There’s no way to hide from the numbers; quality of opposition aside, losing three matches in the span of seven days is a tough go for any team, and when you’re Liverpool football club, it borders on unacceptable.
It was Newcastle United last weekend, Real Madrid midweek and now Chelsea earlier today with a single goal doing in the Reds each time. Emre Can, one of the few hold-overs from much tinkered with team that ran out at the the Santiago Bernabéu on Tuesday, opened the scoring when his long range striker took a wicked deflection off of Gary Cahill, but the defender atoned for his sins a mere five minutes later when he bundled home following some confusion in the box and Diego Costa wrapped things up with a fine finish midway through the second half to ensure the Blues made it back to London with their unbeaten streak intact.
Our inability to defend has been the main talking point on more than one occasion, but with each match this week being decided by a single goal, our woes at the back, for once, haven’t been the most worrisome item of note. Can may have opened the scoring early to get our trademark flying start off the tarmac, but as the match progressed, it became obvious that a lack of composure on the ball and little to no creativity in the final third is what’s really doing us in.
Even when we were in the lead, for that brief spell, we never looked like holding onto it. Last season, against a Chelsea side that didn’t even know what the net looked like let alone how to find it, and we would have been soaring; but this an entirely different beast altogether, and as soon as the visitors turned on the pressure — and got a lucky break for Cahill to bully in with a little help from the goal-line technology — it was all sputters and stutters from the boys in red.
Although the display was drastically better than against the Magpies last weekend, and built on the slight improvement we saw midweek in Spain, it was nowhere near the level we need to be at in order to swing with the big boys. Things just aren’t right at Anfield, and with three losses in a week posted up, you can’t help but have questions for Reds boss Brendan Rodgers.
Despite the best efforts of Philippe Coutinho, who was probably our best player on the day, Mario Balotelli was once again isolated up top, and when he did get on the ball, he found himself in heavy traffic with no one around to support him. That the Brazilian was withdrawn almost immediately following Costa’s go ahead — which he took superbly following a combination of good work from César Azpilicueta and bad luck for Alberto Moreno — is baffling in itself, but when it’s coupled with Fabio Borini being brought on to provide support for his compatriot up-top only to see the player he’s patterning withdrawn less than ten minutes later for an out of sorts Rickie Lambert only adds to the enigma that is Liverpool this season.
Although referee Anthony Taylor decided not to award the Reds a penalty after Steven Gerrard’s long-range effort gave Cahill more than enough time to pull his arm out of the way, it has to be said that the hosts hardly deserved to equalize. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t of taken it of course, but in terms of what we put out on the pitch today, the better team not only won, but they did it rather comfortably.
And that hurts to say; when you take the quality of opposition into account, ruing those three losses in a week is a bit harsh. Consider that almost every team in the league has struggled to match wits with the Premier League pace-setters, and when you go back to Tuesday, you’d be even harder pressed to find a side that’s going to get something against Real Madrid. Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, that’s beside the point.
The fact of the matter remains that we’re in a serious downward spiral, and by the time the day is out, we’ll almost certainly be in the wrong half of the table. Going into November, that’s not where we should be. It’s one thing to come up short against the Madrid’s and Chelsea’s of the world — these things happen — but when those matches are only serving to punctuate how dire things really are, that’s when you’ve really got a problem.
–Steven
