A quite masterful display by a much more youthful starting eleven against Manchester City almost earned Brendan Rodgers a memorable first three points at Anfield but a misplaced back-pass from Martin Skrtel ten minutes to the end meant that his wait would have to continue.
Even though we didn’t manage to claim all 3 points as we so rightly deserved, the strength in possession and the usefulness of the play are two major positives that can be taken from the game.
The stellar performance of Raheem Sterling and contributions of Jonjo Shelvey against the Champions will also be quite assuring for fans who doubt the ability of our youngsters and the quality of players the Academy is producing.
The problem however, is that in our most recent campaigns the team has always managed to churn out performances like this against the EPL elite but has never really managed to use them as springboards to jump-start a good run of form and have often failed to maintain the standard of football they produce in these “big games”. This has personally put a bit of a damper on my optimism and enthusiasm. I so badly hope that this marks the steady rebirth of the “Any given Sunday” side we’ve craved since 2009 and is not just the performance of a team that rises to the challenge of such fixtures, something we will find out over the course of the next five to ten games.
Inconsistency has been a major contributor to our woes, being unable to keep any kind of rhythm or form for more than three consecutive games. After beating Arsenal away and Bolton at home early last season, we lost to Stoke and were demolished 4-0 by Spurs at White Heart Lane. At the very end, we beat Chelsea convincingly in our penultimate game and then lost to a then Brendan Rodgers Swansea on the final day of the season. The most worrying part of it is that our poor runs of form can usually span quite a number of games. After beating Wolves 3-0 in January, it wouldn’t be until April that we would record another Premier League victory and managing to draw only 2 of the 9 games in between.
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This is probably why tiki-taka has been welcomed with such open arms. Teams associated with this style of play are quite consistent for the most part once the right blend of players has been found, and with Shelvey and Sterling proving themselves compatible with this system and the already telling ability of new-boy Joe Allen, it might not be long before this blend is found if it hasn’t been already.
The still-in-development partnership between Borini and Suarez could be a bottleneck as far as conversion rate is concerned but so long as we avoid losing games and manage to make it through the next couple of league fixtures in the same manner as we did against City (minus the defensive blunders obviously), we could be poised for a good season considering the confidence boost good performances and a good amount of points from our lethal first five games could provide, and with this growing confidence I have no doubt that we will find the consistency that we so badly require.
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