The worst aspect after today’s fixtures is that Spurs have moved a further 2 points away from us which we could have contained had we taken maximum points with Wigan.
While Spurs played with a very changed side bringing in players that have not seen too much first teams football (the likes of Kranjcar, Pavlyuchenko and Sandro), the Reds reverted to a more traditional 4-4-2 and fielded players like Lucas, Kuyt, Meireles and Glen Johnson that played in many cases the full ninety minutes of their international friendly duties.
In recent times we have never recovered well from international breaks, and in some ways the fact that the momentum gained in the previous four games could suffer, was a foreseen possibility. Today we could have been lucky and taken the 3 points, but luck was not much on our side and quite frankly Wigan seemed to have more freshness in their legs than our players. We were unlucky with their goal which seen over and over gave more the impression of an offside, yet our defense was totally stationery on the occasion.
Pointing fingers at this or that player is very unfair, and if in the past weeks the word has been ‘stick together’ than that is what we ought to do. It was not a sparkling performance by any account even though there is one positive: Luis Suarez will be a menace to any defense that will try to contain him. It’s not the end of the world, we are still sixth, but it was a missed opportunity wasn’t it. Not taking maximum points in our home games will not get us any closer to 4th!
Now we need to concentrate on the two legs that will see us face Sparta Prague in the Europa League, which in case of success will see us through to the last 16!