A couple of weeks ago, Liverpool seemed on course to win the Premier League for the second season running and probably the Champions League too. The Reds’ run of winning without being that good made it feel inevitable. Winning when not at your best is, after all, a sign (™) of a title-winning side, Clive.

But then Liverpool continued playing not particularly well and started losing. At the same time perennial second-placed, high-performance cowards Arsenal, who have an excellent defence and now at least two very good players in every position, started to close the gap. Arise Sir Mikel.

It is almost as if things can change during a season. It really would be better all round to wait until it is finished and review everything then. But that would be a very long podcast. Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher might get through a couple of pairs of thick white-soled pundit shoes by the time they had broken everything down on the one episode of MondayTuesdayWednesday Night Football at the end of May.

Does three defeats in a row constitute a crisis? As with any football debate it depends entirely on your definition of the key word in...