi-final last weekend, days after being knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid.

Like Arsenal, they had appeared to look tired and lethargic. Like Arsenal (and unlike Liverpool) they come correct at the Amex from the opening whistle.

Their passing is sharp, their pressing is on point and full of energy, their movement is balletic.

De Bruyne and Foden celebrate as City demolish Brighton (Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)

They are fortunate when Phil Foden falls over and is awarded a free kick by Jarred Gillett — and luckier still when said free kick deflects into the net — but otherwise this is an utterly dominant victory against meek opponents.

In their previous 44 matches this season in all competitions, the lowest amount of possession Brighton had kept in a game was 45 per cent. Tonight they have 35 per cent of the ball.

“That’s so easy, they’re taking the piss,” a Seagulls fan screams as Julian Alvarez scores City’s fourth in the second half. They are.

The celebrations at full time are fairly restrained. This kind of victory is bread and butter for City, especially in April. It’s job done. Five to go.

As a fan who regularly attends away games as well as home, Mike is one of a select few thousand who are in the inner sanctum of watching this title race unfold in the flesh.

“It is a privilege,” he says. “And the away games are great, always a good atmosphere, most people really look forward to the away days.

“It’s not ‘pinch yourself’ like it was in the first few years of Pep, the manner in which he did it, the football he’s introduced, he’s something else that guy. The best you’ve ever seen.

“Obviously we’re going for the fourth in a row. We’ve done three, it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t happen this year, but the team know how to do it and this is kind of where we come good.”

Just like at The Emirates and Goodison Park, there is a song on repeat at the Amex as the evening draws to a close.

“Champions again, ole ole, champions again, ole ole.”

In some ways it has been an extraordinary week, what with Liverpool’s first defeat at Everton for 14 years probably ending their title hopes and Arsenal’s biggest victory over Chelsea for, well, ever.

In some ways it has also played out to type – Arsenal loving life, Liverpool on the emotional rollercoaster and City utterly serene.

(Top photo: Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)

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Dirk Kuyt is ideally placed to assess the merits of Feyenoord’s Arne Slot, the man Liverpool have identified as Jurgen Klopp’s potential successor.

A legendary figure at Feyenoord, Kuyt scored more than 100 goals across two spells at the club, and the former Liverpool forward has closely watched Slot’s three-year reign in Rotterdam. He gained a fascinating insight into Slot’s methods during a week spent behind the scenes shadowing him.

Slot has said it is “clear” he wants the Liverpool job and Kuyt, who has recently celebrated leading Beerschot to the Belgian second-division title, also knows how to succeed at Anfield.

Here, speaking to James Pearce, he explains what he learnt from Slot and why he thinks the Feyenoord manager has what it takes to fill Klopp’s shoes.

Feyenoord are my team in Holland. My son plays in the academy there so now and then myself and Arne have some contact.

It was around this time last year that he gave me the opportunity to spend a week with him, so I could watch how he goes about his job. It was a fascinating experience.

He’s a manager who likes to help younger coaches like me and it says a lot about the type of person he is that he’s willing to share his thoughts and vision so openly.

The timing was perfect as it was just before Feyenoord became Dutch champions. Watching his training sessions was so interesting in terms of the drills and how he prepares his team.

Arne loves the game and thinks about football 24/7. That passion shines through when he speaks. He’s always studying other teams and thinking about how his team can improve and evolve.

Arne Slot helped Feyenoord win the KNVB Cup this season (ANP via Getty Images)

Tactically, he’s very strong. What people like most in Holland, where his reputation is so high, is that he has his own vision, his style of play.

Nowadays managers always get compared. Is it the Jurgen Klopp style? Is it the Jose Mourinho style? Is it the Pep Guardiola style?

The answer is that Slot has his own style. He doesn’t copy anyone. He knows exactly what he wants and he believes in it. It’s attractive, attacking football. He likes to play an aggressive defence, high intensity, with the game played in the opponent’s half, but it’s his way. It’s different from Klopp but a lot of the principles are the same.

What struck me about Arne was his ability to make the players believe in what he believes in. I talked to some of them when I was there and they all spoke so highly about him. They love how he organises the training sessions and how he gets his ideas across. He’s an excellent communicator and man manager.

Watching Feyenoord in recent years, you can see his signature on the team in how he wants football to be played. Everyone bought into his vision. He gets the best out of people.

The job he took on after arriving from AZ Alkmaar in 2021 wasn’t an easy one. Some questioned whether he was the right man because he hadn’t previously trained a top Dutch team, but Feyenoord finished third and reached the final of the Europa Conference League, where they lost narrowly to Jose Mourinho’s Roma.

European football’s best up-and-coming managers

Before his second season, he lost a lot of key players. Top scorer Luis Sinisterra was sold to Leeds United, Tyrell Malacia went to Manchester United, Marcos Senesi to Bournemouth and Fredrik Aursnes to Benfica.

Arne effectively had to build a new side. People doubted the new players who arrived and said he would need time to get things right, but he proved them wrong. Outperforming Ajax and PSV to become champions was unbelievable because nobody expected that at the start of the season.

Before this season, he lost Orkun Kokcu to Benfica but they still won the KNVB Cup (Dutch FA Cup) and will finish second behind PSV, who have a really strong squad.

The news that Liverpool had decided to go for Slot came out of the blue. I was surprised because since Jurgen said he would be leaving at the end of the season, other names had been mentioned as possible contenders.

But it makes a lot of sense. I haven’t spoken to Arne but if everything is agreed, Liverpool have made a very good choice. It’s interesting for me as a Dutchman who is both a Feyenoord and Liverpool supporter. I’m a bit excited, to be honest.

Slot in the 2022 Europa Conference League final (Nikola Krstic/Orange Pictures/BSR Agency/Getty Images)

He’s ready for the next step in his career. The doubters will say, ‘But Arne Slot has never trained a foreign team’, but we know how successful Jurgen proved to be and he hadn’t coached outside his homeland before he came to Liverpool.

Louis van Gaal once said, ‘When you’re ready, you’re ready.’ It doesn’t matter what age you are or how much experience you have — it’s about your qualities.

You can’t compare Feyenoord with Liverpool but Arne is used to dealing with pressure and high expectations. When he’s been faced with difficult situations, when results didn’t work out, when he was faced with difficult questions from the media, he always stayed in control and stuck to his principles and the vision of how he wanted to play. He never gave me a negative experience.

He’s had opportunities to move to the Premier League previously but he didn’t feel like those projects were right. He’s been waiting for the right step to take.

Arne wouldn’t go anywhere unless he really believed in the project. If he says ‘yes’ then it’s because he’s convinced he can do great things in the job he’s taking on. Arne is the type of guy who would say ‘no’ to any big club if he had any doubts.

Following in the footsteps of Jurgen isn’t easy but Arne will do it his own way and give everything to make the club successful. He’s determined and driven with a lot of self-belief.

His style of play is exactly what Liverpool supporters love to see at Anfield. He’s also good with the media because he explains himself very clearly. As Feyenoord have so many foreign players, he conducts his meetings in English so there will be no issues over language.

At Feyenoord, he’s loved by the fans. They don’t want to lose him and it will be sad to see him leave — but from my perspective, if he has to go anywhere, I’m happy that it’s to Liverpool. He’s not only a very good manager, but also a very good human being.

(Top photos: Andrew Powell/Liverpool/ANP via Getty Images)

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