Last season was without doubt our best of the Premier League era, fast flowing attacking football that was exciting to watch and brought us many memorable wins against all kinds of opposition. The problem with eye catching football is that your best players inevitably catch the eyes of the mega rich and we have lost last season's stand out player, Luis Suarez to Barcelona for £75 million.
Suarez is almost a one off, somebody that can make things happen out of nothing and astonish fans, team mates and, most importantly, his opponents. There are only a couple of players out there who could come in as 'like for like' replacements for the talented Uruguayan. Suarez has yet to be seen in a Barca shirt due to his ban earned on World Cup duty and unless Lionel Messi is under similar restrictions and is having to keep his Liverpool shirt away from the cameras after a secret swap deal it's unrealistic to expect us to bring in a straight ahead replacement.
So what is the next step, how do we replace the irreplaceable?
We don't.
If we try to play exactly the same way as last season with an inferior player in Suarez' position we will produce inferior performances. I don't mean we'll play badly, far from it, but we won't have the same 'get out of jail free' card that we played when we needed to over the last twelve months.
It seems to be fashionable (and, let's face it, enjoyable) for fans of other teams to say we failed to win the title last term because Steven Gerrard slipped over, but this couldn't be further from the truth. We failed to win the title because our defence wasn't up to it. Away to Hull we were poor, we didn't show up, but we still managed a goal and if we could have kept an average-at-best attack out we would have gained the points necessary to top the pile. Similarly away at West Brom, we scored but a horrendous mistake allowed Victor Anichebe(!) to prevent us taking all three points. Home to Aston Villa was a similar story. Home to Southampton and away to Newcastle -couldn't defend set pieces. Away to Crystal Palace - couldn't close out a game with a commanding lead. Change the outcome of any one or two of these games and we go into this coming season as defending champions.
Scoring over 100 goals in the league last season was an amazing feat that we were always odds against to repeat this time around, with or without Suarez. But conceding 50 goals was extremely disappointing and quite simply not good enough for a team in the top four.
The point I'm trying to make is that it will be virtually impossible to replace Suarez' goals but we don't necessarily have to. If somebody can come into the side and score around half of the 31 goals Suarez netted, the defence can do the rest. Dejan Lovren looks a good player and will hopefully keep the ship tighter than either Kolo Toure or Mamadou Sakho managed. If, as looks likely, we can bring in Javier Manquillo and Alberto Moreno to play at full backs in place of Glen Johnson and the improving-but-still-out-of-position Jon Flanagan it should add more stability to our back four.
Reducing the goals conceded column from 50 to somewhere around 30 will go a long way towards making sure Suarez' goals aren't missed. I'm aware of how many assists also need replacing but Raheem Sterling, Philippe Coutinho, Adam Lallana and Lazar Markovic have the attacking quality to do this.
We probably haven't secretly signed Messi but it is possible we've already brought in the players who will allow us to build on the promise of our 2013/14 campaign.
