The club has moved forward from the dark days of a manager who can speak as many languages as he has excuses for his team’s poor performances. The squad has a lot more attacking options since this time last year, with Luis Suarez being the constant shining light for the club. We have to be realistic though even Luis can improve his game drastically as irrelevant to his creativity, pace, awareness and trickery, this is still a man with a chance/goal ratio that would make most defenders cringe. As far as our most recent result it was paramount to get the maximum points available but the same problems that have been dogging us all season are still there for all to see.
For a side who created so much and tested Cerny time and time again, irrelevant to the win, my main concern was seeing the ‘attempts on target’ column reading 15. This just outlines how we are creating plenty but not turning possession into penetration. To get Champions League football this has to improve drastically as all of the teams competing, if they were creating as many opportunities as ourselves, would be hammering teams and not even getting into a situation of a nervy end to the game as the opposition try to nick a draw or win! As to what is causing the problem well this is something we must rely on Kenny to address.
Prior to this weekend’s fixture all the talk was of how Fulham had ended Liverpool’s unbeaten run, let’s be honest there weren’t many Liverpool fans singing from the rooftops about an unbeaten run that had more draws than the IKEA January Sales. We have seen time after time that draws are as damaging as defeats when looking to include yourself in the Premier League ‘elite’. This brings us back to the same point again, had we taken the chances we created, Fulham wouldn’t have still been in that game when Dempsey scored thanks to Reina’s uncharacteristic ‘assist’.
To be considered contenders for the coveted Champions League places, a lot is asked of would be suitors now and the margin for errors is smaller than ever. You need consistency over the course of the season and to achieve as many points as possible from every game. It is not good saying ‘we should have won that’ or justifying your teams defeat or disappointing draw with colleagues in work by qualifying your rationale by saying ‘we were robbed’ / ‘the ref costs us the game’ / ‘we were all over them’. If there were a league where teams achieve the points they should on paper, Liverpool would have been crowned Premier League Champions some years ago. There is not though and these excuses are starting to get boring to even the staunchest Reds fan. Every team has poor decisions imposed upon them by officials, all you can hope is that over the course of the season it evens itself out. Nobody wins games of football by dominance of possession over 90 minutes and the difference between winning or losing most of the time is clinical finishing in front of goal. Liverpool are getting to the extreme now where when we get past the back four, the opposing defender must still feel it in his favour that we won’t score.
This is not good enough for Liverpool Football Club. A club world renound due to the history built over a long period of time by many, many players resulting in there being few corners of the world that the name can be mentioned without recognition. The decline has been more than evident during the Hicks/Gillette era, but that has been and gone now and it’s time to start looking to the future. The board have backed Kenny to the eyeballs in the transfer market and there is no excuse for not achieving the minimum expectation level of Champions League football. Currently we do not look capable of that. There are 5 teams in the league who are in better form in the league and picking up more points than us. This needs to change, the excuses need to stop and it is time for players to be held accountable for their actions.
Results such as the win against Neil Warnock’s side is just papering over the cracks, a newly promoted side should be coming to Anfield in fear of a mauling not in hope of taking all of the spoils. Kenny does often speak that we will give a side a real beating soon when ‘things go our way’ and chances are taken and whilst I have the utmost respect for the King I don’t want to hear this again. I would prefer to see our leader when interviewed to tell it as it is, say the players have to be accountable to the fans and start invoking a level of finishing that compliments the build up play. We used to be a side that would beat all the expected teams and never win in the ‘big 4’ crunch matches, we now appear to be in some alternate universe where all of that is turned on its head!