Return of cult-hero Matip catalyst behind Liverpool's title charge

What a difference a year makes - just ask Joel Matip, the languid Liverpool centre-back who is currently playing the best football of his career, 12 months on from an injury-ravaged campaign that ruined his and almost the club's entire season.

This time last year Jurgen Klopp's battered champions were threatening to produce one of the worst title defences in Premier League history during a never-been-seen-before sequence of six straight home league defeats that even led to reports the German was set to leave Anfield.

The defence, if you could call it that such was its makeshift composition, with midfielders often having to fill in, was a shadow of the back line that had been the bedrock of the club's first top-flight title in 30 years in 2019-20.

Matip himself, a real favourite of Klopp having been his first-ever signing after joining Liverpool on a free transfer from Schalke in the summer of 2016, endured a miserable campaign as one injury after another reduced his involvement to just 10 league outings.

All this after his previous two seasons, both trophy-laden ones for the club, were also badly interrupted by a succession of untimely knee and ankle injuries, with Matip featuring in only 32 Premier League games during that time.

So much so, in fact, that many began to question whether the defender, now in his 30s and with young France central defender Ibrahima Konate - signed from RB Leipzig last summer - to compete with for his place, even had a future at Anfield this season.

Not his manager, though, who wasted no time at all in restoring Matip to his defence for the opening game of the campaign, a 3-0 win at Norwich City in August, the first of a joint-high 19 clean sheets in the league so far this season.

In total,