Patrice Evra won’t label this a ‘great’ Liverpool team – and he’s right

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Former Manchester United left-back Patrice Evra won’t label this a ‘great’ Liverpool team. And in truth, he’s absolutely right.

Patrice Evra gave his opinion on Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool while working for Sky Sports on Sunday. There, the ex-Manchester United man wouldn’t call this a great Liverpool side.

In fact, he still wouldn’t even if they won the title this season. Evra believes the standards are very high.

“If they don’t win this year, I won’t consider Liverpool as an ‘amazing’ team, I would say that’s a good team,” said Evra. “But I’m talking about consistency.

“If this club keeps the same players and they add even more quality, and they win the league year after year, that’s when we can start to talk about the greatest Liverpool team.

“But some [of their] teams before that have done even more. They’d already won like 19 titles [it was 18] – so many teams before this team won things. So we have to respect that.

“I will start to call them the greatest Liverpool team when they win at least three leagues in a row”.

What RTK has to say

So Evra’s only really right because he answered the wrong question – but he’s still right.

The original question was whether this Liverpool side is a great team, not how they rank in Liverpool’s own history. We’ll answer that ourselves, though – this is a great team.

Klopp has guided them to a Champions League and Premier League title in consecutive seasons. They’re world champions. They’ve amassed close to 100 points back-to-back. It’s a great team.

But Evra is right – they have work to do to be a great Liverpool team. The standards are just so high there.

There’s the greatest Bill Shankly team that won the title in ’64 and ’66, sandwiching the club’s first ever FA Cup in ’65.

Bob Paisley then had a run of six league titles in nine years, winning three European cups to go along with it all.

Then there’s the fact Liverpool have won three titles back-to-back before – ’82, ’83, and ’84 under Paisley and Joe Fagan.

So even if Evra did answer a completely different question, he’s right about what he’s saying. For Liverpool, this isn’t one of their ‘greatest’ teams. There’s still work to do.

That’s just how high the standards are at one of the most successful clubs in world football.