There was a football match at 12:45 on Saturday morning but you wouldn’t have known it ever happened such has been the ridiculous nature of the talking points since then. It’s been a good few weeks since I last even cared about the Suarez-Evra affair and I’ll be glad if Sunday’s apologies and acceptances of apologies can finally put this highly irritating debacle to bed. I’m sure they won’t; Suarez will be linked with every other club in Europe from now until the start of next season but I’m happy we won’t have to go near Old Trafford again until next season and now, fingers crossed; we can look forward to thinking about football 99% of the time.
Speaking of which, you may have noticed – unless you spent the entire match debating whether two people should have shaken hands – that Liverpool were pretty much entirely awful. Reina, Agger and Skrtel aside, that was probably our 3rd worst performance of the season (though the score line wasn’t quite bad enough to trump Bolton away or Spurs away). From the way we were set out to the way we responded to going 1, then 2 goals down, nothing worked and ever looked like working.
I, like most, was probably glad to see that Suarez was starting. I knew he’d been out for a while and there were concerns over his ‘match fitness’ but I think, had he been more ably supported, this wouldn’t have been an issue and Suarez would’ve been able to flourish; God knows Ferdinand and Evans were there for the taking. Instead, we lined up with Downing, Kuyt and Gerrard sitting just behind the striker. Now, in the past, Kuyt has worked well in tandem with Suarez and Gerrard is a player with whom I can see Suarez hitting it off. But Downing? You have to wonder how many more displays of utter mediocrity the winger needs to show before he is dropped for a prolonged period. He was at times poor and at others utterly anonymous. He neither helped going forward or in defence. As such, Enrique was often left to defend attacks down his side on his own, with Valencia having a particularly productive day. I really don’t know how it took so long for him to be taken off (or, for that matter, why it took so long to make substitutions after going 2-nil down).
As for Kuyt, for all his industry, you have to wonder how much longer he can be a first choice in big games when his legs are clearly not what they were. He is a top player and a talented footballer when he needs to be but his game relies on being able to cover more ground than his team mates or opponents and on Saturday he, Gerrard and Downing were so far behind Suarez at times that Luis was left facing 3, 4 or more players on his own and support often never arrived.
Further back and you have got to wonder what thinking went in to Spearing and Henderson as a two-man ‘holding’ unit. If this is ever used again I think I’ll pick my own eyes out with a fork, it was that painful to watch. I mean, Spearing tries, I’ll give him that but for such a small player he is so lacking in agility and is so easily bypassed by a clever pass. On the other hand, Henderson’s laziness is really starting to irk me; at times he would casually saunter over to a United player with the ball and then, once they’d either passed him or played the ball past his general vicinity, he would just turn around and watch, instead of chasing back to support Spearing. In fairness, he isn’t a defensive player but when you’re given a job, you damned well do it to the best of your ability, you don’t look bored and disinterested, particularly not when playing for Liverpool at Old Trafford.
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Which brings me to a point I’ve raised several times this season: why, when players like Downing and Henderson have spent all season never looking any more than mildly interested, do players like Shelvey and Rodriguez barely get a look in on the bench, despite impressing when they’re given a chance? And while I never thought I’d say this, why is it that after probably his most dangerous looking display against Spurs did Andy Carroll finds himself consigned to the bench? There are too many questions being raised that are not being answered on the pitch and the most pressing for me is: why are players not being rewarded at all for a good performance?
At Old Trafford the tactics and starting line-up where a shambles and I can only think Dalglish must be beginning to see his folly after yet another inept display in which we utilized the ‘round pegs in square holes’ philosophy. Because it seems like we rarely go in to a game these days with a formation to suit the players we have available, instead we stick players in to positions where they’re not equipped to do a job and we’re too often seeing average players starting ahead of more in-form or more worthy team mates and all the Suarez incident did on Saturday was further overshadow what is quickly becoming as bad a season as last year or in Rafa’s final season.
In fact, just some food for thought here, if you look at where we were after 25 games in each of the past 3 seasons, you’ll find something very interesting: in 2009-10 – Rafa Benitez’s ‘awful’ final season – Liverpool had 44 points at this stage, compared to our current 39 and had scored 43 goals, whilst having conceded 24; our goal-difference was 19. This season we’ve managed only 29 goals so far and have conceded 23; that’s a goal difference of 6. In his final season Rafa Benitez finished with 63 points, in 7th, 23 points off the League Champions, whilst this season we currently sit in 7th, 21 points off the League Leaders. Last season at this time Liverpool had 32 points after 25 games and finished the season in 6th with 58 points, 22 points being eventual winners Manchester United. Somewhere in there, if you decipher all the figures, is the fact that both Rafael Benitez and Roy Hodgson got the sack for under-performing; Hodgson mid-way through the season and Benitez at the end of a poor season. Yet, at the moment, Kenny Dalglish’s position is bizarrely 100% safe, despite being in a worse position than Benitez’s Liverpool in 2009-10 and being on course to finish with 4 points less (if you assume we’ll continue to pick up around 1.53 points per game, as we have done so far) than Benitez’s Liverpool that season.
