Winter is coming and with it the most important period for Liverpool in the league in a long time is here. December started on the worst possible note with defeat at Steve Bruce’s Hull City and with travels to the Lane, Eastlands and Stamford Bridge coming this month, yesterday’s result has Red’s fans all over the world cursing our luck.
Even with such a good start to the season, with Suarez’s every touch turning to Gold, Daniel Sturridge in scintillating form along with Simon Mignolet and Steven Gerrard, we find ourselves moving down at the wrong time and with Daniel Sturridge out till January end, Aspas being injured/ looking out of depth since arriving, Brendan Rodgers has been left red faced bemoaning the lack of depth in the squad.
Four Four Two stats show with 38.5% possession Hull city had 132 attacking 3rd passes where as Liverpool with 61.5% possession had only 13 more passes. Sterling had only 11 successful passes in the whole game. Moses fared slightly better in the pass category with 27 out of 32 successful though only 9 were in the final 3rd. Forget we were playing Hull City , as attacking wingers these passing figures is very poor against any team. I can’t understand how a player can set a target of 20 goals a season, demand the manager to pick him and then give a performance like that. The need to change the solid Agger- Skrtel partnership and bring back Kolo toure in is questionable to say the least. If Agger was not 100% (just assuming) then surely Sakho was the obvious choice to replace him, Left foot for Left foot. The need to shift Skrtel to the right of the central defense was not necessary.
Above all I feel the finishing from us should improve. Arsenal were under pressure against Southampton and Cardiff for long periods, still they won. Chelsea went behind after 15 seconds against the Saints and won. Game defining moments like Allen’s miss against Everton at 2-1 and Moses’ against Hull at 1-1, should be scored and used as a stepping stone to close out games in our favour, rather than give the other team a huge lift and help them.. This can happen only when the mentality of the club moves forward as a whole and only then can we expect continued success coming our way.
The problems Brendan faced at the start of his Liverpool tenure last season are slowly coming back. The lack of quality up front, lack of options from the bench to change the game, will one way or another define our season. As Liverpool fans we can only hope it goes only one way and that is up.
Anything else and “WINTER IS COMING”