While talk of the quadruple may still seem fanciful for Liverpool, the unprecedented opportunity enjoyed under Jurgen Klopp is worth savouring every minute of.
Never mind can Liverpool win the quadruple, the bigger question is can you afford to see Liverpool try to win the quadruple?
Success comes at a price and Jurgen Klopp and the lads seem hell-bent on making us all skint by the end of May, if not before.
Bringing on yer Internazionale is all well and good, but when Mastercard are bringing on yer credit card bill after also putting a cup final at Wembley on plastic (the credit cards, not Chelsea flags) you start to wonder if you’ve got the quid for a quad.
Liverpool vs. Inter is the 23rd game of the season at Anfield.
There are still another five to follow in the Premier League, hopefully two more in the Champions League and for those Reds who want to support good causes while singing the Maxi Rodriguez song on his return to Anfield, there’s a legends game vs. Barcelona later this month.
Which is why, when a good offer comes along, you should take it – and plenty of shrewd Reds did exactly that at the Liverpool vs. Norwich FA Cup game when they bought a matchday programme and the Carabao Cup winners’ special magazine in an Anfield double deal for £6.
Which is 85p less than one pint of gassy beer (Bud. Weis. Errrrr no thanks) was at Wembley.
Gratuitous programme promotions over, for travelling Kopites there could be three more European jaunts – at least one of them to Paris – and you can tell yer Ma, yer Ma, we might be going to Wembley thrice as both the FA Cup semi-final and final can still be reached.
Not that reaching Wembley for the semi will be easy if Nottingham Forest or Huddersfield are knocked out, as the semis are on Easter weekend when there are no trains in and out of London Euston due to engineering works and the roads will no doubt be full of caravans being towed at the speed Harry Maguire runs at.
Brighton, Arsenal, Newcastle and Southampton away aren’t exactly on the doorstep to get to either in the Premier League. But at least petrol is cheap these days. What?
Even for loyal non-match-going Reds around the world, the costs add up if socialising while watching Liverpool with your mates – and there’s also the relentless schedule to work around.
Can you get enough time off work, or swap enough shifts, to watch every Liverpool match? Have you booked the last weekend of May off yet just in case?
How many 3.30am kickoffs can you watch on the other side of the planet in one season before sleep deprivation kicks in and drives you madder than Mikel Arteta on an Anfield touchline?
And were you even born when we last had a free midweek?
Yet, let’s be honest here, this is what we all live for. These are the days, my friend, let’s hope they never end…or at least they end in more silverware.
Because while Klopp and his players correctly reject all talk of the mythical quadruple for their one-game-at-a-time mantra, the very thought of being able to sing ‘from Paris down to Turkey, we won the fucking lot’ knowing that we did it in the same season after completing football in Paris is beyond the wildest of dreams.
Being a football follower is as much about living in the future as the present.
You run your life around fixture lists, worry about the contracts of star players expiring in four years more than your cheap mortgage rate expiring in four weeks and dream big.
You dream of seasons like this.
As Klopp has pointed out, no English club has won the quadruple before. Such a reality suggests it can’t be done, but then how many times have Liverpool achieved something else that nobody thought possible? Ask AC Milan.
Historical evidence, an unforgiving schedule, the quality of our rivals and the inevitability of injuries to come suggest the quadruple is improbable, but even in the unparalleled glory days of the 1980s never did Liverpool go into March with a legit opportunity of winning all four competitions.
This is new ground for us all and it takes any pressure right off.
It’s not quite a free hit, as finishing the season with only the Carabao Cup to show would now feel like a huge anti-climax.
But for the players and manager of English football’s most successful club to even have a chance of achieving something Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley or Joe Fagan’s sides couldn’t at this stage of the season is remarkable in itself.
The chances are it won’t happen.
How much money would you put on Man City winning nothing this season? Only in 2016/17 has Pep Guardiola finished without a trophy during his previous 13 seasons as a manager and they are favourites to win the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup.
Yet the more games Liverpool win, the more it feels possible that the Redmen can lift that treble of trophies.
So maybe the question isn’t can you afford to see Liverpool try to win the quadruple, but can you afford not to see every moment of what might be our greatest season of all?
* Chris McLoughlin is senior writer at Reach Sport, publishers of the official matchday programme and Liverpool FC Magazine.
You can order both and the Carabao Cup Winners special magazine here and look out for a special double deal at Anfield when the Reds face Inter Milan.
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