I would never for a second say that Dalglish is a worse manager than Hodgson but the results don’t lie and just as Rafa wasn’t allowed to bemoan his circumstances in 2010 and Hodgson couldn’t use his ‘we need time’ excuse last season, likewise Kenny cannot use any excuses this season. We need a marked improvement in the next 13 league games; we need more goals, more substantial performances and more telling contributions from the players he spent a fortune on, otherwise in the summer he will have many more serious questions to answer than ‘why the hell is Henderson playing as a defensive midfielder?’ and ‘why in God’s name is Downing starting?’. Because, as a club with fans that so loves to re-iterate the mantra of ‘no man is bigger than the club’, we wouldn’t want to be thought of as being hypocrites now, would we?
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i will never foget it sunday 2nd december 1990 – a cold sunday afternoon down at highbury – arsenal 3 a pitiful Liverpool 0. I remember it well because we had travelled down on the Sunday morning to be met with a Liverpool teamsheet I just could not make sense of – Venison and Burrows in midfield!! I love Kenny and always will but his line-ups around this time were bemusing. Sometimes I think he tries to be too clever and spends too much time cogitating – just pick your best 11 Kenny and go and play. I am really concerned at the moment at the progress the team is making and again at some of his line ups – I hope I am proved wrong and it does’nt end up in tears for kenny.
I think the key word is try. KD tries to be clever, but in reality he is not. There are section of the fans who continues to support KD and i feel sad, both for them ,KD and for our beloved club.
KD was a great as player for us but nothing suggest, even his first spell as manager, that he would cut it as a great manager, at any club, let alone LFC. He had won one PL title at Blackburn but at the same time nearly bankrupting the owner.
The stats says it all, we are worse this point of the season compared to when Rafa was in charge during his last season. Rafa never had 100 mill and have to bear with a set of cowboys mind you. I supported the appointment of KD as a temp manager after LFC sacked RH b’cos i thought the players would get a temporarily lift from the appointment but not on a permanent basis as i thought KD is simply out of his depth to manage a club of LFC stature.
So far his players purchases, team selection, tactics had all but proven me right, sad to say. Downing for example have 0 goals, o assist in 19 starts and KD saw it fit to pay 20 mill for him and worse continues to play him. Henderson, just like Downing, is missing most of the time when he plays and yet KD paid 20 mill and continues to play him. At this rate Downing is a much worse player compared to Babel, and Babel cost us 12 mill. Mata and Aguero cost about 20 to 24 mill and wow look at the difference and why was Meireles sold after doing well for a mere 500k profit, to our CL spot rival? In reality if i am JH i would be very tempted to have an official investigation for a possible “bung”. I would leave out Carroll as his case had been well documented.
On tactics, well games against Manure, Spurs, Swansea, Norwich, Stoke, Blackburn, just a few examples says it all. Poor tactics from the start, does nothing and leave it too late to change it, all the hallmarks of KD.
In truth LFC must sack KD if we hope to move forward, let alone harbouring any hopes to win the Prem and knock Manure off their F****** perch. I think JH or IA would not have the guts to do it (unless of course Stan Chart gives them another call) so we must take it upon ourselves to save our beloved club. We did drove those cowboys out, so we have the experience and must be proactive.
There would of course be a section, a very vocal one that would defend KD and to these people, ask yourselves, ARE YOU A FAN OF LFC OR KD? To me the club comes first, i don’t know about you guys. To these people, you could continue to hero worship hinm via a FB page or something, but leave` LFC out of it.
Oh talkinh about our sponsors, i think Suarez should not have apologize (he was the aggrieved party) but since when LFC start to Kow Tow to our sponsors?
I don’t know about you, but i would start to cancel my c. card and close any bank account that remotely relates to Stan Chart.
No sponsors, however big can gives us instructions.
At last, we can talk about the football. I have to totally agree about the performance on Saturday. We created one half chance through Johnson and the rest was toothless. Only for ferdinand making a complete mess of it we would have lost 2-0. It really frustrated me that we didnt have a good go at them, even if it was Old trafford. The Mancs showed recently that they are not great at the back and why drop carroll if we 1. want to improve his confidence and 2. Reward him for his recent efforts. I cant understand why we didnt go for another striker with pace in the window because we badly need one.
The display on Saturday was embarassing, god only knows how we managed to hold them to 2 and how we managed to get a goal from nowhere.
what really annoys me is with the score at 2:1 having been gifted a lifeline when we were dead and buried we did not seem bothered about making one last effort at the end of the game to try and salvage a point. We appeared to accept the game was over and we actually had done well to get the score back to 2:1 so we should leave it there.
You could see what it meant to the man u players (evra in particular) and yet it meant so little to us.
Im a liverpool fan living in Manchester so this game means alot to me, a hell of a lot. Its a pity it means so little to so many of our players. To them it was a bad day, to me its more than that and im just a fan.
