With the spectre of facing defending Champions League holders Real Madrid home and away up next, these are troubling times indeed for Liverpool.
The Reds hopes of navigating their way out of Group B and into the knock-out rounds of the Champions League were dealt a major blow with a 1-0 reversal at the hands of FC Basel in Switzerland last night. Marco Streller scored a poachers goal after embattled ‘keeper Simon Mignolet initially prevented an own goal following Martin Skrtel’s inexplicable header towards his own goal from a dangerous corner kick. Defensive error — the on-going hallmark of the Anfield outfit — aside, the visitors created little in the way of problems for their welcoming hosts as the Swiss side kept their rather impressive record against English opposition alive and well.
Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have all felt the sting of FC Basel over recent years and they did little to suggest that trend would change any time soon. Although Paulo Sousa’s side were on the end of a 5-1 hiding at the hands of Los Blancos on Match Day 1, there was no sign of a hangover in their game and it was blatantly obvious that they weren’t about to roll over for the visiting red hordes.
“I think we created a good few openings where you would expect us to go and score, but we didn’t deserve anything out of this game today,” said Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard following the final whistle. “I thought we were second best at times tonight. I think they are an okay team, but I wouldn’t say we were blown off the park or that they were fantastic tonight. We made it easy for them and we wanted something out of this game – at least a draw. We came for the win, I expected us to win, so it was very disappointing.”
To be fair, we never looked like doing any of that. Mario Balotelli had a swerving free-kick well saved by Tomáš Vaclík, Lazar Markovic made a hash of the rebound, Raheem Sterling twice found himself in space only to have his touch go awry and Gerrard’s own set-piece barely troubled the Basel shot-stopper. In contrast, the Swiss side were composed going forward with Derlis González giving Jose Enrique a bundle of problems, but just as important, they were also solid at the back as Serey Die controlled the middle of the park and caused all kinds of problems for the Reds build-up play.
It was ugly. It was disappointing. It wasn’t good enough for this team.
Growing pains are one thing and a lack of cohesion is a complete other. The pundits may want to bang on about one or even two players that are missing from the Liverpool set-up at the moment, but even a handful of players being sidelined doesn’t account for the numerous times we wasted possession, misplaced a routine pass or played ourselves into problems. There’s no easy matches — you can repeat that mantra until you’re blue in the face, and though it’s validity can’t be disputed, nothing is going to get easier if we don’t stop making it so damn hard on ourselves.
–Steven
It’s hard to look for positives after that one, but where can we go from here? How do we push on? Have a go in the comments and be sure to vote for your Man of the Match against FC Basel — again, not always the easiest to keep it positive, but not everyone stunk. Right?
