This Red Planet

The best in the world. That's what the aggregate of three major, highly-respected rankings systems said: Liverpool were the best team in the world, at the point 2021/22 concluded.

As its global fanbase swelled to anywhere between 100-500 million fans, Liverpool's cosmopolitan team, led by the peerless Jürgen Klopp, racked up all manner of records: rising, in 2020, to be rated the 4th-best team in European history; and then, in 2022, taking a chase for the ever-elusive quadruple 21 days longer than any previous attempt in English football.

In between, a deadly pandemic brought the planet to its knees, and Liverpool suffered all kinds of losses, big and small. But the club and the city rose again, as it had before; and as life, in general, suggests we all must, with the ebbs and flows of fortune.

This, Paul Tomkins' 14th, is a book about remarkable success - a remarkable team - but also deep, dark struggles; it is a book about football, but also community, and what it means to be a fan; about Liverpool, and about the world; about failure and success.