In the latest of our season review pieces with professional football writers, Ste Hoare caught up with The Telegraph’s Chris Bascombe to discuss Liverpool’s 2012/13 season. As well as looking back on this season just gone, we have a quick look at the Reds’ future under the management of Brendan Rodgers.
To see more of Chris’ work, you can follow him on Twitter @_ChrisBascombe. Keep an eye out for the further interviews with professional writers coming up on our website in the near future.
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Well, we might as well get straight into it! Why have Liverpool been so inconsistent this season? At times they’ve looked like world beaters but at other times we’ve looked awful. Do you have any thoughts on why Liverpool have been so up and down?
Chris Bascombe: Welcome to the world of the mid-table team, sadly. In fairness, they were most erratic in the first half of the season; a well-documented lack of firepower, dreadful form of some experienced players (Martin Skrtel) and an understandable adjustment to a different pattern of play. Since January 1 there’s been a gradual improvement with the poorer performances tending to end in draws rather than defeats.
Steven Gerrard recently said if Liverpool had signed Daniel Sturridge and Phillipe Coutinho at the start of the season rather than in January then they’d have been “right up there among the top four.” Do you agree with him?
Chris Bascombe: It’s easy to say that based on Sturridge’s form since he signed, but you’d have to consider other factors. He arrived in January with a point to prove. He also knew Brendan Rodgers had doubts about signing him permanently (initially) which, again, could have provided more motivation when he eventually arrived here. As for Coutinho, it again seems self-evident Liverpool would have been better with him for the full season rather than half of it. In this new world of Google you can look daft making predictions about young players if they’ve disappeared without trace ten years later, but if anyone is going to inspire a frenzy of optimism it’s Coutinho – a delightful, humble kid off the park and a magician on it. What were Inter Milan thinking selling him?
Having said this, I don’t really see the point of discussing ‘if we’d done this, this might have happened instead of this’ because we’ll never know. Mistakes were made last summer. We all know that. What’s important is making sure, unlike last August, Liverpool go into a new season as completely prepared as they can be and there are no excuses for a top four challenge.
Jamie Carragher started the season on the bench and in Liverpool’s Europa League squad and has ended the season as a regular in the first team, having decided to retire somewhere in the middle. Knowing that Jamie was retiring, do you think Rodgers should have used Martin Skrtel more? I ask as we may need to replace both Jamie and Martin if he believes this season has shown his manager has little faith in him?
Chris Bascombe: I think Skrtel was given long enough. Can we just shrug off his performance against Oldham? Liverpool’s results since Carragher was recalled prove it was not just the addition of Coutinho and Sturridge that made a difference. It was as if Liverpool made three new signings in January. If Skrtel does believe the manager has not shown enough faith in him – and I’ve no idea if that’s the case – he’d be well advised to watch videos of his own performances and reconsider. I have to say I’m completely ambivalent on the future of Martin Skrtel at this particular moment. If he’s sold for a reasonable fee, that seems fair enough; if he stays and starts playing to an adequate standard, that’s fine too. It would certainly solve a problem if Rodgers can trust Skrtel the next time he faces Danny Welbeck or Matt Smith.
Do you think Luis Suarez would have won the FWA Player of the Year if he didn’t mistake Branaslav Ivanovich’s arm for a sandwich – and what have you made of his performances this year?
Chris Bascombe: Yes. I believe he would have won, and the fact he only received two votes shows how much people were swayed. It would have been too controversial to give him such a coveted reward in the midst of a ten game ban so it was never going to happen. It was one extreme to the other, though. He was the favourite and then it was stated on radio 48 hours before the result he would not receive one vote. That would have been ridiculous. Given the timing, he couldn’t have expected to win but when the dust settles it’s still player of the year, not a vote for the next Pope. As for Suarez’s form, he was wonderful. Player of the Year without the gong. Hopefully he will stay, alter is eating habits, and win it next season.
Finally, what now do you think Brendan Rodgers has done in his first season as Liverpool manager? Any major positives or negatives, and what do you think he will have learned that’ll help him in the future?
Chris Bascombe: Rodgers oozes positivity. There is a purpose behind it and, of course, you can’t please everyone, but in broad terms he’s delivered a par score. Nothing special or spectacular, but a slight improvement in the league in terms of points. I think Rodgers deserves the same support Gerard Houllier and Rafa Benitez received in their first couple of seasons. It is interesting to note he has performed better in the league than they did in their first year in English football. There seemed to be much more patience around for them, supporters accepting rebuilding work was required. Both those managers inherited teams in the top four and were appointed to compete for the title. They then actually finished in a lower position in the league 12 months later and it was extraordinary cup success that captured the hearts of The Kop before they regained the top four spot Roy Evans achieved every season.
Rodgers took over a team in eighth and has moved it forward a bit. He is right to say he inherited an imbalanced squad. Let him build his own team. Let him select a side with seven or eight his own signings. That’s how it used to be at Liverpool. Then we can make a fairer judgment as to whether Rodgers is the long-term answer. For Liverpool’s sake, I hope he is, because every so often it concerns me the ruptures of recent years have not been completely repaired and are a few dodgy performances away from being exposed again.
