Of all the indignities suffered by Liverpool fans during the 6-1 defeat at the Britannia Stadium in May, perhaps the most galling was the sight of Charlie Adam swanning around spraying passes at ease, writes NEIL DOCKING.
Everything about a gutless surrender of that magnitude against a mid-table team like Stoke City is utterly humiliating. But worst of all was having to watch the iconic Steven Gerrard spend his last game in a Red shirt eclipsed by the considerable shadow of an overweight Anfield outcast.
Adam’s goal — the fourth of five blows in a truly embarrassing first half — came after he had already gone close twice, including a strike that set up Stoke’s opener.
To be fair to the dumpling from Dundee, he’s always had a wand of a left foot that can punish any opposition, from pretty much any distance. Yet at no stage in the contest did anybody try to put him off his game, or exploit the fact he’s often likely to respond to physical pressure by losing the ball, losing his cool and throwing in a snide tackle.
Much has been made about Liverpool’s players committing only four fouls that dark afternoon and receiving just two bookings — effectively throwing in the towel when the very least they should have been doing was breaking up play and going down fighting.
Stoke by contrast committed 13 fouls and were booked four times, despite the fact they were strolling towards a famous victory.
The fresh memories of that nightmare are why it was so satisfying on Sunday to see James Milner cap off an industrious first half by sliding in and upending Adam with a crunching late tackle.
It earned Milner both a shove from the infuriated Scot while our new recruit was down on the ground and a deserved yellow card from the referee. However, it was exactly what Liverpool have lacked for so long — bite and aggression — and something we need to see a lot more of this season.
On this occasion it was Liverpool who racked up the fouls — 16 to Stoke’s nine — and four yellow cards compared to the home side’s two.
That tally could quite easily have included a red card for Dejan Lovren, after he elbowed Mame Biram Diouf in the head without employing much subtlety and was lucky to escape with a booking.
Going down to 10 men is never going to help the Reds’ cause and there is no need for rash flailing limbs à la Marouane Fellaini. Similarly, I don’t want us to become known for the kind of malicious challenge Chadam reserves for his one-man war against Tottenham Hotspur’s midfielders.
But you don’t get anywhere in sport by being nice and it’s about time we had a fighter like Milner, who understands games and titles are won in part by stopping the opposition from playing their natural game.
An example of Liverpool’s soft underbelly is that in 2013-14 we actually topped the Premier League Fair Play Table — an achievement lauded by Brendan Rodgers after coming so close to winning the title. Was it really worth celebrating? Could a more cynical approach have helped deliver silverware? And I don’t just mean somebody scything down Crystal Palace’s Yannick Bolasie!
Last season we actually led this table again going into May, before eventually coming second to West Ham. Where did the champions Chelsea finish? Fourteenth. Jose Mourinho (of course) ridiculed the table, which also found that his side showed the least respect towards match officials and were second worst when it came to the behaviour of club staff on the touchline, and branded it ‘a lie’.
Let’s be clear. I have no desire to see Gary Mac berating referee Craig Pawson when he takes charge of the game against Bournemouth on Monday, or Rodgers adopting the habitual petulance of his former mentor. But when we’re up against it away at the Emirates or under the cosh at Stamford Bridge, I have absolutely no qualms with seeing Jordan Henderson and company surrounding a referee and demanding that a crucial decision goes in our favour.
Unsportsmanlike you say? What a misnomer. Champions seek every possible advantage to ensure they win.
You actually have to go back more than a decade to Arsenal’s Invincibles in 2003/04 to find a title-winning team that also clinched this fair play award. Quite how they won it remains a mystery. Cursory research reveals the Gunners had three players sent off that season, six charged with improper conduct after the infamous confrontation with Ruud van Nistelrooy when the club was fined £175,000 — the largest ever fine given to a club by the FA — and regularly had to refute accusations of diving thanks to the questionable antics of Robert Pirès.
