Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspur: Premier League – live

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Key events2m agoPreambleShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureFirst things first: we’ve two bangers already in progress…PreamblePowerless patsies – among them cynics and sceptics, jokers and losers – acting with naivety and arrogance, making dreadful decisions as if on purpose, immense but obviously misplaced confidence gradually dwindling as threats and warnings are blithely ignored, peripheral characters departing the scene never to be seen again with those who remain reduced to meat puppets of gibbering jelly. Yes, Spurs’ season has more than a little in common with a horror movie.But the tweak that makes their rendition uniquely compelling is the innovation of its meta aspect: the characters know they’re in a film, unable to escape a world they can’t control and fully aware there’s a worldwide audience wincing, laughing and cheering on the monster, their lives co-opted for kicks.

There is no one anyone wants to be less.In such circumstance, there is no staging post less inviting than Anfield. Just last season, many of the same players delivered one of the least vertebrate performances of all time, turning up in the second leg of the League Cup semi holding a one-goal lead before subsiding to a 4-0 defeat, terrified of even believing there was another way.Of course, win today and suddenly life seems much less intense … except an unlikely triumph which suggests all will be well is yet another horror-movie trope.

A horror-movie trope which precedes the most entertainingly gruesome carnage of all.