This is a serious question. Do any players from rival elite clubs look at their Manchester United counterparts and envy them?
Actually, no. It is a daft question. Of course they don’t.
Why would any top professional not want to be playing in the business stages of the Champions League and in the FA Cup in March?
Why would any top professional want to have a light workload that involves no more than a game a week, plenty of days off and nice downtime with the family?
Seriously, to still be in contention for major honours at this stage of a season is what every top professional wants. Obviously.
But the calendar for footballers whose teams go deep into most competitions is pretty ridiculous.
It is a dream job, but it is still a job. Any job can take its toll. Any job can become wearing.
They might not have had European football this season, they might have been knocked out of both domestic cup competitions at their earliest convenience, but Manchester United players seem to be happy characters right now.
The same could not be said of Liverpool players on Sunday. Okay, they were bound to be gloomy after only drawing with a Spurs team that had gone from being criticised to being ridiculed ahead of the match.
But even before Richarlison’s scuffed equaliser, it was hardly a joyous experience at Anfield.
And the most concerning thing for Liverpool fans must have been the lack of intensity and intent among players who, quite frankly, looked occasionally uninterested.
When a team has the majority of possession, it can mean they cover less distance because they are not chasing the ball as much. And Liverpool had just over 63 percent of possession against Spurs.
But that is not always the case. Not by any means.
Manchester City, for example, had 71.5 percent of possession at West Ham and still covered 3.5km more distance than the home side.
Generally, though, in terms of distance covered by teams - when both have the full complement for the entire match - there tends to be little difference, regardless of possession.
But in the Liverpool-Spurs game, the difference was marked, the difference was the biggest in the weekend’s nine Premier League fixtures.
Spurs covered 7.33 percent more distance than Liverpool (118.27km to 109.6km).
The next biggest difference was at the Emirates, where Arsenal (115.83km) covered 4.88 percent more distance than Everton (110.18km).
At Anfield, the player who covered the most distance for Liverpool was Alexis Mac Allister, who was actually withdrawn in the 91st minute.
But his 10.72km only placed him fifth in the overall rankings. In the same central midfield area, Tottenham’s Archie Gray covered 12.58km, well over a mile more than any Liverpool player.
The statisticians and technical analysts divide the distance-covered statistics into three categories. Walking, jogging and sprinting.
But you did not need the figures to tell you which was the only one Liverpool bettered Spurs in.
There was a collective lack of vibrancy that Arne Slot somehow needs to address.
It cannot be explained by tiredness alone. Liverpool have played only two more games than Spurs this season and one of those was the Community Shield.
Dominik Szoboszlai used the word ‘flat’ and that is how the Liverpool performance at the weekend felt.
Knowing that the title defence has failed badly has surely had a mentally draining effect on the players.
Re-motivating them is the biggest challenge of Slot’s Liverpool tenure.