Maybe it was a particularly dirty season, or the exemplary behaviour of Arsène Wenger and his staff made the difference? Either way that wondrous team had the grit and nous I’m referring to — a savvy, studs-first edge, epitomised by Patrick Vieira and Dennis Bergkamp.
Disregarding that seemingly anomalous example, it looks like we’ll never top the table that matters most if we keeping winning the fair play alternative.
I think the true test of whether this Liverpool side has developed the necessary appetite for destruction will come when we travel to Old Trafford on September 12.
Last year in the first half of a critical encounter at Anfield, Manchester United bullied us out of the game. So much so that an enraged Gerrard felt the need after coming on at half time to quite literally stamp his authority on Ander Herrera.
It was foolish and it proved costly. Yet who didn’t cheer when he crashed into Juan Mata seconds earlier, showing what we had so sorely missed until that point?
This kind of raw aggression has to be controlled. United that day showed us exactly how it can be done — bending the rules and pushing physicality to the limit of what will be accepted by the officials. Imposing your will over the opposition without resorting to unfettered violence. Unless like Jamie Carragher on Nani, you can get away with it!
We’ll soon learn in the next six away games whether the Reds now have the necessary steel to ensure we don’t get turned over on our travels again.
Every team loses games. But Liverpool Football Club should never lose 6-1 at Stoke. On Sunday, Milner and his new team mates made that clear.
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda Photo
Agreed and this is another reason why the first choice midfield should be Can behind Milner and Henderson. We need a competitive midfield, protecting the defence but also with the hard work to get forward as well. None of the more attacking, flair players should be included in this three. let them fight it out for the three places further forward.
The problem with being under-matched physically is that it becomes necessary to turn those niggly, cynical fouls, into blatant obvious yellow card offences.
That was a major part of the problem with a midfield anchored by Allen (too weak and small) and Gerrard & Lucas (too slow) in the central midfield, and even Henderson at times also; these failings allowed opposition attackers the freedom (and confidence) to run at pace at our back four so frequently and predicated many of our calls for a new defensive midfielder to be brought in.
Hopefully the alternative of a more aggressive front foot approach to engaging the opposition before they get into our final third will pay off though…
Good points , we have often been bullied by teams of lesser ability . I really appreciated Milners dogged performance for that reason. However I really think we need a DM to release Milner and Henderson further forward.
It is not so much about one player it is the attitude of the team . Once over the line we need to show that extreme ( often ugly) competitive attitude that is the calling card of winning teams. That comes from the Manager and I dont see that rage to win in BR. Being bought up on Souness I really look forward to a team that if needed can go to the dark side.
This was one of the most positive elements of the Stoke game. And as others have pointed out, the middle was solidified once Can appeared.
For the Bournemouth game I’d like to see Can behind Milner and Henderson, and Coutinho a little further on, behind Benteke and Firmino.
This would in theory produce something like an inverted, double-layered “Flying V” formation (all hail Mighty Ducks!) when attacking.
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Good article and sums up exactly how I felt about both Stoke games. I’m glad we’ve finally grown a pair and Milner looks a great addition but I never want us to be mentioned in the same breath as Chelsea for being habitually snide and unsporting twats. I’m genuinely glad Jose never came to our club…we may well have won the league with him in charge but it would have felt dirty and soulless. He was tailor made for Chelsea.
By all means keep the mean streak in our locker but use it merely as a platform to return to being tricky again.
Over to Padraig and co for the view from suicide street…
Being a Welshman as well as a proud Red, and having witnessed Gareth Bale (whilst playing for both Tottenham and Wales) suffer numerous scythings, ankle stamps and various other assaults from Charlie Adam over the years, nothing pleased me more about Sunday’s game (Coutinho’s exquisite finish apart, of course) than the clattering James Milner gave The Burger King. Bravo, Jimmy!!
I remember thinking wow we look strong, wow we look solid, wow we look organised and at ease in a back 4? as if not seen before, stoke players/fans were as shocked as i was delighted.
It pleased me because there are matches that call for this and improving here improves us much.
