Six or seven years ago we played at home to Bolton in the early kick off on New Years Day, it wasn't good. It was the latest in a succession of horrible games against them. At that point I vowed never to pay money to watch a Sam Allardyce team again and I've stuck to that. I don't blame Allardyce, if that's how he plays and he's successful at it then he has a duty to his employers to do it, get results the best way he knows how. It's not pretty to watch, it's rarely anything even approaching entertaining, but we struggle against it so he would be daft not to set his team up in the way that he does. It's his job to earn points for West Ham United, not to make life easier for any of their opponents.
Over the last 20 years we've never found a consistent formula for beating the hard working, defensively set up teams that come to Anfield. Look at Man Utd, when they play at Old Trafford against anyone of that type it's a home banker. If you can beat the bottom ten sides home and away that gets you sixty points, you should then get enough points in your remaining eighteen fixtures to win the title and that's more or less what Utd do.
Wigan, Fulham, Swansea, Sunderland and Norwich have all come to Anfield this term and been battered, we've beaten them all by three or more goals. This makes you think we've maybe got it sussed and gives you more confidence that we'll brush aside teams like this when they visit but then you get a Stoke, West Brom or West Ham turn up and we just can't score, never mind win. It's not a new problem and it certainly isn't exclusive to Brendan Rodgers' Liverpool, all of his predecessors have had the same trouble. We could have had a penalty today and had a dubiously disallowed goal, but decisions like this happen and can't be blamed for a failure to win, the team must keep going and find that winning goal from somewhere.
Over the last couple of decades we've had seasons where we've beaten the top sides home and away but we've not finished in first place because we've not taken enough points in games where we're clear favourites. Whichever side gets the best results against all the lower down teams is usually the one that picks up the title in May.
Today's 0-0 doesn't really mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. With the way the FA Cup and League Cup have gone it means only the top five will qualify for Europe through their league position and I doubt we'd make that even if we won all of our remaining games. It would be nice to overtake our neighbours from across the park but finishing above them certainly isn't an aim at the start of the season. Being below them after 38 games doesn't bother me as long as we've shown progress from last season, which we have. We can't say that Brendan Rodgers needs time to build a dynasty but still expect him in his first season to finish above someone who has had over a decade to mould a team.
Looking at the bigger picture our last seven matches have produced five wins, one draw and one defeat. Repeat this over the course of a season and you'll finish top. Scorelines like today happen, they always have and they always will, but the players have to react positively in the next match. We're away at relegation certainties Reading next Saturday, a game ripe for the winning if ever there was one. We need to get our attitude right, focus on the parts of our game that are working and produce a performance that will get us the three points. It wasn't a good result today but we can't let the rot set in. As it stands it's only one bad result and not a poor run and we, as fans, have got to remember that and not get too carried away with our first goalless draw since Swansea away on November 25th.
The team have given us some good performances this season and we've scored more goals than we had by this point in all but two of our previous Premier League campaigns so there are plenty of positives. There's no reason to believe we won't put Reading to the sword next weekend, but games like today do knock your confidence in the side a little. It's up to the players to remind us what they can do when they step on Saturday and make sure today was the exception and not the norm.
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