Watching maunre at Anfield after Agger’s goal was a little bit uneasy until Kenny changed the formation and brought on the subs enabling us to win. What we learnt from that game was that there was a real aerial threat from Andy, Skertel ,Agger come the set pieces which their goalie & defense could not cope with. We also learnt that we could not just simply sit back and defend. Why should our two performances at Anfield against them be so different? in the league match we could/should have won by a large margin.
I cannot remember Downing playing at Old Trafford, I do remember Henderson as I found myself repeatedly swearing as most of his passes went backward ! Gerrard would have easily cleared the corner from which Shrek scored his first goal but Henderson got in front of him.
Unfortunately Jose is also seriously below par, god only knows what has happened to him in the past month or so, can the pre-Xmas Jose stand up.
Jay was also below par and responsible for a silly goal, having badly given the ball away with two attackers behind him I am shouting take one for team bring him done ( would only be a yellow!!) oh but no, he even ensured his hand did not touch the player!!
On the other hand Ferdinand & Evra were prepared to put their lives on the line to stop us scoring.
Thank god for Skertel , Agger & Pepe And a BIG thank you to Luis Suarez who tried his hardest and with a bit more luck could have have scored another goal and may be even get Ferdinand sent off, now wouldn’t that have been a poetic justice ?!
Attack is the best form of defense as we all learnt from Whiskey Nose’s puddle reporting Suarez to the match referee back at Anfield,
YNWA
Ps . I forgot to say and this a message to Henderson & Spearing, how the hell could Paul Scholes ( aged 95 & 3/4) outshine the pair of you??????? It looked as if there were six of him on the pitch. Now that bloody hurts. Next time if you are picked to play against manure ( and specially these f…..s you give 200%).
pps. Kenny should really show the video of the match to the players. If you watch you can see Jose doing absolutely nothing simply walking along the touch line, with downing having dropped back to stop a short corner from being taken.
Jose, watch the tape and also wake up, you could and should have been at or around the near post where you could have headed the ball away.
All very frustrating, school boy mistake.
Lot of good points made in the article. Can someone explain what Kenny sees in Henderson? What does he add to the team? He doesn’t tackle at all, he jockeys without closing the player down. That is why Scholes has had two easy games against us without anyone laying a foot on him. Henderson has shown some neat touches and may become a good player but at the moment he is a passenger. He doesn’t shoot,tackle or create.I can do that. I am not criticising the lad, it is Kenny’s judgement that concerns me. I don’t blame him for picking that team or formation but why wait until the game was dead before sending subs on.And Henderson stayed on!
Are you seriously suggesting that Dalglish should get the sack? The difference this season compared to those mentioned in your article, is that, by and large, we have played some very nice football. The sort of football I have wanted to see from Liverpool for a long time. Nice, tidy passing game with fluid movement. No Arsenal / Barca obviously, but decent. All that has been lacking is the finishing touches to win matches. The regularity that that touch has been missing is now fairly alarming, and I can’t believe it wasn’t addressed in the transfer window, but you can’t see we are performing on the pitch in the same way we were under Hodgson.
However, I agree with much of this article; Downing is somehow undroppable, despite barley any end product. When Maxi has played (rarely) he has done more than Downing has all season. Therefore why is Maxi not featuring more? Carrol had started to show some glimmer of why we bought him in the last few games and certainly could have done a job against Utd frail defence, but was out. You failed to mention our best attacking player this season, by a mile – Bellamy. When you play the big teams, you pick you best players and Bellamy has been far and away our best striker this season, and I’m sure Utd were happy he was on the bench.
Strange team selection, poor application on the pitch (the way there was no ungency to get back in the game, chase the ball once we went behind was disturbing), but I don’t think it justifies you implying Dalglish should be sacked…
Spot on article.All the handshake thing did was to divert an inept display with terrible tactics and even worse team selection.Someone tell me this – our goal is to finish 4th,we have a serious problem scoring goals, what to do?Lets play a defensive formation with an isolated striker up front and even better lets use players who wont contribute anything in the game.Kd an Comolli have to take responsibility for this shambles.After R100 mil outlay we have an average team that is made to look even worse because of poor tactics and stubborn insistence on persisting with the flops bought.Shelvey,Aqua and Cole vs Hendo,Downing and Adam – if these guys are better than what we already have on our books then we should be in 4th place.Necastle,Norwhich and Sunderland with less outlay are outperforming us.
Stop playing Gerrard in the midfield he should play just off the striker (attacking midfield), he’s not disciplined enough and never has been. I’m fed up with this experiment that just does not work. We really missed Lucas who would have stopped Scholes from Playing.
Kelly should be playing right back with Johnson playing right mid. He shows more desire and ability to attack and get into the box than anyone else who has played over there this season, plus it relieves him of the bulk of his defensive duties. I think that Maxi should play more also. When the left side is Enrique, Maxi, and Bellamy up front, LFC has truly looked more dangerous than any other combination Kenny has tried. Put Suarez and Bellamy up front with Johnson, Gerrard and Maxi behind them and Adam (only in place of Lucas) in front of the back four, we might actually start scoring some goals.