Liverpool's 1/3rd Season Review: It's third world football – Part 2
We would continue our analysis of Liverpool’s season so far. But first let’s have a look at some statistical data.
Stats show that Liverpool are having their worst start to a Premier League season:
16 points was joint lowest total along with Souness in 1992/93. 13 goals are the fewest. Four wins from thirteen are joint lowest along with 1992/93 and 1998/99 seasons.
A goal difference of -4 is the worst Liverpool have had at this stage. 12th position is worst along with 1992/93 season. 5 defeats are joint highest with 7 other seasons, including the last one.
Last season, Liverpool had 20 points at this stage which were considered really poor. In those games, Liverpool played attacking football with Glen Johnson scoring goals for fun from a fullback position and Liverpool had a real injury crisis. At least, the
team was playing some attractive football and the defeats were mostly down to individual errors.
At this stage during last season, Liverpool had banged in 29 league goals and conceded 20. This meant nearly 4 goals a game. However, this season the results are worse but the performances are absolutely shocking. Last season, fans at least had some hope
that if the team could eradicate their defensive errors than they would start getting results.
In Hodgson’s case, there is no hope what so ever, his press conferences confirm that he is happy with his system and is stubborn enough to persist with it, horribly failing to prove his critics wrong.
Roy has an advantage this season as well. He can play a ‘B’ team in the Europa League unlike last season, when Rafa couldn’t rest his senior players for their Champions League fixtures.
At Fulham, he could play his strongest eleven week in week out, and get away with a few draws when there was a fixture compilation.
Last week was a prime example when Roy’s inability to change for team's good became evident. After the mid-week draw against Wigan, he pointed out tiredness as a factor for the tame display.
Interestingly, he made only one change for the game against Stoke at the weekend. That too was to replace the young and fitter Kelly and put far less fitter and mobile Jamie Carragher in his place.
This change wasn’t a result of fatigue; it was a tactical move, as he wanted to add Kyrgiakos to counter the aerial threat from Stoke City. After having admitted 2 days earlier that his team was tired he still did nothing to freshen it up. Hodgson seems
to have no idea on how to rotate his squad.
It won’t surprise anyone if Torres comes out and voices his disgust at the kind of role he is being asked to do. To his annoyance, Hodgson bemoaned that his team lacked creativity and his forward players need to work harder to help the team be more creative.
This statement is in itself laughable. Creativity comes from midfield and not from hoofing long balls towards your ‘tired’ striker, against extremely physical defenders like Huth and Shawcross.
One can feel pity on Torres for chasing long balls and lost causes. One can understand if the back line has someone like Agger in it or even Johnson. Having a backline of 4 old fashioned defenders can’t be asked to be creative over night. To the annoyance
of forward players, the manager after applying his awful tactics, comes out and blames his forwards for lacking creativity. I wonder what Torres would be thinking after Roy said that.
In the central midfield, Meireles is being asked to play on the right side and when he has played in the middle, he has hardly been given any license to go forward and join up attacks. Roy lost a lot of support after he let go Aquilani ‘on loan’ to Juventus;
a player who had most assists in the 2nd half of last season and is currently one of the top players in Seria A.
Without Steven Gerrard, Liverpool lack creative players, especially when you have unadventurous full backs and your manager continuously ignores the quick players like Babel and Jovanovic. He has also frozen out young prodigy Dani Pacheco.
Losing to Stoke is one thing but being outplayed completely is totally another. With the team completely deprived of any imaginative play, it comes as no surprise that Liverpool have become unbearable to watch.
The argument is more than valid that Liverpool need a young, dynamic and modern day manager. With so many players increasingly getting annoyed with the manager’s tactics and fans sick of the horrible football that they are paying to watch, a delay in change
can only do more harm than good.
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