7 Points

Seven points now.

Looking back at my posts of 'In Rafa we trust', I must have looked really ridiculous right now. Well, yup, I'd admit to that. I put all my optimism and hope to this one guy who manages this one club, and now it looks very likely that I will be disappointed. I'd rather look ridiculous than to lose hope, but for now, I think it would be more realistic for me to have rather smaller hopes.

Secretly (or sometimes outspokenly) anti-Rafa Liverpool fans will always have this "Please prove me wrong Rafa" mentality in them. They seem to know what Rafa is doing wrong, but perhaps they themselves are wrong. After all, they are the fans, and he is an established manager, masterminding a team that would affect the emotions of millions if not billions. But now, at least until now, Rafa hasn't proved them wrong. After leading the table in January, the best chance of Premiership that Anfield has ever seen in nineteen years, we seem to blow everything away.

Well, at least it's still February. The title is won in May. We can plant ourselves some fake hope if we want to. It's just seven points.

Let us travel somewhere else, where the current second-placed team is also trailing the leaders seven points behind. However, for them, their situation looks much better than Liverpool's. Only over a week ago, the gap was twelve. After notching nineteen wins out of twenty (that is absolutely insane) and their top trio scoring even more than the whole Real Madrid team, Barcelona looked invincible. Nothing can stop them. Thing is, Real themselves are on a winning streak, and how painful it is to be on such a good run and yet still trail the leaders twelve whopping points.

But things can change all of a sudden. The draw with Villarreal looked like a hiccup, but after the lost to Espanyol, now their incredible twelve point lead has now been cut to seven.

Back to Liverpool. So trailing by seven should not be a very woeful thing, is it? If I'm incredibly optimistic, I could see things that way. Unfortunately, the situations bears no similarities whatsoever, apart from the gap with the leaders. Liverpool drew four of their last six, dropping two points for each match. Had they won all, just like United did, Liverpool would still be leading the table just as they did on New Year's Day. Real, on the other hand, are stringing their own winning streak, so that they can always capitalize on any slip-ups, though it is more hopeful than realistic. As things turned out to be, Barca did slip, and they can always hope for more slip-ups if they continue their own rich form.

Now, hopes are very thin, and I don't hope anymore. If we do win the title, that would be a humongous bonus, something that I would not hope at this stage. I hope we'll have the Champions League as a consolation for us. But first, we need to pass the first hurdle - in the form of who else - Real Madrid.