Liverpool 2, Tottenham Hotspur 0: Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

Liverpool 2 Mané 16’, 18’

Tottenham 0

I don’t want to get too carried away with this. Yes, Liverpool beat Spurs 2-0 at home, breaking a lengthy winless streak and stringing three points together for the first time in 2017. Yes, it was easily their best performance since Christmas. Yes, Sadio Mané is the hero our generation so desperately needs.

But I know, I know I have to keep some perspective. There’s still a lot of football left in the season and none of our fellow Top 4 rivals are going to go easy on us. We need many more days like today, and it’s not immediately obvious that this Liverpool team have it in them. There are plenty of reasons why we say they could pull it off, but saying is not doing. I have to settle down. I have to act like we’ve been here.

... except, no. We live in a broken world that’s growing colder and crueler with each passing day. Liverpool went a month and a half without winning a Premier League game. It’s hard to find any tiny speck of joy these days— much less hang on to it. Why shouldn’t I get carried away?

I mean, did YOU see Sadio Mané’s two-minute brace? Did you? After the past month and a half, how you see Mané do that and not completely lose it? How is that anything less than a cathartic release? While I think that the modern football fan— and this is a club-agnostic observation— labors under an unearned sense of entitlement toward their teams and their favorite players, I think those goals and this performance and this result feels good because, to put it plainly, we deserved it.

Obviously we’re not owed anything in this life. But it’s been a tough few weeks. On the pitch and off. Not just football and not even just politics. 2017 has not been kind, thusfar, and it’s not even spring yet.

So I don’t know about y’all, but I needed this game. I needed to see Mané score those goals. I needed to see Jordan Henderson bossing the center of the park. I needed to see Tottenham running scared far away from home and never really getting a foothold in this game. I needed to see Jürgen Klopp happy again.

I like this Liverpool team. I miss this Liverpool team. Can they stay? Can we keep them?

If we can’t, it’s all the more reason to enjoy today for what it is. The Reds were imperious. Indomitable. They were everything we know they can be. And in this world where darkness is gathering, what better way to shine a light than to be relentlessly yourself?

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he's a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And, while ye may, go marry:

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.