Fernando Torres hasn't been injured ONCE and is cracking home 1.5 goals a game.
Stevie G is in sizzling form, Ryan Babel has been a revelation on the left, the defence has kept more than a dozen clean sheets and Rafa Benitez is doing an extraordinary job as manager.
Even better, Everton is down in 14th place and Arsenal looks like missing out on Europe next year.
Hold up there, big fella.
Is this some kind of weird parallel universe, where Liverpool ISN'T falling apart?
No.
It's a video game - the escape route for those of us who can't handle the humiliation of finishing seventh.
Scarily, I've been a gamer slightly longer than I've been a football fan.
When I realised my two passions could be combined, I never looked back.
From the heady days of Sensible Football and Kick Off on the Amiga 500, to World Cup Italia 90 and Champions of Europe on the Sega Master System, to Championship Manager on the PC,to the great console era of Fifa/Pro Evo/This Is Football on PlayStation 1/2/3/Portable and Xbox/Xbox 360, it's been quite a ride.
I think I've now got 58 football games, ranging from the brilliant (Fifa 10, Fifa 2005, Pro Evo 6, Tactical Manager 2) to the weird (Libero Grande) to the really rather poor (Actua Soccer Club Edition, Striker).
When I do find some gaming time, I tend to stick to sports and driving games. A bit of Madden here, a bit of NBA Live there, even rugby and cricket.
But it always comes back to football.
I always have a season or two running somewhere.
The great thing about football games is the variety.
The simple games that involved nothing but running and kicking have been replaced by remarkably realistic simulations with sprints, step-overs, bicycle kicks, goal celebrations, individual likenesses and attributes, real-life stadiums and authentic competitions.
There are arcade-style games, management games, "virtual pro" modes, games with club teams, games with international teams, games with both.
You can play as Liverpool, as Scunthorpe United, as Mexico, as the Wellington Phoenix.
Still no Caversham or Dunedin Technical, but I live in hope.
A lot of people play and love football games, but I wonder if many have taken it to the same obsessive, trainspotterish, slightly tragic level I have.
For some reason, early in my football game-playing career, I started keeping statistics.
That's right.
I would jot down the score and scorers, plus the man of the match if one was awarded.
Big events like FINALS and SEMIFINALS would be capped, and at the end of every season I'd tally up the wins and losses and goals.
From there, I'd load the stats on to a plain word processing programme to keep a running tally of my teams and my players and how many goals/appearances/hat tricks etc they had.
What used to be a laborious task became a whole lot easier when newer football games simplydisplayed all the relevant statistics, and I could just copy them down at the end of the season.
My system required some rules.
I decided I would:
1. Keep authentic statistics only.No glossing over any losses, in other words.
2. Include all statistics from management games, even though they affected my overallwinning percentage.
3. Not include statistics from players I transferred into my team in any game if they were notpart of that real-life club at any stage.
4. Play with accurate historical rosters.
So when I played a Fifa game that was four years old,I would not alter the squad to include present-day players from the same club.
Because I am a sucker for goals (and runs in cricket games, and points in basketball games,and yards in Madden games), I always played football games on the easiest levels.
This is proved by the following records I set while playing for Liverpool:
15-0 v Derby (Fifa 2001)15-0 v Aston Villa (Fifa 2001)13-0 v Blackburn (Manchester United Premier League Champions)13-1 v Leeds (Premier League Stars).
And by the individual record:
10 goals, Fernando Torres v St Etienne (Pro Evo 2008).
But as I matured, I realised I needed more of a challenge.
Now I always play on semi-pro or its equivalent. Not pro or world class - I just ain't that good.
Liverpool is my first footballing love, and my records show I have played as that great club more times than any other:
3406 games, 2460 wins (72%), 493 losses, 453 draws, 9877 goals (2.9 per game).
The trophies have also racked up:
37 Premier League titles, 35 FA Cups, 18 European Cups, 18 League Cups, 8 Charity Shields,2 UEFA Cups, 3 World Club Cups, 3 European Super Cups.
Ten of my Liverpool players have made more than 1000 appearances:
Steven Gerrard 2003, Jamie Carragher 1971, Robbie Fowler 1811, Sami Hyypia 1587, John-Arne Riise 1291, Jamie Redknapp 1275, Michael Owen 1073, Peter Crouch 1034, Jose Reina 1013, Xabi Alonso 1010.
And eight have 300-plus goals:
Fowler 1326, Owen 853, Gerrard 828, Crouch 557, Steve McManaman 437, Emile Heskey 356, Fernando Torres 339, Redknapp 307.
I like big numbers, big statistics.
That's why I can handle the fact the figures are so far removed from reality.
These days, I tend to play exclusively as Liverpool, though I try to play occasional seasons as the All Whites, England and the Phoenix, and I keep their stats too.
For some reason - perhaps the sheer amount of hours I used to spend on football games - I played as other English clubs in my younger days, and naturally kept their stats.
I had four "back-up" clubs:
Chelsea (no idea why, but it was in the days before Abramovich and Lampard and Drogba)
Middlesbrough (because of Juninho, possibly)
Newcastle (always liked the black and white strip)
And, er, ahem, Manchester United.
Anyway, as the Premier League season winds down, and the curtain falls on a desperately poor Liverpool season, I find solace in football gaming and statistics that I just can't bring myself to discard.
Stevie G only needs 172 goals to crack 1000, you know.
