By the time the team-sheet was announced, you’d have been excused for suggesting that Liverpool had sacrificed further progression in this season’s Champions League in order to focus on qualifying again next year. By the final whistle, it was hard to know how to feel.
Reds boss Brendan Rodgers made wholesale changes to the side that lost to Newcastle at the weekend with Steven Gerrard, Jordan Henderson and Mario Balotelli all left on the bench. Though it was suggested by a number of pundits pre-match that he was either throwing in the towel or keeping an eye to Chelsea at the weekend by resting a number of key players rather than focusing on the considerable task at hand, the Northern Irishman wasn’t keen on that line of thinking and had some suggestions of his own following the match.
“I didn’t rest players for Saturday. I picked a team that I thought could get a result” insisted the Liverpool manager was a noticeable amount of annoyance in his voice. “The players that came in were excellent and we were unfortunate not to get a result.” Those words are rather understated, or extremely generous depending on how you look at it.
To be fair to Rodgers, the 1-0 loss at the Santiago Bernabeu was a far better result than the thrashing they received at Anfield a fortnight ago, but if you’re going to count that as a victory of sorts, it’s certainly one of the stranger ones as of late. In the same vein, one that is flowing with lowered expectations, losing by such a slim margin to the reigning European champions isn’t exactly something to be terribly ashamed of; Karim Benzema’s goal, with its flowing build-up, excellent cross and spot-on finish is one that any side, anywhere would have conceded regardless if the team selection was a bit weak or not.
Like I said, it’s hard to know how to feel about this one.
It’s reasonable enough to suggest, considering that this is the first Champions League match in recent memory that Carlo Ancelotti’s men failed to score more than once, that the hosts were a little less than their usual rampaging selves. That in itself could very well mean that a team at full strength — a term used lightly for this Liverpool side — may have been able to sneak a result. The sheer fact that the Reds failed to register a shot on goal until the early stages of the second half is telling of course, but it’s also safe enough to assume that had Rodgers named a more attacking line-up, they would have been more prone to attack and therefore leave more space for the deadly counter-attack of Los Blancos.
I could write all night about should ofs and could ofs that are sprinkled generously with ifs and buts; in the end, no one can predict what would of happened if Rodgers had made two changes, or no changes, rather than seven. Would Raheem Sterling make more of the ball than Lazar Markovic did? Could Philippe Coutinho have hit the net where Adam Lallana failed to? Does Karim Benzema find space to open the scoring if Dejan Lovren and not a rusty Kolo Toure is tracking his run?
I wish I knew.
What I do know is that we’re now sitting three points behind FC Basel for second spot in the Group with only two matches left to be played — a position that many predicted that we’d be in following the back to back meetings with Real Madrid, but still not one that inspires anything resembling confidence for progression to the next round. While it remains a point of contention whether or not Rodgers made the right decision to make wholesale changes to the side, should we exit the Champions League at this stage, it’ll be a lot harder not to look back on this one with something a little harsher than regret.
–Steven
