LIVERPOOL are stuck in a bit of a rut.
It’s the kind of rut that gets you 30 points from your first 12 league games.
As if the results of the first three months of the season were not encouraging enough, the sense of optimism is somehow heightened by a feeling that the team has not yet found its best form. I agree with the opinion but I can’t share the optimism. Liverpool can and must play better to maintain their challenge.
If there is a virtue in winning games without playing your best football, it’s short term. It’s not the single quality that defines champions. It’s a useful knack to have in order to keep the scoreboard ticking over when you hit a flat patch. It’s not something to take pride in or rely on. Sorry, but I’m posing the awkward question, “just when did Liverpool last play really well?”
They’ve done “enough” on the home front so far. It’s points that win prizes and I happen to think that Liverpool have earned every one of those 30 points. I can’t bring to mind a result their performance hasn’t merited. Ironically, the six points they have dropped have all been against good teams, in good games, in which Liverpool have given a good account of themselves.
But I don’t think you can separate Premier League and Champions League form. For me, the painful defeats to Napoli and Red Star were accidents waiting to happen. Did Liverpool play significantly better against Huddersfield, Cardiff or Fulham than they did in Belgrade? Or were they simply not required to? You can’t just keep doing just “enough”.
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Only twice in the league this season – against West Ham and Southampton – have Liverpool put an opponent away with time to spare. That can be wearing. What has changed with the presence of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker is the degree to which the team can make even a slender lead look relatively secure. They are much better at managing games now. The Fulham victory was as comfortable as a 2-0 win can be… In the end.
Liverpool were a lot better than Fulham. Such is the quality and depth in this squad, they are better than most teams they face at home and abroad. But whenever your performance level slips, you leave yourselves open to the possibility of incidents and moments taking a game away from you.
Anfield was enjoying a nice lunchtime snooze when Ryan Sessegnon went clean through. It only takes him to score and then the linesman to keep his flag down and you’ve got a rude awakening on your hands. If Liverpool play to the level they undoubtedly can and maximise their overall supremacy more, those fine margins can be avoided.
So, what’s missing? When results are as good as they are you are left to pick at the fine detail of individuals and systems and that can be dangerously over analytical. Liverpool are only slightly out of sync. There just seems to be a bit of clarity and precision missing. Some better decision making needed. Too many promising situations don’t result in a goal chance. It’s a matter of opinion as to where the fine tuning is required.
I happen to prefer 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1. I’d go with the old guard over the new in midfield and upfront for now. I do think it will happen again for Adam Lallana eventually. To my mind, Fabinho is a work in progress but he’s learning the ropes well and I’m not yet quite as taken with Xherdan Shaqiri as many are. None of the three would be in my first 11 right now.
I think the attack functions best when the ball is passed rather than carried. I throw stuff at the telly when players get flicky or run into traffic or hit wishful shots into blocking defenders. I could go on but it’s just an opinion and mine carries no more weight than anyone else reading this – unless the boss happens to have logged on.
Jürgen Klopp knows best. We can all argue about certain selections and semantics but you can’t ignore the overwhelming evidence that he is the right man for this job. However much we might be debating what would work best, the manager is on it 24-7.
I’m not sure I buy it when he shrugs off bad spells with that endless smile of his. I suspect that when he says “and obviously that’s not cool” in a disarming post-match interview it translates into a bit of a bollocking for someone behind a closed door. I hope so.
In answer to the question I asked at the start, Liverpool have probably played their best football of the season against the best sides they have faced. Certainly in spells. In that sense, the challenging fixture list they face after the internationals may be no bad thing. Something to really concentrate the minds.
I hate to mention the “C” word but City are playing better than Liverpool at the moment. You don’t have to scratch your head for long to remember when they last really turned it on. I’m not getting dreamy about them, I’m just saying. They are the standard.
It’s a standard I honestly believe Liverpool are capable of getting very close to but not at 90 per cent capacity. They need to find that missing 10 per cent soon if they are to stay in this wonderful rut.
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I assure you, nobody is going to ask questions about performance if we dont get the results. Supporters dont care in the end how we perform on a day if we win the match. Won 9, drawn 3. It’s easy to muse about optimizing performances when we remain unbeaten and getting the wins. Last season we had a lot of draws at Anfield. Burnley, West Brom, Everton, Stoke, etc. Tell you what. Would have taken all the wins with a sh#tty performance. We shouldnt take our current results for granted.
Also, I wouldnt worry too much about performance. We are becoming more and more a team of moments, rather than being aggressive for large periods of the game.
If the moments keep being produced, there wont be much of a moan.
Winter is coming. The lads definitely to keep going the way they are, results-wise!
You must have not read all the comments then after all the games… People are getting worried about the performances and especially so after the likes of Red Star and Napoli away. Both show cased we can’t get away with being abject and must start putting in displays. Tougher tests lay in wait, especially now we MUST go to PSG away and beat them, as it will be a huge task to beat Napoli by 2 clear goals at Anfield if it all comes down to that, especially as we are not serving up the type of performances that would get us this type of win.
Some of the article echo a lot of what I have been saying in posts all season. All except Lallana. Sorry but this lad has yet to do much to convince me, even when at his very best for us, what exactly has this provide. Yeah he got a winner in a 5 vs 4 game against Norwich away all that time back. this being a Norwich being spanked by all and who went down that season (Wow did we make life hard for ourselves in that game).
Also Clive hasn’t stated what he doesn’t see in Shaq that the rest of us can. Well a goal ever 23 mins for us when her has been playing with our front 3 might help answer that question. Someone else showed how many assists he also has as well as goals. Can Lallana match that? Also our best performances have all been when Shaq has been on the pitch and we create more chances.
Old guard has been used and it is only when Shaq or Naby has been in the equation that we have seen the most goals and also our best performances. Keita is yet to get up to speed. Imagine what he may do when he does. As for Shaq, I think he needs to be the first name on the team sheet.
The rest of the article I agree with.