Two wins from two, no goals conceded and our £32m striker is off and running. The perfect start really. Or is it? There seem to be an awful lot of pissed off Reds out there, which I can only assume is due to the lingering effects of last season. It’s not been easy on the eye and we’ve got plenty of room for improvement, but is there really THAT much to be complaining about right now?
There’s plenty of time for that when we start losing, which may not be too long looking at the upcoming fixtures, so at least let’s try and hold off on the complaining a bit until then. We might still be shite, or we could get better and go on to have an exciting season. There’s no way of knowing either way right now.
We’ve not played well in attack, we can all see that, but at least the work rate and resilience has been there to allow us to grind out a couple of wins. That was missing for most of last season so surely that represents progress of sorts? We need more than that, obviously, but if we’d been offered two 1-0 wins to start the season a couple of weeks ago I'm sure we’d all have taken that, so I’m content enough with the situation at this stage.
We’ve got four new starters in the team and a fifth about to join them as soon as he’s fully up to speed. That’s half a new team, there’s bound to be some issues while they get to know each other and it seems pretty obvious to me that most of the work they will have done to this point has probably been related to shape, organisation and ensuring that we’re difficult to beat. The rest will - hopefully - come in time and if it doesn’t…. well I’ll worry about it then, not now.
It’s difficult to add much context to this performance because we don’t really know how good Bournemouth are going to be. They looked pretty good to be fair but was that because we haven’t got going yet? Or did we not get going because they’re better than we think they’re going to be? Those are things that will become clearer in the coming weeks but at least while we’re in the process of finding out we’ve picked up maximum points.
Obviously the two big contentious decisions are what everyone was talking about afterwards. I haven’t seen any replays of the disallowed Bournemouth goal but watching it in real time I thought their lad was climbing all over Lovren. That said it was the kind of decision that you’ll get on some days and won’t on others, so from that point of view we may have gotten a bit lucky.
Benteke’s goal was a lot more clear cut. It shouldn’t have stood as Coutinho was a mile offside and tried to play the ball, thus distracting the keeper. That he made no contact is irrelevant. We caught a big break there. The kind of break that the likes of Lambert and Balotelli never got for example.
Bournemouth have every right to feel aggrieved at how this went down but that’s not our problem. We’ll suffer at the hands of poor officiating soon enough I expect, probably when we go to Stamford Bridge as it’s par for the course there.
I didn’t know what to expect from us beforehand and I don’t really feel like we’ve learned anything afterwards either. It would be easy to just dismiss it as a poor performance as, let’s face it, there was very little to get the pulse racing and the winning goal shouldn’t have even stood. And yet there were flashes here and there where it looked like we were about to go up a couple of gears and make the game safe. We just didn’t sustain any of those promising little spells, which was why we ended up hanging on a bit.
Individually I thought most of the players were decent enough, but collectively it’s still a work in progress. A case in point is the Benteke / Coutinho link up. It’s almost clicking, but not quite. There are some sparks there and hopefully that will develop into something over the coming weeks. Benteke isn’t getting great service but he looks really good so far. His touch has been superb and physically he’s been everything we expected. His link up has been good but he also looks to run in behind a lot too which was a concern many had about whether he’d fit in. His work rate has been fine as well and he must be a pain in the arse to play against. If and hopefully when the team steps it up and starts to create more chances, he looks like he’ll do the business.
Others need to step up though, notably Ibe, Lallana and even Coutinho. He scored that worldy last week but otherwise he’s been below par. When he gets back up to speed we should be much better for it as he’s the one who makes us tick these days. Ibe has been disappointing and it just hasn’t happened for him yet. Both Stoke and Bournemouth have done a good job on him and he’s rarely had any one v one opportunities with the full backs. Assuming he stays in the side that will change next week against Arsenal because the way they play should ensure he gets a chance to get at the full back.
Lallana is the really interesting one for me. I feel like he’s becoming the new whipping boy. With Lovren not giving any real cause for complaint and Joe Allen currently sidelined through injury, someone has to fill that role and so far it’s been Lallana. He was anonymous at Stoke but I thought he was alright in this game. Then I’m having a scroll through twitter and the match thread on the forum and he’s getting absolutely caned! Was he really that bad? He worked his bollocks off and, considering he was playing centre mid and not as one of the front three, did the job we needed him to do.
