Things at Anfield have turned very, very sour.
A club that seems to lurch from one moment of turmoil to the next has seen the focus shift heavily onto the American owners in recent times, with fans desperate to understand what is going on behind the scenes.
They’re not wrong to be questioning. With the departure of Steven Gerrard taking the spotlight since January, the rather public saga involving Raheem Sterling and a squad failing to cement a place in the top four despite it being the weakest league (in my opinion) for quite some time, the fan-base can’t be blamed for speculating as to what is going to happen in the near future.
It’s impossible to forget the state the club was in 12 months ago.
We’d just won the nation’s hearts with a league campaign quite unlike one that has ever gone before it. A 14 game winning streak to nearly snatch the League from the grasp of the expected challengers was frankly ridiculous, and bar the defeat to Chelsea, it seemed unlikely we’d ever actually lose a game of football again.
Then the summer happened. That lovely Uruguayan lad left, Aly Cissokho’s smile was no more and before you know it, here we are, languishing in 5th place despite the best efforts of the rest of the league to match us in terms of being rubbish, with the future looking bleak.
It doesn’t just tarnish the memory of last season, it makes me question it. Was a fall always coming?
As much as I say I hate clichés, I secretly love them and the old ‘flying too close to the sun’ saying perfectly encapsulates Liverpool’s 2013-14 season. For 14 straight games, Liverpool tried to defy all logic and tactical reasoning, and just win every game 6-0.
The fall came.
“We go again”.
Why didn’t we?
The summer window has been discussed over and over again, to the point where I can basically memorise all the lines to the debate, like the lines to my favourite song.
Over and Over.
“£20million on Dejan Lovren.”
We get it. What I personally think people fail to get is that the window showed a turning point from Liverpool, where we stopped trying to fly too close to the sun. We’d instead lashed some sun-cream on and strolled underneath it, at a safe distance, doing the same as the rest. I say the solution is to fly even closer, because everyone else is too wary of doing that.
That analogy has gone way too far, but the underlying point is simple: we changed our identity and tried to match the rest of the League. We knew we were miles better than everyone going forward, so instead of sustaining that mentality, we instead accepted a hit in the offensive department to try and match others teams defensive abilities. The result? We made a weak defence into a mediocre one, and a world class attack into a good one.
Then the good picked up ANOTHER injury, and it was a mediocre attack. The balance shifted from being skewed towards being offensively brilliant to being completely balanced across the board. Not great anywhere, just ok.
The bright sparks weren’t bright enough, for which they have been slated. There comes a point when they need help, in the form of an identity. That identity last season was so, so simple, yet hasn’t been done in the modern era.
This is the conclusion here, but I have a feeling that the problems at Liverpool are far from concluded. The multiple keys to our standout 2013-14 season are either gone or trying to adapt to things that they aren’t, and before long it’ll be too late to save that identity and we’ll be stuck with being just another team in just another league.
It may have happened already.
