Liverpool struggled to make a breakthrough against the Blues but the momentum is still with them
Well. That derby didn’t quite live up to the hype, did it?
There are many things we can rightly criticise about Liverpool’s performance yesterday. Yet again, without Daniel Sturridge on the field we are still not clinical enough. Steven Gerrard played the full 90 minutes despite not giving a performance worthy of the privilege.
Brendan Rodgers’ substitutions were alarmingly poor. How you can bring Sturridge on 50 minutes in and then proceed to take off Coutinho – the one most likely to create chances for him with balls behind the defence – and then Sterling – the only remaining forward with any pace whatsoever tasked to support Sturridge – for Rickie Lambert, who offers the exact opposite, is beyond me.
However, there are positives still. Jordon Ibe was fantastic for a 19-year-old making only his second start and third appearance overall in the Premier League, hitting the post after a superb run and shot from right wing-back, and would have scored later on in the first half if he’d only gambled and busted a gut to get to the ball at the far post as his team mate’s shot went wide.
Perhaps most importantly, we didn’t lose. Now I understand it can be difficult to take that as a positive considering that we were the better team all game (Everton only got braver when there were 10 minutes left and they realised it was still goalless) and we should have won, no doubt about it. However, with the run of games we have coming up from here on in, it is of the utmost importance that we do not lose the momentum we have gathered over the last couple of months.
Since the defeat to Manchester United, we’re unbeaten in the league, with 5 wins and 3 draws. We’re still in the FA Cup and only lost the League Cup semi-final in extra time. We’ve come a long way since November. A goalless draw with Everton is merely a stutter; it’s not a reset.
With a draw, no one can say our momentum’s been halted, because that wouldn’t necessarily be true. With a loss, we’d be going into the Spurs game looking to get back that momentum, with our confidence knocked while Spurs’ is at an all-time high following their derby win against Arsenal. Right now, we can at least claim that we’re still going.
Spurs will be a tough game on tuesday. The North London side are in a good run of form at the moment. But while I’m sure plenty of fans will be worried about the prospect of Harry Kane going up against our often shaky defence (though it has been 5 games since we last conceded a goal in the league), this game is winnable. For all of Tottenham’s great form of late, they’re still prone to random slip ups. For every impressive derby win, there is inevitably a game where they go and lose to Crystal Palace.
It could be that the reason Rodgers subbed Coutinho and Sterling in the derby was so they were fresh for Spurs. Of course, that brings us to an entirely different debate about priorities, but it is something we can take advantage from now.
The next few games are all must-wins if we hope to get top 4. It’s very unlikely that we’ll win all of them, but at the very least we need to keep the momentum going as long as possible. All it takes is one loss and it makes everything so much harder. So far, that hasn’t happened.
We’re still in this.
i like the first two parts, directly critical of brendan’s decision makings. nevertheless, given that they both have had some knocks and could see they were affected by the knocks, brendan saw fit to change them. just too bad that the squad players could not complement or match the qualities of the first eleven. anyway, good news that only lucas is not available for the spurs match as it was initially thought that coutinho, sterling and marko were also out injured.