Liverpool Still EPL Favorite Despite 7-2 Battering at Villa on Day Soccer ‘Went Crazy’

Liverpool remains the favorite with bookmakers to retain the English Premier League title, despite the team receiving an unlikely hiding on Sunday.

Liverpool is  among the best soccer teams in the world — arguably the best — but that meant squat after Aston Villa’s seventh goal sailed into the back of the net in the 75th minute at Villa Park on Sunday afternoon.

In fact, everything you ever thought you knew about soccer suddenly turned on its head. The game finished 7-2, but it could have been ten or eleven.

A team that had escaped relegation last season by a single point, and who were 9/1 to cause an upset going into the game, outplayed and outclassed one of the truly great EPL teams — and scored seven goals.

In fact, those two results – along with West Ham’s eyebrow-raising victory at Leicester – meant this was perhaps the strangest day in league history, or “the day football went crazy,” as one British tabloid newspaper had it.

Unpredictable Season

After its victory against Arsenal last week, Liverpool was an odds-on favorite to win the league. Now, it’s a slightly less surefire 5/4.

Manchester City is not too far behind at 6/4, and the Sky Blues would likely have usurped the champions as favorites had they not had a lukewarm start to the season of their own.

Which means the only team that still has a 100 percent record is perennial mid-tabler Everton.

Could this be the most unpredictable season since Leicester ran away with the title in 2016, having begun the year as a 5,000 to 1 outsider? Or will the natural order be restored as the long run sets in?

One off?

And if you decided to put your money on Liverpool at the beginning of the season for a reasonable chance of a small ROI, how safe now is your stake? Not even Liverpool’s German manager Jurgen Klopp could provide an answer.

 What should I be now?” he asked traumatized Liverpool fans in a statement on the team’s website. “Completely outraged or something like that? Is it only a one-off? I would think so, I would like to think so, but that I cannot prove tonight. If people want to hear it, I can say it: that’s a one-off. The proof for that will be in the next couple of weeks and months and not because I say it tonight. A game like tonight should not happen.”

Was it just a bizarre case of every single player in the team having an off day? Liverpool play local rival and league leader Everton next Saturday, so we’ll soon find out.