Liverpool aims to turn sinking ship around
Their attacking spark has gone. Their opponents seem to have figured them out. Their chances of silverware are dropping by the week.
For Liverpool’s players, there’s concern that a season of high hopes is slipping away altogether.
January has been a month to forget for Liverpool, which has plummeted from title contention after earning only one point from a possible nine in the Premier League and then being eliminated from the League Cup at the semifinal stage by Southampton. They’ve got one win in seven games so far in 2017, and that came in an FA Cup replay against Plymouth, a team from the fourth division.
Realistically, Liverpool’s only chance to end a five-year wait for a trophy rests with winning the FA Cup. Second-tier strugglers the Wolverhampton Wanderers visit Anfield on Saturday for a fourthround match that suddenly has taken increased importance for Liverpool.
A number of factors have combined to make Liverpool look like a shadow of the team that blew opponents away in the first half of the season.
The departure of Sadio Mane to the African Cup of Nations with Senegal in early January has deprived Liverpool of its most lively, energetic forward — he might not be back for another two weeks — while another key attacker in Philippe Coutinho is still recovering his match sharpness after returning from a six-and-a-halfweek injury layoff.
It has forced Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp to shuffle his attacking personnel. Meanwhile, rivals are realizing the best way of playing Liverpool and neutralizing its prolific strike force is to sit back, pack the defence and hit on the counter-attack.
Klopp said after the two-legged loss to Southampton that 70 to 80 per cent of teams are deploying this tactic, and his team must adapt to it.
“It’s the most difficult thing in football,” Klopp said. “We are a good footballing team. That’s why this happens.”