Liverpool will try to extend their unbeaten run to seven games and keep pace with Arsenal and Manchester City in the Premier League title race, when they host Fulham at Anfield on Sunday.

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Jurgen Klopp’s side stole a 1-1 draw away to the three-time defending champions last weekend, with the manager proclaiming, “I think we passed a test today” after the game. Liverpool have been particularly dominant — as in, a perfect 10-for-10 wins across all competitions — at Anfield.

The Reds are comeback kings of the Premier League heading into matchweek 14, with a league-leading 12 points rescued from losing positions and just one defeat in the last 11 PL games in which they trailed. With his next goal, Mohamed Salah will become the fifth Liverpool player to score 200 goals in all competitions.

Fulham, meanwhile, find themselves rather comfortable among the many mid-table sides hoping to put relegation fears to bed early in the season.

The Cottagers, in 14th, have opened up a 10-point gap between themselves and the relegation zone, putting them closer to Manchester United in 6th (eight points) than 18th-place Sheffield United.

Marco Silva’s side picked up all three points in a 3-2 victory over Wolves last time out, as Willian scored twice from the penalty spot, including the 93rd-minute winner, to snap a four-game winless slide (0W-1D-3L).

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This week’s Blood Red on what could be a season-shaping December for Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool team.

A December that Jurgen Klopp has labelled “the most intense period in world football” may not have the potential to make Liverpool’s season but it can certainly break it.

Speaking after Thursday’s 4-0 win at LASK in the Europa League, the Reds manager was at pains to stress how he will need every member of his squad to be ready to go “full throttle” during a critically important month that will go a long way towards deciding just what is left for his side to chase in 2024.

The comfortable victory of LASK has at least rendered one of those games as an irrelevance and while a Champions League dead-rubber is always worth winning due to the financial benefits, the significantly less lucrative Europa League won’t have the same incentive when the winners of Group E are hosted by Union Saint-Gilloise in Brussels later this month.

As a result, that game will lay claim to being the most meaningless competitive game in years for Liverpool but it is still a vital chance to rest and rotate with Manchester United to come later that week at Anfield. That is a hidden benefit of winning the group handily, at least.

If that match – the most watched club football fixture on the planet – is jumping off the page when December’s fixture list is perused, there are huge home clashes with Arsenal, Newcastle United on New Year’s Day and a Carabao Cup quarter-final with West Ham also to come.

Liverpool will at least know that a last-16 Europa League tie awaits them at the turn of the year but their prospects of a Premier League title tilt for the second half of the campaign will be much clearer too and they might also be just a two-legged semi away from a return to Wembley to boot.

“This is the most intense period in world football coming up now, that’s how it is, for all the teams,” Klopp said. “So they will all play. We have already Diogo [Jota] not in [through injury] so that is not helpful and so we have to share these minutes with different players. They have to perform, not always 90 but 60/70 and full throttle, that’s how it is.”

It’s clear to see, then, why Klopp was at pains to stress just how vital the coming weeks are for the Reds. Between Sunday’s visit from Fulham and January 1, the team play nine times with five of them coming at Fortress Anfield; a venue where the Reds have won every game this term and are without defeat in all competitions since February. It is a ground where they have lost just one Premier League match in nearly three years.

With a record that has seen Liverpool beaten just 11 times in over eight years on Klopp’s watch in the league – six of which came consecutively behind-closed-doors in early 2021 – there are few strongholds in world football like Anfield and while the atmosphere can underwhelm outsiders on freezing cold winter nights against the also-rans of the Europa League, a white-hot cacophony will no doubt await United, Arsenal and Newcastle in the coming weeks, particularly given the venue is set to play host to some of its biggest crowds in decades when the £80m Anfield Road expansion is finally open to the public in a fortnight.

How crucial those extra 7000 seats will be towards what happens on the pitch will only be known on the day but it bodes well for Liverpool that such important home games are coming around this time of the year. It could yet make all the difference.

But for all the plaudits that have deservedly been given to Klopp’s men since the start of the season, their excellent opening to the campaign must be maintained across a season-shaping December if they are to become recognised once more as the real deal capable of landing the big prizes.