This season already feels like it’s just going to be a succession of kicks to the nuts. I’m sick of it already and we’re only six games in. It’s scant consolation right now but this was actually a much improved performance and had we held on for the win we deserved then there would have been several positives to take from the game. In truth, that last gasp flukey hit from Jagielka really doesn’t alter that, but it’s difficult to look at it that way when you’re wallowing in your own misery as I am right now.
Yeah we played ok, so what? We didn’t win. Yeah we defended much better. Again, so what? We didn’t keep a clean sheet did we? (I realise that’s harsh, I can’t help it though). If we hadn’t lost to Villa and West Ham then I’d probably feel a lot less shitty about this one, even though it was Everton and even though it was nothing short of daylight fucking robbery. As it is, I’ve gone from eagerly looking forward to every game to absolutely dreading them. That probably makes me a bit of a fanny, but there you go. It’s part hangover from last season and part post-Suarez blues I think, but this team is in a funk right now and it matches how I’m feeling.
All that said, at least I didn’t come out of this one depressed at the result AND how shit we looked. Far from it, I thought we were ok. Not great, but ok and far, far better than them. The way it ended was sickening, but looking to the long term this might even be the game we look back on and say “that got us back on track”. Maybe it’s the game that kick starts Adam Lallana’s Anfield career and perhaps even the game in which the first shoots of a reliable defensive partnership between Skrtel and Lovren emerged. We won’t know any of that for a few months though, and that’s part of the problem. ‘A few months’ feels like it’s a lifetime away right now, and what heartache are we going to have to go through in the meantime? I’m miserable; I miss that whole buzz we had last season, it’s completely gone and might never come back.
One of my mates keeps saying that last season was series 9 of Dallas, and this summer Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower and went “whoa, that was one weird fucking dream I just had, Pam. Liverpool almost won the title and United came 7th! How mad is that?” It does almost feel like it was it all just a dream and now we’re back in reality, and reality sucks. You know what typifies the mood more than anything? The “We are Liverpool” song. It just doesn’t seem to fit anymore does it? It’s a reminder of a time when we actually were ‘poetry in motion’. The singing of it is just really half hearted now and it’s easy to understand why. People’s hearts aren’t really in it anymore.
I know I’m probably just adding to your misery by harping on about it, and I keep telling myself to just man up and snap the fuck out of it. I’m sure I will, hopefully soon, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be so downhearted about this. We played pretty well and... y’know, shit happens and that. We were unlucky, no question about that, and on another day we win easily. I'm not mad at anyone, or even disappointed. I'm just down in the dumps. Right now nothing is going for us. Aside from the Spurs game this was by far the best we’ve played all season, and it’s unquestionably the most solid we’ve looked defensively in a good while. Yet we still couldn’t win.
Have we turned a corner defensively or was it simply a case of Martinez and his bizarre team selection playing right into our hands? It kind of feels like we got off lightly by him not playing a centre forward. The “best shit player in the league”, Steven Naismith, was in a ‘false nine’ role, which considering not so long ago he was more of a ‘false footballer’ shows how far he’s come. I doubt our centre backs will have an easier game all season though. No wonder Sakho spat his dummy and stormed off when he heard he wasn't playing. Even he may have got through this game without fucking up.
Be honest, how many of you were worried beforehand about what Lukaku might do to Skrtel and Lovren? I know I was, so I was more than happy to see him marooned on the right wing all afternoon having alehouse balls lumped at him while our centre backs dealt with the ‘threat’ of Naismith.
Moreno coped with Lukaku brilliantly until one rash challenge right at the end which led to a free-kick in a dangerous area that almost saw Barry back heel a winning goal in at the Kop end. Had that gone in it might just have finished me off. That fat arsed crab shouldn’t have even been on the pitch anyway. He was booked after a couple of minutes and then should have had a second yellow when he was mugged by Balotelli and then fouled him. Martin Atkinson shit out of that decision, and then shit out of awarding a penalty when Barry blocked a shot with both hands. I fucking hate Gareth Barry.
I digress though. If the identity of Everton’s right winger played into our hands, they can say the same about ours. I was truly shocked Markovic made the team, he’s done absolutely nothing of note yet and this was not a game for a player like him who is clearly still trying to find his feet. Derby games need big players with big characters. Up to know, Markovic has been anything but a big character; he’s been timid, shot shy and totally lacking in conviction in anything he has done.
That continued in this game, he was a passenger once more and if I’m Suso I’m seriously fucking annoyed that this lad is getting a game over me at the moment. I can understand why Coutinho didn’t start as perhaps he’s not fully fit. But Suso did more in 15 minutes the other night than Markovic has done in any game he’s played.
I don’t want to be overly harsh on the lad as it does often take time for new players to settle. I’m definitely not writing him off, but we really needed him to be good straight away if we were going to be able to hit the ground running this year. Same with the other new players too, obviously, but him, Lallana and Balotelli we especially needed as between them they needed to fill the void left by Luis. Lallana has been injured so he gets a pass (plus I'm biased as I think he's class), but Balotelli and Markovic haven’t been good enough. At least Balotelli has shown some flashes, Markovic has done the square root of fuck all and most worryingly, I can’t even tell what type of player he is or what his strengths are.
