Sorry guys, false alarm! After our scintillating performance
against Swansea
last time out, I made the grievous error of writing that “we’re back”. In the
first game of 2015 Liverpool presented us with
fairly strong evidence that they are not in fact back in the form of a hugely disappointing
2-2 draw with bottom of the table Leicester. The dropped points leave us a
sizeable seven points off 4th place, and casts huge doubts over our
ability to finish in the top 4 this season.
In the understandable flood of emotion following the
announcement that Steven Gerrard is to leave the club at the end of the season,
nearly everyone seems to have forgotten that he has been extremely poor for (at
a generous estimate) the last six months. Of course we should admire what he
was in his prime and applaud his great service to our club, but what we should
not do is persist in playing him out of sentimentality. His ‘legend’ status is
the only thing getting him on the team sheet this season, and I would go as far
as to say that it cost us the match yesterday. For the first time this campaign
we fielded what I see to be our strongest back three: Sakho, Toure and Can.
They all had reasonable games – Sakho in particular was superb – and would
surely have been capable of holding on to a two goal lead had they received
even a small level of cover from the defensive midfielders. As it was, Gerrard’s
total lack of mobility meant that the back three were constantly exposed; essentially,
he was a wasted player in the line-up. Had Rodgers opted for the same team that
won at Swansea ,
we’d probably have won.
It wasn’t just the line-up that Rodgers got wrong. His
in-game switches were bizarre; Borini came on for the injured Lallana just
after half time, when Markovic would surely have been both better suited to the
position and more capable of making an impact. At 2-2 he made another odd
change. We needed a goal, so he decided to take off Moreno for Lambert. This was nonsensical for
multiple reasons. Firstly, and most simply, Lambert is painfully ineffectual
and has not once made a notable impact as a substitute. Secondly, the whole
point of buying Lambert was a ‘Plan B’ that allowed us to whip crosses into the
box – Moreno is our quickest wide player, and would have been the ideal
candidate for getting down the flank and putting crosses in towards Lambert. These
decisions alone cannot take all off the blame for the failure to get a win, but
they certainly played a part.
A very strong case can be made that Liverpool
deserved absolutely nothing from the game. Both of their goals were penalties, the
first of which was definitely given incorrectly. Jeffrey Schlupp slid in to
block Sterling ’s
cross and the ball struck his face – the referee deemed it to have struck his
arm and pointed to the spot. Admittedly Schlupp shouldn’t have gone to ground
with his arms spread out, but it wasn’t a handball. The second penalty definitely
hit a hand – Simpson’s to be precise – but he had very little time to react and
move his hand out of the way. It is clear, therefore, that Liverpool can count
themselves lucky to come out of a home fixture against 20th place Leicester with a point; this is indeed a sorry state of
affairs.
To conclude, if Brendan Rodgers wants even a distant chance
of guiding Liverpool into the top 4, he has to
make the brave call of dropping Gerrard in his final half season. We saw at Swansea what we can
achieve without him in the team, and we saw yesterday how little he contributes
when he is in the side. The article that celebrates the achievements and
service of the legend that is Steven Gerrard will surely be on its way, but
this is not the time for sentimentality. This is the time for cold, hard
realism, and if Rodgers doesn’t show that same level of realism then we can
wave goodbye to our hopes of Champions League football next season.
-James Martin
Follow me on Twitter @JamesMartin013
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