On the one side of the divide, there is the Liverpool that signed Alexis Sanchez from Barcelona last summer, replacing the optimism lost by the sale of Luis Suarez in one fell swoop and more than satisfactorily tooling up ready to “go again” for 2014/15—first, not second, the target this time.
And on the other, there is what actually happened.
Sanchez went to Arsenal, had a stellar Premier League season and won the FA Cup, whilst a remodelled Liverpool full of new faces fell drastically short on their return to the Champions League, failed to reach it again and then lost both their 21st-century icon and brightest rising star this summer.