There were a number of question that rose out of Liverpool’s loss to Manchester City on Monday, but an emphatic 3-0 victory against Tottenham Hotspur yesterday answered the vast majority of them in exactly the way you want your football team to — with actions, not mere words.
Over their last three meetings with Spurs, the Reds have scored a combined 12-goals without allowing even one. With many a pundit questioning outright whether or not Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers can lift his team back up to the lofty heights we saw last season without Luis Suarez, yesterday he proved that there’s life after the Uruguayan. “We were excellent,” said the Northern Irishman in his post-match interview. “It was a brilliant win at a difficult place to come. It was a great win for us, two out of three now, and I’m reasonably happy.”
Video courtesy of GaboriklessWild
That the Reds boss is only “reasonably happy” with their start to the season tells the tale in itself. Although they have two wins out of their first three attempts, Rodgers is constantly striving for more — and he’s going to drag it out of his charges whether they like it or not.
“The beauty of this group is that they’re very hungry” continued the Liverpool manager. “We lost the game the other night and the last 10 minutes sort of petered away from us; we played with 10 men and didn’t have the impact we would have liked in the final part of the game.”
A bit of rust and a touch of the familiar disorganization in the back line coupled with an amazingly efficient Manchester City side may have saw the Reds miss out at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday, but it was a different story at White Hart Lane less than a week later. Where their moves broke down at the beginning of the week with touches of uncertainty and a lack of synchronicity throughout the team plaguing them, the pieces started fitting together once again as the Reds found both their rhythm and their poise going forward and on the back-foot. In short, it’s working again.
“So we lost the game and then we come to a team that has started well, having won two league games. We showed today that we’re a very good side” said the boss with a smile. “We played very well and probably clicked back into where we were last season – which was great to see. Hopefully people enjoyed watching us as well.”
–Steven
