Stumble for Slot's side shows strength of the Premier League

Here it comes then. The much-promised collapse. The improbable, but somehow also deserved and collectively willed disintegration of these champions by default. Something like that anyway. Tell you what though. Fulham are good, aren't they?

- Barney Ronay

Here it comes then. The much-promised collapse. The improbable, but somehow also deserved and collectively willed disintegration of these champions by default. Something like that anyway. Tell you what though. Fulham are good, aren't they? And particularly so, it should be said, for a team that started the day 10th in an apparently mediocre league. Or is that not part of the story?

At the end of a fun, boisterous 3-2 victory for Marco Silva's excellent, vigorous upper-midtable team, the talk will of course be about Liverpool, and not necessarily in a very flattering way.

Since the start of March, Liverpool's progress towards the league title has been expressed in a run of routine almost-there wins, a series of this-must-be-it moments, reminiscent of one of those lovelorn phone conversations where nobody wants to be the person to hang up. No, you say the title race is over. No, you.

A trip to Fulham in the gentle sun had looked like another edge along that route, another of these mini-climaxes. But defeat will at least give fuel to the energetically pursued discussion around Liverpool's season, the debate about worthiness and deserved success.