Finishing Clinic

 Another home game, another bucketload of chances, yet another failure to win. We played well over the ninety minutes and on the balance of play and chances certainly didn't deserve to lose against Arsenal yesterday but we were far too wasteful in front of goal again while Robin Van Persie did what he has been doing all season and stuck his chances away. It's easy to say if we play like that every week we'll win far more than we lose but we do seem to play like that every week but the wins just haven't come along at Anfield. Maybe a defeat will help waken up a few of the players and make them realise just how costly those misses are, though it may be too late as catching Arsenal for 4th place is now going to be a very difficult task that will probably prove beyond us for this season.

 Another England friendly and another game Gerrard missed through injury, his drive and leadership would've proved vital in yesterday's match and his presence could well have inspired us to victory. Not that anybody in a Liverpool shirt particularly disgraced themselves yesterday but we just lack that mentality without Gerrard, that magical thing that turns draws into wins. Suarez and Kuyt up front played well, their movement and effort was good and at no point did the Arsenal defence have them under control. But forwards are there to score and they both missed good chances, as did Martin Kelly who mis-kicked when he had a fantastic opportunity to get his first Premier League goal. I'm not going to go into Kuyt's penalty too much, it just seems we have a mental block when it comes to spot kicks now, whoever steps up seems to expect to miss rather than score. The award of the penalty was contested but just about correct, there's no doubt whatsoever that Suarez A: was looking for it, and B: exaggerated the contact. But there was contact, shin to shin, so it was a foul. Arsenal used exaggerating injury as a tactic on several occasions throughout the game forcing us to put the ball out of play when we had momentum so if they are going to bend the rules they can't be too critical when there opponents take a similar approach.

 Two fantastic passes and two top quality, but unmarked, Van Persie finishes took the points from us in a game we shouldn't have let slip. We restricted a confident Arsenal side to very little attacking play but our players need  to be shown a DVD of the game as a perfect example of what happens if you take your chances. We should have taken three points yesterday and improved out goal difference but we have only ourselves to blame for not doing. We've done it before this season but this time it could prove too costly, we needed to make up the points on Arsenal, plain and simple. Time to re-focus and sharpen up ahead of a very tricky trip to Sunderland next weekend, take the positives from Saturday's game but really look to improve on where we fell short. And do all we can to persuade Steven Gerrard to retire from international football.