Brendan
Rodgers and some of his players should be buying Mario Balotelli a pint at some
point this week. It’s the least they could do for the deserved scrutiny he has unwittingly
helped them to avoid.
Naively swapping
shirts a few seconds too early has unsurprisingly directed the focus and ire of
many supporters and the media (sadly this includes the local press as well as
the nationals) on to the misfiring striker’s ‘offensive behaviour’ while the
real questions that should currently be being addressed are going largely unreported.
Clicks are obviously easier to come by when headlines include the word ‘Balotelli’.
The most
worrying issue surrounding Liverpool right now isn’t a shirt changing hands at
an inappropriate moment. It isn’t even the team’s inability to find a way to coexist
and flourish with Balotelli in it (though that is certainly a bone of
contention worthy of addressing). No, the underlying problem here is that this
team is about as easy to break through as a pane of sugar glass and it has been
for far too long. No defensive progress is being made and it’s costing the reds
week in and week out. Having to score a minimum of two or three goals per game
to accumulate points is doable when you have Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge
in your side as we saw last season. Without them, though? Well, it gets a lot
harder. Not every side is going to be as accommodating as QPR. Real Madrid
certainly weren’t.
Every single
concern that supporters have harboured this season was cruelly laid bare on
Wednesday. The goalkeeper. The centre halves. Glen Johnson. The lack of
protection in midfield. Liverpool’s performance was a lethal cocktail of
problems that Real Madrid dismissively downed in one go before putting their
feet up for 45 minutes of relaxation in preparation of far greater tests to
come.
So where to
start? The man between the posts seems as good a place as any. When keepers at Anfield
lose their way history tells us that they rarely find it again. David James, Sander
Westerveld, Jerzy Dudek and Pepe Reina all went through severe dips in form
that they never recovered from. Simon Mignolet looks as though he’s the latest
Liverpool number one to suffer this fate.
For all his
faults, last season the Belgian did win crucial points for his team. He was
obviously flawed in many respects but by and large he was excelling in the areas
that Liverpool most expected and required him to. As recently as the opening
day of the current domestic campaign his stupendous save late on against
Southampton secured his team two additional points. Since then it’s been all
downhill.
The indecision
in his game is tangible. He’s not staying on his line but he’s not dominating
his box either. Seeing him diving at the ball with his feet rather than his
hands as if he were an outfield player asked to fill in between the sticks last
night was as sad to see as it was alarming. No confidence resides within the
man these days.
Brendan Rodgers
recently asserted that Victor Valdes isn’t coming to Anfield. We’re getting to
the point now where we have to hope that that is only the case because someone
else has been lined up.
The
relationship between Mignolet and his back four is a toxic circle of never
ending doubt and distrust. Defenders don’t know if the Belgian is coming or
staying. Mignolet doesn’t look as if he knows himself. How could he? When his
centre halves are defending the edge of their box and through balls are still
finding their way to the feet of opposing strikers (as was the case with
Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal) it offers a reason at least for why the Belgian is so
regularly caught in no man’s land. Twelve months ago the keeper was no more
dominant than he is now but at least he was consistent in his play. His back
four seemed to be confident that he would stay on his line for better or worse whereas
these days the only certainty is uncertainty.
One clean
sheet since March can’t be all down to the goalkeeper, though. Real Madrid are
undoubtedly a wonderful group of footballers, but at Anfield they scored two
goals from build up play that Sunday League sides could have put together
without too much fuss. Glen Johnson looking at Karim Benzema three times before
ultimately neglecting to get tight to the striker was embarrassingly shoddy
work, but sadly not untypical. Yet another goal direct from yet another set
piece minutes later was beyond frustrating. Giving young Alberto Moreno a pass
for a moment, could anyone seriously point to any of Liverpool’s starting
defenders on Wednesday and claim with any certainty that they are good enough
for a team with genuine aspirations of success?
As with
Mignolet, Johnson and Martin Skrtel’s deficiencies aren’t news to anyone. If
replacements who can improve upon the standards that they offer can’t be found
or aren’t being sought then we have major problems. In the summer Liverpool
elected to replace Mamadou Sakho rather than Skrtel. People can debate all they
want about the rights and wrongs of that but what isn’t up for debate at this
juncture is whether they succeeded. Dejan Lovren cost £20m. Amongst all the
outrage and pontificating about shirts being swapped last night, this is a fact
that too few are concentrating on. When you spend £20m on a centre back you have
a right to expect top quality, yet the Croatian looks worse than any of our much
maligned centre halves did during last season. If that was the best deal that
the transfer committee and the manager could come up with after a summer of
work in the market then one wonders exactly what they were playing at.
There are a number
of people willing to write off a £16m striker in October after a poor start and
I wonder how much longer our £20m centre back will be given before the same fate
befalls him. His performances certainly haven’t merited any more leniency than
what is currently being offered to the likes of Balotelli.
As daunting
and as likely as the prospect of an even more severe hiding in the Bernabeu
currently is, what remains more concerning still is the fact that Hull City are
likely to have red pulses racing every time they get in to Liverpool’s half at
the weekend, especially when they have dead ball situations to exploit. Set
pieces haven’t been this scary since Gary Pallister was nodding them in at
every opportunity against Roy Evans’ Liverpool nearly two decades ago.
Thankfully,
plenty of the season still remains. The problems are obvious and now is the
time to find solutions. Nothing is gone at this point. Progressing from the
Champions League group remains a possibility and, Chelsea and City aside, no other
teams look any less flawed than we do domestically. If Rodgers can somehow,
someway get his side’s defensive act together then this campaign could still be
one of promise and expectation rather than one defined by the present mood of
fear and pessimism.
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