He was the one player who stood out as being poor, I thought the rest all played well and deserved much more than they got. The 4-2-3-1 worked better than it has any point so far this season and if teams are going to man mark Gerrard (perhaps that was why Naismith was initially deployed where he was?) maybe this is what we'll have to do to counter it? I still think it takes too much away from Hendo's game but he was still one of the best players on the pitch, as was Gerrard for that matter.
We passed it round well and worked numerous good situations when we got in behind them down the sides, but more often than not the final ball was lacking and Howard wasn’t often tested. We did a good job pressing them and winning the ball back though (which was encouraging as we haven’t had that high tempo so far this year) and on the occasions that didn’t work they invariably twatted a cross field ball to Lukaku who then ran into trouble and lost the ball. They offered nothing.
For all our dominance there were not enough clear chances at the end of it and it needed a set-piece for us to take the lead. It was a great hit by Stevie and we should have gone 2-0 up soon after but Balotelli hit the bar after great play by Sterling. As time began to tick away we became more cautious and started to play keep ball rather than press for another goal. Understandable as we need to get better at seeing out games when we have a lead. Imagine the inquests if we'd conceded through getting caught on a counter? That's what makes this especially cruel; we defended well. It’s not as though we capitulated under pressure and gave a bad goal away, there was very little we could have done about this and that’s what makes it even harder to take.
When they got that corner I said to my arl fella “I think we both know how this is going to go, don’t we?” We could see a goal coming, but to be fair it didn’t happen anything like either of us envisioned. We did a good job clearing the corner (as we’d done all day to be fair) but how can you legislate for what happened next? Say what you want about maybe closing down quicker or whatever, but he had no right to score from there and if he tried it another 1000 times I bet he couldn’t repeat that strike, the jammy twat.
The only real criticism I’d have of the performance is that we were left hanging on to a one goal lead when we’d been vastly superior from first minute to last. We needed to turn that superiority into more chances and then hopefully turn those chances into more goals. We failed to do it and that’s why we didn’t win, not because we let in an unstoppable goal right at the end.
It’s hard to be too critical at all though really. It’s unrealistic to expect us to be as lethal as we were last season because two thirds of the front three aren’t in the team at the moment (one never will will be again, of course), and the one that is still there was the least prolific member of that trio anyway. At least Sturridge will come back in at some point, although once again he’s taking longer than expected to recover. That’s a problem, he’s injury prone and he’s not a quick healer. We can’t hang our hat on him because it’s quite conceivable he could get injured again at any point, especially if that soft cunt Hodgson gets his talons into him again in a couple of weeks.
As I try to put a brave face on it and look for positives I’d say that Lallana is now showing why we bought him and is improving with each game. I thought he was terrific from start to finish and he was my star man just ahead of Henderson and Moreno. I thought Balotelli did some good things too, and his work rate caught the eye as on several occasions he ran back to dispossess Everton players. He’s really making an effort to fit in and fair play to him for that.
He needs to start putting the ball in the net though as one in six just doesn’t cut it when you take into account who he is replacing. I know it’s an unfair comparison but that’s life at a big club I’m afraid. The expectations are high and you have to live up to them. I’m not worried about it yet, I think he’s doing ok and will get better, especially when Sturridge returns, but it is a fact that he has to score more goals.
At least the intensity was back in our play, as we’ve just plodded through most games this season. Hopefully this high tempo and intense pressing is a sign of things to come and wasn’t just a one off effort just because it was a derby game. If we play like this next week against West Brom then we should win, especially if Sturridge is back for that one. There’s the small matter of FC Basel in the Champions League first of course, and I can’t say I’m looking forward to that one at all. That’s as much down to my pre-occupation with the Premier League as it is any kind of fear of the Swiss side.
To be honest the Champions League is feeling like one big inconvenience right now. I know how daft that sounds and I’m sure I’m in a small minority, but after last year I got used to the one game a week routine and I got used to us winning that one game a week. It feels like everything has changed now, and not for the better. I don’t give a fuck about getting out of the group, I just want us to be back near the top of the table. Yeah I’d prefer to have both, but that doesn’t seem possible for us at the moment.
On this evidence the Blues should be far more worried about their prospects this season than we should, because they were absolutely awful and offered nothing at all. A one in a million strike got them a point they didn’t deserve and even though I’m expecting us to finish significantly lower than we did last year, we’ll still be well ahead of them losers. The difference between us and them is that finishing above them means nothing to us, it’s not an achievement it’s merely what we expect. We’ve got much higher ambitions than them and the awful start we’ve made has all but killed the loftiest of those ambitions.
At least the performance has given us something to build on, some indication that maybe we’re beginning to get it together. If we play well and beat West Brom next weekend then the disappointment of that Jagielka goal will quickly be forgotten and we can look forward again. If we don’t beat West Brom, well it's back to square one again I suppose.
Team: Mignolet; Manquillo, Skrtel, Lovren, Moreno; Gerrard; Henderson; Markovic (Coutinho), Lallana, Sterling; Balotelli (Lambert):
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