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Game of sixes: Liverpool's path to the promised land

Steven Gerrard is playing abroad, but is certainly no longer in his prime.
Roar Rookie
4th April, 2014
11

And so it has come to this for Liverpool. Win their next six games and they are Premier League Champions for the first time ever and English champions for the first time in 24 years.

The league title is in their own hands.

Six games – that’s about a sixth of the season. The clocks have changed. The seasons have changed. It’s the final sprint. Or a hurdle race if you will.

Obviously, there are two hurdles bigger than the others.

The games against Man City and Chelsea have been earmarked for a while as the title-deciding games. But Liverpool are at home for these games and will understandably be up for them.

It is the smaller hurdles Liverpool have to look out for. Andy Carroll looking to haunt the team that let him go when the Reds visit the Hammers. Also Crystal Palace will be a challenge. They are led by Tony Pulis, a man whose teams have given Liverpool plenty of problems in the past, and fresh from beating another title hopeful in Chelsea.

Liverpool have to maintain the focus and treat each game as a cup final, which is something the players and management are not shy in saying every time a microphone is put in front of them.

The motivation is surely there – glory for the long-suffering fans after such a long wait. Making things right after agonising close calls. And to cap Steven Gerrard’s legendary career with the only major club trophy he hasn’t won.

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Six games. It’s funny isn’t it?

Last time Liverpool we so desperately analysing six games and going through endless scenarios was actually earlier this year.

The first six games of the year in fact – of which one Luis Suarez was suspended. “If we can just hang in there after the first six games” Reds fans would say, “Suarez will return and he will be like a new signing. And he will fire us into the Champions League”.

The Champions League was the limit of ambition for Liverpool fans at the start of the year. Now they are dreaming of the title.

Liverpool didn’t just hang in there – led by Daniel Sturridge in the absence of Luis Suarez, they had a championship-winning start. And the form continued after the first six rounds.

Suarez did indeed return and did indeed fire Liverpool to many wins. Sturridge missed some games with injury, and Suarez returned the favour by keeping the back of the net rattling.

The team clicked and gelled when Sturridge returned. Raheem Sterling made the decision not to sign an attacker in January look like a financial masterstroke as he played in such devastating form that he altered the SAS to the SASAS.

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And Martin Skrtel’s goalscoring form threatened to add another few letters to this moniker.

Liverpool look irresistible. They have won six in a row in all competitions. They recently scored six goals against Cardiff. And they just have to do it for six more games.

Then, they need to go on and win the famous “Number 6” next year.

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