Newcastle 1-0 Liverpool: Discontent Grows as Reds Slip to Defeat

For the last few weeks, Liverpool have been nowhere near their scintillating form of last season. At first the excuse was that the new players needed time to gel to with the team, and that we were still adapting. We are now 10 games in, and the finger is pointing in a much more worrying direction: Brendan Rodgers. His stubborn refusal to switch the formation and put someone up front to partner Balotelli has led to woeful performances and lots of dropped points. It was the same story today, as Liverpool lost 1-0 to an average Newcastle side.

The performance was sadly one we have become very much used to this season. It was lacklustre, uninspired and frankly poor. Nobody could create any chances – Sterling was wasted out wide, Coutinho was far from his best and Balotelli was horribly isolated. These problems would have been addressed by putting Sterling up front with Balotelli, but Rodgers opted to stick with the 4-3-3. Fortunately Newcastle were putting in a fairly poor shift as well, or things could have got very embarrassing. One of the dullest first halves of football Liverpool fans have witnessed for a long time ended goalless, and this scoreline flattered the reds.

The second half saw a slight improvement in quality, and it looked for a while like Liverpool might be able to take all three points away from St. James’s Park. Steven Gerrard’s inclusion in a midfield three (alongside Henderson and Allen) gave him licence to push up the field, and he rolled back the years with some good passes from advanced positions. That said, no clear cut chances were being created; the only genuine test of Krul was a close-range header from Coutinho, which was incorrectly called back for offside anyway. The referee had a poor game, and both Janmaat and Sissoko were lucky not to see red. As it was the magpies were allowed to carry on with a full compliment of 11 men, and there was an awful inevitability about their goal in the 73^rd minute. A failure to clear the ball from Moreno allowed Ayoze Perez the opportunity to nip in and smash the ball past a helpless Mignolet, giving the hosts the lead.

Any hopes of Liverpool being fired up by going behind quickly faded. By contrast, they had looked much more of a threat prior to conceding. It was Newcastle who played the better football for the last 15 minutes, and it would have finished 2 or 3 nil had it not been for some excellent saves from Simon Mignolet. The introduction of Lambert had absolutely no effect, throwing into question whether he was really worth buying as a ‘Plan B’. The game ended 1-0 to Newcastle, and Liverpool now find themselves 12 points adrift of leaders Chelsea.

Unless these performances can improve rapidly, we can wave goodbye to hopes of a top 4 spot, let alone another push for the title. The return of Daniel Sturridge towards the end of the month will definitely be a help to us, but certainly doesn’t solve the core issue of defensive frailty. Brendan Rodgers opted to spend a sizeable proportion of the money from the sale of Luis Suarez on Dejan Lovren: this is a very painful thought. Suarez was one of the best players in the world, whilst Lovren is an utter liability. A defensive pairing of him and Skrtel is laughable, and Rodgers’s continued insistence that we don’t need a defensive coach brought in is worrying indeed. The first step to curing any problem is acceptance that the problem exists, and until Rodgers does that we’re in big trouble.

-James Martin

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