Well where do I start? Last week I was buoyant and full of optimism going into the remainder of the season after two very good displays and draws at Arsenal and Manchester City. I was harbouring hopes of a late challenge for a Champions League place for next season and was hopeful we could get past a Russian side who had just had a winter season break and hadn’t played a competitive game for two months.
So what happens?
We contrive to lose our next two games, 2-0 to West Bromwich Albion, at Anfield, in the Premier League, to all but end any realistic outside chance of a top 4 finish and then capitulate in Russia against Zenit St Petersburg, again 2-0, to leave ourselves a mountain to climb in the 2nd leg of our Europa League tie.
Season effectively over in February?
The harsh fact of reality is, probably. Now without wanting to sound negative, we have to be brutally honest and admit that this campaign hasn’t been good enough. It was always going to be a learning curve with a new, young and inexperienced manager taking over the reigns. Brendan Rodgers’ philosophy and new ideas were always going to take time to be implemented and unfortunately sometimes things do get worse before they get better, but there are no guarantees things will get any better.
A major concern of mine is that, in the summer, a top European club may come along and offer our prized asset, Luis Suarez, a chance of Champions League football. Could we seriously begrudge him that opportunity if he did indeed wish to leave? Especially with us not providing him with that platform for yet another season. I know no player is bigger than the club, but he is a special footballer and right now we are lucky to have him and although the noises are that he will remain with us for next season, I honestly don’t know whether he will still be a Liverpool player come August.
Another concern of mine is the Brendan Rodgers style, it’s easy on the eye but we just don’t have a plan B. I know he likes to model his teams on ‘Barcelona style’ football, but there’s a massive difference in personnel when you consider that they have the likes of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi in their ranks. They don’t need to worry about a plan B, because they are currently the greatest team in the world, yet this Liverpool team is a million miles away from being anywhere near to their level, so sometimes you have to adapt to certain games by mixing your play up. Rodgers is so rigid in his views on the game that he rarely adapts, and I feel he can be too stubborn in his thought process. I think we are too predictable at times and are easy to suss out; the amount of goals we’ve shipped this season is alarming, we concede in bunches and it’s becoming a shambles at the back, leaking so many goals and making far too many defensive errors.
So what happens next?
While I don’t for one moment think that FSG will get rid of Rodgers – it seems clear to me that they are prepared to allow him more time to impose himself on the football club and I am sure they will give him more money to spend in the summer to add a few more to the ‘group’ as he likes to say. – I just hope that he adds better quality to that ‘group’ than he has done so far, as the likes of Joe Allen for £15m and Fabio Borini for £10m have both really struggled to offer performances worthy of that substantial outlay, considering we’re now supposedly a club trying to learn from previous mistakes in the transfer market. I am, however, happy with the January business of Daniel Sturridge, who has looked superb so far and will only get better; we can’t really judge Coutinho yet, as he only came on for a cameo role against West Brom, but the price we’ve paid for him, £8.5m, seems cheap considering some of the rave reviews he’s been getting. Improvement is definitely needed in our scouting department for the next transfer window, though. We can’t keep wasting millions of pounds like it’s confetti.
Looking ahead towards our coming fixtures, we face Brendan Rodgers’ old club Swansea City on Sunday – they might have one eye on their League Cup Final the following week, so hopefully we’ll return to winning ways against them, but they are a very good side and in the 3 Premier League games we’ve played against them since their promotion we’ve failed to score a single goal. I expect it to be a close encounter but I think we might just beat them 1-0, with Luis Suarez redeeming himself for his misses in Russia last night, notching the only goal of the game. We then face the return leg of the Europa League tie with Zenit St Petersburg, next Thursday. As much as I would love us to add another famous Anfield European night to the collection, I can see Zenit scoring a vital away goal, which would mean we have to score 4 times to go through and, sadly, I can only see us scoring twice,so although I am predicting a 2-1 win for the reds, come next Thursday evening, unfortunately I am expecting us to be out of Europe.
