Rafa Benitez’s frustration was clear for all to see after the abject display against Wigan on Monday. He stated that he couldn’t think of many times during his five year stay at Anfield where the performance had been so far below what he expected from the players:
“You have to be disappointed and I was really furious the other day. We had dropped below the level I expect us to play at and we had missed an opportunity to stay in the top four. It’s difficult to remember when I felt in such a way. This team has been doing well for a while but a situation like the other day is difficult to take. But I always try to be positive and I am looking at the second half and believe that we showed a little bit more. We know the other teams have games in hand. But we lost the opportunity and lost it in a bad way.”
They lost in such a “bad way” that in the run up to the Reds’ tie with Lille in the Europa League tonight, he has called for the “Real Liverpool” to stand up. Rafa has done this many times this campaign, calling for big efforts in games that he has denoted the most important of the season. He has done the same for tonight’s match and although the trick has sometimes worked against opponents, most importantly Everton and Manchester United, it has also failed in the same measure against Arsenal and Lyon. It seems to be his favourite motivation tool this season as the club has moved from one crisis to another. It has been needed so much because of the plethora of sub standard performances on par with the Wigan game on Monday night, and so the question becomes whether Benitez can really get the team back performing consistently.
A run of good form has been the one major missing factor this season and it has been a characteristic of all Liverpool sides since Kenny Dalglish left the club as manager. Inconsistency has plagued all subsequent managers, including Benitez, until last season when it appeared that at last, large strides were being made in the league. For an array of reasons such as injuries, player sales, poor tactics and the subsequent loss of confidence that has led to players like Gerrard and others being way off form, things have gone worryingly awry this campaign. For me, the question of whether a “Real Liverpool” exists holds firm in my mind. Inconsistency and loss of form means that sometimes there can be no discernible style of play and although Rafa can lift the team for big games, this season it has been more through hard work than skill that we have won games against Man U, Everton and Tottenham. During these difficult times, Rafa has reassessed and reassessed his tactics, reverting to a defensive style of play to limit the amount of goals conceded. He was certainly correct to identify this as a major problem and it has been good to see how he has changed the backline for the better; however it has also led to a corresponding lack of goals at the other end. Something Rafa has admitted:
“We have been working so hard to try and improve and you could see the team was stronger, not conceding goals or giving away opportunities. We were strong in defence but we had to improve in attack.”
Even through difficult times, you know what you’ll get with a team like Wenger’s Arsenal or Ferguson’s Manchester United, they’ll go back to their fundamentals and keep with their core principles and start finding wins. For Rafa though, he has decided to go back into his shell, using defensive football to grind out results and solve the lack of confidence to manufacture an upturn in form. The fact that he said he was surprised that such tactics haven’t led to an upturn is down to the fact he believes that the players were at fault, not his negative tactics. For me the “Real Liverpool” will only stand up if he gives players like Aquilani and Babel the confidence to play football, even in difficult moments, rather than constraining creative play in a rigid tactical system. Securing the defence is all well and good but you can’t blame the players for not performing if they are not given the right tools to work with.
