Liverpool aren’t putting teams away and a lack of self-belief then sets in
IT’S strange these days in football how every situation needs a narrative – and everyone has to stick to that story.
So with Liverpool at the moment, they can’t defend and that means they can’t win anything. Which is rubbish, of course, but it is amazing how it becomes almost self-fulfilling.
It’s as if we want perfection. I can’t tell you how high the standard is in the Premier League these days.
The players are amazing, they are at a level which the average person can’t even understand, never mind replicate.
Yet, it is only the negative we pick out. Every time. So we ignore everything Liverpool do right, the majestic movement, the magical interplay, the pace, the intensity, the audacious technique. The sheer joy of it all.
I go to games and I think I’m watching something spectacular, something sublime. Yet I go home and switch on the telly and, by the end, I’m starting to believe I watched a pub team with Peter Kay at centre-half.
Which is my way of saying there is an awful lot of things right about Liverpool and they are not too far away at all.
Which probably sounds crazy to the casual observer, who will have seen all the doom and gloom and thought they were in crisis.
Yes, they concede some bad goals. But every goal is a bad goal really, isn’t it? And every team concedes their fair share of them. If you concentrate enough, then every single goal conceded you can bring it back to a mistake or a weakness...and then say the team conceding can’t defend.
It’s not as simple as that. It’s not all about the defence, for a start. It’s a team game, everyone has to defend properly, not just the back four, and to highlight them in isolation is stupid.
If you look at Manchester City last season, I think you get a bit of insight into Liverpool’s situation now.
When Pep Guardiola came in, they were stylish and exciting, but they were to be apparently undermined by a poor defence.
Yet, many of the same defenders are not being criticised at all now. Why?
Because they are scoring more goals. Last season, City dominated opponents, played some wonderful football, but couldn’t finish them off. Sounds familiar? Liverpool create loads of chances. Loads. They probably create more than City and Manchester United, and yet they very often do not score the goals they should.
That can play havoc with a team’s psyche, because it starts breeding a lack of belief, or at least a lack of confidence.
If you are battering teams, but are only one-up, you start thinking about the goal you could concede to let your opponents back into it. Of course, it shouldn’t be like that, but it’s a mind game, as well as a physical one – and it happens. It happened to City last season. Yet, people forget they still finished third, and were stronger as the season progressed. This season, with a few personnel changes, they are now killing teams off before they can get that late goal which changes everything. Perhaps one of the things Pep has done is acknowledge there can be a role for a goalscorer with a ruthless instinct in his team. It’s no secret he didn’t really want to keep Sergio Aguero, because he felt the striker didn’t fit into his system. In the end, though, it seems he has adapted the system a little to get the goals Aguero guaransaid tees, though he won’t be getting many for a while, following his car accident in Amsterdam.
But maybe Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp needs to look at it a little at what Pep has done.
Maybe there are times when he can give striker Daniel Sturridge the longer run he needs to build up confidence.
I love the way Liverpool play under Klopp. But if the system doesn’t deliver regular goals, then you eventually have to look at it. In saying that, I would be far more worried if they were not creating chances.
I think they will turn a team over spectacularly very soon and then it could be the click they need to get things rolling. I’m not saying that will be today at Newcastle, because St James’ Park is a tough place to go.
But I am certain it will happen soon and when it does, maybe people will stop looking for the negative all the time and start thinking a side that wants to attack, to entertain and to play football in the right way is actually good for the English game.