With 5 games played in the English Premiership so far, some might say that I'm panicking over nothing as a team takes time to regroup after the long summer break. Yes Liverpool's start to the season hasn't been disastrous like some other top team *cough* Chelsea *cough* but the thing is, Chelsea have the players and management to steer them back to the top, meanwhile at Liverpool, the management still seem to be like scientists experimenting on various theories. The trouble is, doing that every weekend might just end up blowing ourselves up.
There's been one major problem at Liverpool FC for the past 3 seasons, that no one can seem to find a solution to, our defence. Even when we had the lethal SAS partnership upfront that helped us score over 100 goals in one season, we still conceded over 50 goals which ultimately cost us the title. Last season nothing really was done to mend it, we did purchase Lovren for a massive fee. Did the acquisition make sense? Yes, he was a top rated footballer with knowledge of the league so he should know what he's in for from day one but to date he looks like a horse on roller skates.
Skrtel, our once Slovakian warrior, everyone feared him, he ate nails for breakfast! Skrtel Smash! Seems like someone swapped the nails for Fruit Loops because he's been anything but terrifying of late! This past weekend, he gave Athony Martial the headlines as he just stood and watched him run through to the box and slot it past a helpless Mignolet. Everyone (Man United fans) hailed the brilliance of their highly priced winger but in actual fact, Skrtel should have down what even a league 3 defender could have done and attacked the ball and clear it.
I'm not entirely sure if Sakho is 100% match fit and I'm guessing that is why he hasn't been starting but I feel he and Sktel would be the preferred starting centre backs. Sakho for me is the better of the two and deserves a sport in the 11, he's a hard worker and no nonsense defender. Our surplace being Kolo seems to just be there for moral support and in case of emergency, break glass, hopefully no shards of said glass hits Sturridge as he just resumed training so we can't afford having him out for another year.
The two new signings of Clyne and Gomez as our wing backs have proved to be a good move but with Gomez being so young and its his first Premiership season, this past weekend showed why he could be vulnerable as he gave away a penalty out of nothing really. All he had to do was press the player to the line but he chose to dive in and give away the foul. Clyne seems sharp, solid at the back, loves to go forward and take a crack at goal but at the same time tracks back quickly.
Brendan and his crew need to go back to the drawing board because whatever they're think they doing isn't working. We've had a mixed bag of results and in certain periods we played some damn good football. I still think our best game so far was the match at the Emirates against Arsenal, we could have won that one but a point was adequate at the time. Maybe it's time the team went back to basics, start with the back and then work their way forward. I know our attack hasn't been all that great, with the key move being "give the ball to Coutinho and let him do something" but now that he's injured we showed we can muster up some decent moves going forward. If it were not for the super human acrobatics by DeGea on Saturday we could have easily been level.
Like I said, it's a bit early to be complaining but if anyone can't see we have a serious problem in defence, then they need to start reading braille. Teams will pick up on this flaw and take advantage of it like Crystal Palace did before the international break. If we start to remedy the situation now, maybe a top 4 finish is possible for us come May.
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