Set piece switch off costing Reds

TO cut straight to the point, if we want to make the most of our season, we need to cut out the difficulties we’re experiencing at set-pieces.

It has become an alarming pattern as the season had progressed and the second goal at Newcastle on Saturday was yet another example of poor defending.

It was a nothing free kick from Cabaye, it was a long ball into the box in order to play to percentages.

However, said percentages fell in Newcastle’s favour as Cisshoko let his man run, Skrtel made a poor error in judgement and suddenly the ball is in the net.

It’s hard to say we would have won the game without that goal happening because we weren’t playing especially well, but it definitely made our lives harder. It was an infuriating goal to concede because it was so avoidable.

But what grates the most is our failure to learn our lessons. We lost two games in the space of four days at home to Southampton and away to Manchester United because of failure to defend set pieces properly and yet it continues to happen. It is a serious issue that needs addressing with the most immediate urgency because it is going to keep on costing us points, points that if we want to finish in the top four, we’re going to need and might well regret losing come May.

You can understand a bit of rustiness from Cisshoko because he’s not played much since the end of last season, although it is mental rustiness for letting his man run, not physical. Or is it rustiness at all? Cisshoko is reputedly excellent going forward but approaching a liability defensively. But it is totally unfair to level any accusations at him – he’s not even played 90 minutes for us yet.

But the most infuriating thing of all, which I cannot understand, is conceding goals from set pieces with three central defenders on the pitch. And all of them are good headers of the ball. But we continue to do it and it is a glaring weakness. The new system has a lot of potential for us but has teething issues which we are still experiencing – such as the glaring gap in midfield for Cabaye’s goal when he wasn’t closed down quickly enough.

What we definitely do need to do is switch on. We need to smarten up and stop conceding soft goals. Because if we do that we should have a good season – we score plenty of goals and have become far more clinical since the turn of the year. Instead we have now taken to severe wobbles at set pieces – and with three centre halves on the pitch that simply shouldn’t happen.

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