Another home game, another bucket load of positives, another game without winning……. Udinese were the latest visitors to Anfield to be given a lesson in football and then sent home with a present, as hosts we’re almost perfect at the moment which is great if you’re on Come Dine With Me, but we’re not, we’re in the results driven business of competitive top level football.
Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool is very much a work in progress and we shouldn’t forget this, he is introducing a new philosophy and a fresh style of play as well as integrating a number of promising youngsters into the first team set up and the work being put in now is geared up for long term success for the football club rather than instant results built with no foundations. As I see it the long term aim for the first XI is to play possession football, keep the ball away from the opposition and press them high up the pitch using fast and accurate passing combined with men moving into forward positions. This sounds like dream football and any supporter would be crazy not to want their team to play in this way, in fact Liverpool supporters almost demand their team to play this way, it’s what we crave and, given the level of support we’ve kept during our last twenty two title-less years, it’s what we deserve. My issue at the moment is this – against Udinese last night, against Man City, Sunderland and Man Utd we pretty much achieved this style of play. We dominated possession, passed the opposition to death, got men forward, wore them down and…………… didn’t win.
The stats from last night’s Europa League game show we completed 691 passes to Udinese’s 173, and we had 71% possession to their paltry 29%. We were also far superior in the goal attempts figures but sadly the only statistics that count record us having two goals to our visitor’s three. It’s all very well trying to play perfect football but if you achieve it for ninety percent of the game and still don’t win then it needs seriously looking at.
So far this season in the league we’ve played six matches, given away three penalties, received two red cards and conceded twelve goals. And probably completed over three thousand passes. What I’m getting at is just how much we’re being hurt by individual errors, they are costing us in every match we play and unless the manager can find out the reasons why and eradicate them we won’t be able to challenge for the positions higher up the league.
Martin Skrtel was our player of the season last term and at times so far this time around he has looked commanding, but his errors have directly given away goals to West Brom, Man City and Norwich. Daniel Agger was caught out against West Brom and conceded a penalty in addition to collecting a red card. Pepe Reina totally fluffed a late long range shot against Hearts, almost resulting in us having to play an extra thirty minutes of football. Steven Gerrard gave the ball away deep in the Arsenal half and Podolski raced away, scored and we lost the game. Jose Enrique somehow managed to take the ball around his own goalkeeper against Young Boys presenting them with an open goal they duly finished off. In the same game Jamie Carragher was easily outmuscled for their third goal. Suso gave the ball away in the Man Utd half, Valencia raced away, won a penalty and we lost the game. In that game we were playing with only ten men after Jonjo Shelvey’s over the top of the ball challenge, the way we played with ten men makes you feel that without the dismissal we could well have taken all three points. Brad Jones comically dropped the ball at West Brom in the League Cup leaving us a goal behind after only three minutes. Last night it was Glen Johnson being caught in possession for the first goal and Sebastian Coates rising majestically to place his firm downward header beyond the reach of the ‘keeper (his own) that really turned the game. That’s pretty much all of our first choice and reserve defenders costing us goals, and it’s only the beginning of October.
At no point this season have I felt a team has had us under so much pressure a goal against us was inevitable, we’ve had too much of the ball for that scenario to have arisen. But also at no point have I felt that we were fully in control of our defending, the possibility of us pressing the self destruct button has always been just around the corner and until that is removed and we regularly keep clean sheets there will always be nerves in our play, which will in turn lead to more mistakes.
As I mentioned at the start there have been plenty of positives and I don’t want this article to seem like it’s doom and gloom. I have no doubts that we have the right man in charge and I think the emergence of some of our younger players, most notably Raheem Sterling and Jonjo Shelvey bodes very well for not just the long term future but also the rest of the current season. Shelvey has the potential to replace what we will lose when Steven Gerrard eventually retires and Sterling could provide the creative spark we’ve not really had since Steve McManaman left for Real Madrid. Also Luis Suarez has taken on the mantle of being our sole striker and vastly improved his goals to games ratio (with the help of a few Norwich defenders). We have been a goal threat more often than we were last season and you feel that it may not be too long before we give somebody a proper hiding when everything clicks together (we have a derby in a few weeks, would be a good time for it to happen…….).
I’ve been impressed with how Brendan Rodgers has spoken about our performances after our victories and our defeats and he seems quite realistic in his assessments. He would do well to heed the warnings of last season though, we went through a patch of totally battering teams like Wigan, West Brom and Norwich but not winning the games. The management seemed to think that as the performances merited more than we were getting there was no need to change anything or to lay into the team and as a consequence the rotten sequence of results continued. I’m pleased that despite playing well last night Rodgers has chosen to publicly highlight the negatives as something to work on rather than point out the positives and say everything is ok.
Lessons need to be learned and if defenders with better concentration are required then that is something that we can look at in January or next summer, but for now as a team I think we’re moving in the right direction, we just need to keep realistic and cut out the basic errors.
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