Usually if someone is “having one” then the Main Stand aren’t slow to let them know about it, but Lallana didn’t get any stick from around where I was sat and speaking to the lads straight after the game no-one singled him out for any particularly negative comments either. He got battered online though! Admittedly he didn’t do much in the final third and he wasted a good chance right at the end, but the only thing I’d criticise him for is always taking too many touches which can often slow us down.
Has he ever played a one touch pass in his life? I bet dinner time in the Lallana household is the cause of many an argument. I can picture it now, his missus asking him to pass the salt as he quickly shifts it between right hand and left hand, pirouettes smartly and then absolutely Cruyff turns the shit out of it three times before handing it over, by which time she doesn't need it anymore as she's already finished.
Still, I’d like to see him in this role again as it suits him a lot more than being marooned on the wing that’s for sure. That said, with everyone fit and available he doesn’t get in our best team. He’s a useful player to have around though, even if he’s never going to live up to his price tag.
The starting eleven may have been the same as Stoke but the way they lined up certainly wasn’t. It looked like a clear 4-1-4-1 formation to me with Henderson sitting and Lallana alongside Milner in centre mid. Coutinho had license to cut in from the right while Ibe stayed wide on the opposite flank. It was fairly interchangeable with Milner and Lallana filling in whenever Coutinho went walkabout.
It looked sporadically promising but generally we weren’t getting enough people around Benteke and as a result didn’t create enough chances. It was better than last week at Stoke though, but then you’d expect it would be as we were at home and against weaker opposition.
The second half was more difficult to keep track of what we were doing as it felt like Rodgers changed systems repeatedly, particularly when he started making substitutions. By the end I didn’t really know who was supposed to be playing where, particularly Firmino who was just running around like a headless chicken.
I felt the momentum of the game shifted away from us when Hendo went off. I thought he was having a really good game and was controlling things well in there. He also made his presence felt in attack with a brilliantly controlled shot that clipped the bar, and with the sumptuous cross that Benteke scored from.
Emre Can didn’t do anything wrong specifically but from the time he came on Bournemouth seemed to take the initiative and we were forced back. That could have just been a natural development of the game though as we were always going to become a little more cautious and edgy defending a one goal lead, while Bournemouth had to come out and go for it more with time running out. Whatever the reason, they had us on the back foot for the last 20 minutes or so and we were reduced to trying to hit them on the break, which we almost did a couple of times.
Moreno was good though wasn’t he? I’m far from being his biggest fan but I thought he gave us just what we needed at the time. You don’t often see Rodgers make a change like that, taking off Coutinho to shore things up, but it worked. Gomez had been booked and Bournemouth were continually trying to attack down his flank, but Moreno coming on to play in front of him really helped.
The Spaniard shored things up nicely and also gave us an outlet for counter attacks. One run at the end was absolutely brilliant and had he not been brought down on the edge of the box may have ended in one of the best goals Anfield has ever seen. I thought their lad should have been red carded for that actually as he would have been clean through on the keeper.
Benteke should have made the game safe but struck his shot into the ground and up onto the bar. A little unlucky perhaps, but he should have scored. It reminded me of Balotelli missing a similar chance in the derby last year. That cost us because Jagielka produced that shot of a lifetime to rob two points from us. That never happened this time and maybe our luck is changing?
Bournemouth had plenty of the ball and forced us to defend, but for all their pressure and the amount of balls they put into the box they never really looked like scoring as the back four dealt with everything well enough. That’s encouraging but doesn’t really tell us much yet.
There’s not enough evidence to support the theory that we’re going to be more defensively sound year and you can’t read too much into the two clean sheets either. Glen Johnson should have scored last week, while but for a referee’s intervention Bournemouth did score. So those two clean sheets could easily have been wiped out. Often there’s a fine margin between success and failure.
What we can say though is that those couple of moments aside Mignolet has had virtually nothing to do (Gomez was solid and Clyne in particular really looks the business). That does point towards improvement as a defensive unit but there’s a long way to go yet. It could easily all come crashing down at the Emirates next week, but if it doesn’t and we come through that with another clean sheet then maybe we’re onto something.
Star man was Benteke, with Clyne, Gomez and Milner all worthy of mentions too. All new players interestingly enough. Another thing that surely bodes well for the rest of the season.
Team: Mignolet; Clyne, Skrtel, Lovren, Gomez; Henderson (Can); Coutinho (Moreno), Milner, Lallana, Ibe (Firmino); Benteke:
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