His world-class finishing has been missed
It was always going to be difficult to finish fourth with Manchester City and Tottenham both having the season’s that they are having, and Roy Hodgson’s Fulham answered all the previously unanswered questions as to why Liverpool have failed to achieve their ultimate goal.
When I saw the team-sheet pre-match at Anfield yesterday, it almost immediately struck me that one name was left missing and it must have filled the Cottages with an equal amount of hope as it did me and 40,000 other Kopites with disappointment, the exclusion of Fernando Torres made our job against Fulham all the more difficult.
Liverpool have lacked that cutting-edge in front of goal all season when Torres has not featured. The replacement names of David Ngog and Ryan Babel fail to serve even a small fraction of consolation as they are as many miles from being Fernando Torres, as Liverpool are to winning this season’s league title.
David Ngog for example is not Liverpool quality and his missed opportunities in the two games against Birmingham and Fulham show it. How delighted Fulham must have been to see the Frenchman’s name alongside that of Ryan Babel. For most of the game yesterday the reds created a surplus number of chances but what was missing was that world class finisher to put those very same chances away. Torres has been missing for large amounts of the season, and ultimately that is what has cost us fourth-place.
Fulham may have parked the bus in front of the goal yesterday but they showed the same signs that many teams have shown when visiting Anfield this season. They were not scared of Liverpool and knew that by defending resolutely they would more than likely leave Merseyside with at least a point, many teams have used them very same tactics at Anfield this season.
Six points behind Manchester City and having played a game more, Rafa Benitez all but surrendered his dubious top-four guarantee and conceded Liverpool are now fighting for a top five finish. Ultimately it is no surprise that we have lost out to Manchester City. Inconsistency has cost us and now we must pay the price by missing out on participation in Europe’s most prestigious club competition.
This season may have been a disaster but Rafa Benitez will and must learn more from this season than any other if he is to get the club back to where it belongs.
Is it Rafa’s fault that we do not have a second striker to rely on in Torres absence? I think back to Crouch and I know he wanted 1st team football, I know at least it is rumoured Keane was not the player he wanted. Both of these players or either one would surely have given us a better season than haivng to rely only upon a young buck (Ngog) and occassionally using Babel and/or Kuyt up front. Neither of these two inspire much confidence as out and out strikers.
I support Rafa and still maintain he needs to be given more time and most importantly his 1st choice transfer targets. I know he has made mistakes & I applaud him for admitting same recently – that is not his form, usually.
If he gets the players he wants eg Silva (Valencia)then there’s a good chance we will bounce back in a big way next season. The fact that we are not in the champs league may actually be a blessing, allowing (forcing) Rafa to focus solely on the premiership.
In rafa we trust
Rafa is the man to blame for all the consequences, Who told rafa to make ngog the backup for torres was that the owners, the commentators, or the fan of liverpoolfc, he was the man who made an 19 yr old backup for torres. Ngog is a very decent player and is ahead of players of his age criteria, but still everybody knew that he was not competent enough to deputy torres(when injured), at the start of the season what did he did, buyed an 20 million injured midfielder although buyed an exceptional talent but was injured for the major chunk of the league. I am calling him exceptional as he is an exceptional talent whom rafa had not played. He was fit from december, but rafa after buying such an expensive player made him sit on the bench whose mistake was that. If rafa had buyed a decent midfielder for 10 million and used the rest of 10 million for a forward like rodayega(sorry for the spelling) or roman pavlyuchenko or any decent backup maybe the story have been different. Never makes changes until and unless it is 20 to 25 min left in the match. His love for lucas, kuyt and insua was pretty much seen in this season whatever the situation may be whether we winning or loosing by 2 goals never changes kuyt or lucas. He rightly said he has taken liverpool atmost where he can take! Now its time for some other bold manager to take the batton and we the liverpoolfc fan can just wait for the end result.