We were brought back down to earth with a bump at St Mary’s on Saturday, as we were torn apart, at times, by a Southampton side who are fighting relegation.
The game highlighted some of our deficiencies, particularly in our back-line and midfield. The loss of the organisational presence of Jamie Carragher, mixed with Pepe Reina failing to shake off his recent injury, meant that we had to start the out of sorts Martin Skrtel at the heart of the defence whilst Brad Jones continued between the sticks.
What baffled me the most though was Brendan Rodgers’ selection of Joe Allen over Lucas in the midfield. Apparently the Brazilian hadn’t fully trained all week due to a niggling injury, but the Welshman has also been carrying a shoulder injury for a while. In my opinion, if Lucas was fit enough for the bench, then he was fit enough to start the game and during the first half at St Mary’s we got totally overrun in midfield.
It was humiliating at times, Southampton went through us like a knife through butter and both our full backs got isolated, spreading us all over the place. Saints forward, Rickie Lambert, also gave our centre half pairing of Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger a torrid time, bullying them from the first whistle. Skrtel was particularly picked on and the Slovakian looks bereft of confidence now after being terrorised numerous times this season by forwards, namely Christian Benteke, Kenwyne Jones, Carlton Cole and lower league man Matt Smith. It’s no exaggeration to say that we could have been 5-0 down at the break, we were that poor. But the little Brazilian playmaker, Coutinho, pulled a goal back on the stroke of half time and offered us hope going into the second half, as we only trailed 2-1.
Game on?
Not quite. Rodgers realised his tactical error in selecting Joe Allen over Lucas and on came the Brazilian to shore up the midfield area. For 20 minutes it seemed to work, as we did get a foothold in the game and threatened at times to get an equaliser but, as the game looked like it was fizzling out, Southampton put the game to bed through Jay Rodriguez. The English forward was left virtually unchallenged as he was allowed to run from the halfway line and score with his second attempt, after Brad Jones could only parry his first effort back into his path. It compounded our misery and, in truth, we got exactly what we deserved after what was quite possibly our worst performance of the season.
What we have established from this campaign is that this Liverpool side is horrifically inconsistent. The momentum we had from beating Swansea 5-0, Wigan 4-0 and coming from behind to beat Tottenham 3-2 mattered not, as the surrender against Southampton in a such a disappointing manner was emphatically feeble. We just don’t know what to expect from this side ,and come the summer, we desperately need to add some backbone to the squad.
An organiser and leader of the back-line is a must with Jamie Carragher retiring, but we also require a domineering midfielder, too. It’s all well and good playing nice, pretty, intricate football, but we also need to dig in at times and show a bit of fight if we want to be successful and I just hope Rodgers can see this as well.
Moving on before I get too wound up.
We have an inconvenient international break before our next game. Two weeks to stew on our awful recent display and defeat. I just hope the players are hurting just as much as the fans are. I guess we’ll soon find out as we travel away to Aston Villa on Easter Sunday. I hope the result changes from our last encounter.
