Part 6 - English Premier League: Figures and Statistics
Liverpool are a club in crisis. Not only facing off the field crisis but on the field as well, their results in the English Premier League so far have only confirmed this fact. Newer fans of the English league might not realize
that Liverpool were once a great dominant force in English football. During the decade of 1970s and then the 1980s, Liverpool were in power as they won numerous English league titles as well as the European Cup.
Under managers such as Bob Paisley and Bill Shankly, the Reds earned their fame as the most successful team in English football history. Recently a dark cloud has descended over Liverpool, under Rafael Benitez; the team came as
close as the second placed finish to winning the title but for the last five years Liverpool have been absolutely woeful. They have suffered because of their new American owners, who have sucked the club dry of capital.
As a result of this, Liverpool have had less and less money to buy top quality players and thus they have failed to compete at the top of English football. In their last league charge, they failed to even finish in the top five
teams of the Premier League as they managed to occupy the 7th placed spot at the end of the 2009-2010 season. Liverpool saw a change in management over the summer as they replaced their ex-manager, Rafael Benitez with Roy Hodgson.
Ever since Roy’s arrival at the club, new players have also followed the new ex-Fulham manager but these players have failed to perform as a team. Liverpool embarrassingly lost their last league match against the minnows, Blackpool.
The two goals to one defeat at Anfield signaled that the current season could indeed be very bad for the Reds since along with their on-the-field troubles, their debt problems mount to new heights as well.
Presently, Liverpool are looking for new investors, investors that might buy the club from the current ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillet. There was a time when Liverpool had fortified Anfield stadium as an impenetrable fortress
but out of their last seven games at their home stadium Liverpool have only managed to obtain a total of nine points from a possible twenty one.
Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool captain has sometimes been single handedly carrying his team but his supporting cast has not been up to the mark. In the 2010-2011 season so far in the Premier League, Gerrard has created nineteen
goal scoring chances for his team mates. Sadly enough, Kyrgiakos’s header from Gerrard’s cross at the weekend against Blackpool was the first chance that was converted into an actual goal by Steven’s team mate.
Despite all their bad starts over the past thirty years, Liverpool have not been in the bottom three of the English league since 1984. Where Liverpool are in an apparent decline, Manchester City are on a historic rise. After investing
millions of pounds in super star players over the summer transfer window, City have a squad that is finally capable of competing alongside the likes of Chelsea and Manchester United for the English Premier League title.
City won their weekend’s encounter against Newcastle United but the two goals to one win wasn’t an easy one. Carlos Tevez has been prolific for Manchester City ever since his signature for the blue half of Manchester. He has been
paying back his twenty five million pound tag consistently as he has netted twenty six goals in his last thirty English Premier League appearances. Adam Johnson is another City player who is high on the ladder to success. Against Newcastle, Johnson had a 100
percent pass completion rate with his eight passes. To top it all off, Johnson also scored with one of his two shots in the fifteen minutes he was on the field for City against Newcastle.
Tags: