At pivotal moment, Liverpool and United meet on wildly divergent paths

Liverpool enter Old Trafford on Sunday with recent history flipped, as they will aim to boost a title challenge while Manchester United hope to save face on an embarrassing season, writes Richard Jolly.

David Moyes and Manchester United are sixth in the Premier League, nine points off Manchester City for fourth. Laurence Griffiths / Getty Images

To borrow the phrase Gerard Houllier deployed in 2002, Liverpool are 10 games from greatness.

To voice sentiments rarely heard about them, Manchester United are 10 days from utter ignominy. Their campaign could be over by the end of March. Liverpool’s could have its most thrilling and gratifying conclusion since 2005’s improbable Champions League win.

This is their first title challenge since 2009. A first victory at Old Trafford since a memorable March day five years ago would help exponentially.

So, in a season of worst-case scenarios for United and David Moyes – dropping out of the top four, potentially finishing behind his former club Everton, seeing Manchester City scoring a glut of goals and winning silverware, watching Jose Mourinho, the manager they opted not to appoint, revive Chelsea – perhaps the most hurtful of all beckons.

Liverpool, the club Sir Alex Ferguson knocked off their perch, could become champions.

So United’s task is two-fold. Denting the hopes of their fiercest rivals ranks high on the list of supporters’ priorities, whatever the players and Moyes say.

Their focus has to be on salvaging and saving their season. The next week and a half brings meetings with Liverpool, Olympiakos, West Ham and Manchester City.

They are about damage limitation, about halting the sudden slide and about pride.

A season shorn of highlights could suddenly have a series in short succession. Or, in further illustrations of how whatever can go wrong in Moyes’ reign seems to, they may find Liverpool and City, the local rivals who railed at United’s dominance, crowing at their demise.

So this is pivotal. It is particularly crucial for Moyes.

However loyal United intend to be, no matter how impressive his long-term planning is or how advanced his attempts to sign in the summer are, his credibility could be fatally damaged if both Liverpool and City celebrate victories on the Old Trafford turf. It is difficult to see how he could recover from that.

It is vital for Liverpool, too. They have not been champions since 1990, a fact that used to be mentioned more than it is now.

The past few seasons conditioned the long suffering not to expect a title challenge. Instead, one has materialised when the objective was a top-four finish.

United’s has been a damp squib of a season. Liverpool’s is reaching boiling point but, with 29 goals in the past nine games, they have been hot for weeks.

They are taking a prolific path as they aim to overhaul Chelsea. It is an unlikely scenario but there is little that is logical about their challenge.

Not when the probable Player of the Year started the campaign serving a suspension for biting an opponent. Not when a defence as poor and porous as theirs could end the season with title-winners’ medals.

The encouraging element for Liverpool is that they have beaten United – 1-0 in September – and displayed a tendency to thrash the best teams.

Tottenham Hotspur, Everton and Arsenal have all been beaten by at least four goals. United, in contrast, have a solitary league win against top-nine opponents and Moyes conceded his opponents may be favourites on Sunday.

It was hard to imagine Sir Alex Ferguson accepting that. But then, almost everyone arrived at Old Trafford as underdogs in his day. Now the stakes are different.

This could be a season-defining match. It is a seminal fixture in any year, whether it was Luis Suarez’s refusal to shake Patrice Evra’s hand two years ago – prompting a flurry of apologies from Anfield – or the extraordinary 4-1 win Rafa Benitez masterminded in 2009.

Even that was not enough to make Liverpool champions. Nor, indeed, was Houllier’s run of nine wins in their last 10 games in 2002. The past is against them. Yet, a dozen years on, history beckons for Liverpool.

If Rodgers’ side justify Moyes’ billing as favourites, so does humiliation for United.

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