Venger will have more to chew on now, in fact we are such a different prospect from last season the potential is genuinely exciting to me, so for me its on big time!
I agree fully and think the point about breaking up play before the mids can just sprint at our backline makes a ton of sense.
That being said I think a call for a player in the dm slot isn’t necessarily what liverpool need. What they need a lot more of is less ibe and lallana in the the 2 in a 4-3-2-1 I think firmino and marko make a ton more sense, and eventually firmino and studge.
Benteke quietly had a tremendous game but he was isolated, not given the ball enough and his movement wasn’t exploited.
the henderson run, both coutinho runs and the longer henderson run were all made possible because of what benteke did with defenders.
Benteke had a play wher ehe had a neat little flick while getting tackled to lallana, who wasn’t ready for it, and ibe had a nice gap to run into and would have been clear in on goal but you could see they weren’t used to playing with one another.
https://youtu.be/OPgr1h11vso
It’s at 1:48 of that video, but the chances created there were three good ones not including the lob to benteke that phil missed. That is really really encouraging to me to see that and in a month or so I think you’ll see a team that not only has a physical edge to it but one that can translate that into really pretty attacking football, and with benteke if you need to do some smashing then so be it.
tl;dr I’m excited for things to come.
Milner and his firm took the ordinary to the Potteries and arrived tooled up.
‘Yet who didn’t cheer when he crashed into Juan Mata seconds earlier, showing what we had so sorely missed until that point?’
Me. You could see what was coming next from a mile away. A bit of steel and cynicism, yes. Recklessness, no thanks. Skrtl’s a good example, he’s the master of sitting on a booking. The only problem is, his bookings are usually needless!
Yeah, Charlie Adam swanning around like he owned the place was the thing that got to me most about last May. Enjoyed Milner’s tackle no end. Come on boys, let’s show Bournemouth how to play football now!
Enjoyed that. Really well written piece. It seems that Rodgers has taken heed of what the lads on the podcast have been endorsing over the Summer. About how we need to lose the soft under-belly and get stuck in more, and also Neil saying how we need to grind out some 1-0 wins. Maybe 38 of them. Either way this team already looks like it’s going to be far more savvy than last season. Rodgers as well.
Adam didn’t really want to know, after that Milner tackle. I liked the fact that Milner smiled and shrugged, when Adam kept moaning about it.
However, if JM is going to be our new enforcer, he will probably get sent off at least once this season and may get further suspensions through accumulated bookings. I like the look of Can or Lucas behind Henderson and Milner but we have no really effective cover for JH and JM. Let’s be honest, Allen offers almost nothing and if Lallana steps in we look weaker.
If we can get rid of Allen, Borini and Balotelli and get in one more quality central midfielder to put pressure on both JH and JM, then we would look pretty strong.
I imagine that we are just looking to offload players to recoup some of what has already been spent though. Maybe Milner can inspire Lallana to bring a little more bite and presence to his game, but I’m not convinced.
A bottom-4 fair play league finish would suit me fine though and I think it could be a major step towards a top-4 finish in the league that actually matters.
My initial reaction, to Mourinho’s treatment of his medical staff, was disgust but I can understand where he’s coming from. He’s basically telling everybody at the club that failing to win is utterly unacceptable, unless everybody does what is expected of them. He is also keeping the focus on himself and avoiding a press inquisition into individual players.
There will be consequences for whichever players he feels are responsible for the failure to beat Swansea at home though. Chelsea have a winning mentality that matches what we had under Paisley, at least in terms of ruthlessness.
I don’t get a lot of these comments. The fact is we were a mid table team last season. On a par (but not ion the day) with Stoke. Reality check.
Pool played great hope we stuff the manc scum
Anyone remember the crunching challenge Agger put in on Torres on his Anfield return? Loved the Milner challenge on Adam…really hilarious that Adam shoved Milner in anger considering his history of being the most awkward and dangerous tackler this side of Paul Scholes.