Ah well, it was nice while it lasted. Three clean sheets, seven points, new signings bedding in quickly, it was a new dawn and last season was behind us, right? WRONG! This was every bit as bad as anything we saw last season and it's difficult to escape the conclusion that this might be the shape of things to come. It's not that we lost, it's HOW we lost.
It’s all just so deflating. I’m not that shocked we lost to West Ham, we are still bedding in half a new team and there are going to be some bumps along the road. That's only natural. If we’d lost 1-0 or 2-1 and shown some signs of life I could have shrugged this one off a lot easier. It wasn’t like that though was it? I mean, 3-0 may have flattered West Ham a bit, but not much.
There was not a single positive thing to take from this game. Not one. It started badly, ended badly and was crap in between. No-one played well, but obviously some were worse than others. Milner was the least shit, but even he didn't play well.
The biggest beef I’ve got after this is that it feels like Rodgers has learned nothing from last season. We went into this game with the exact same set up that we had at Arsenal last week, even though the game was always going to be about as different as it’s possible to be. That set up worked great against Arsenal and their tippy tappy, one two’s around the box approach, but when the onus is on us to break down a packed defence is that really how we should be lining up?
The Lucas thing is just unfathomable to me. One minute Rodgers doesn’t want any part of him because he doesn’t need a defensive midfielder, the next thing he’s back in the side. Fair enough against Arsenal, but did we need him against West Ham? Perhaps if we didn’t also have Can and Milner in there, but that team played right into West Ham’s hands really. Their keeper will never have an easier game in his career.
Brendan has still got absolutely no idea how to break down a well organised, physical side that knows how to defend, and as soon as we fell a goal behind I'll be honest, I was ready to panic there and then even though there was still 87 minutes remaining. If Arsenal couldn’t break West Ham down then we were sure as hell going to find it tough, as the Gunners are a far better attacking side than we are.
The opening goal was sloppy. Skrtel’s header was a bit weak and then Gomez got caught a little on his heels as their winger nipped in front of him. Shit happens though, the run of clean sheets was always going to end at some point and far as bad goals go, I’ve seen a lot worse.
The worrying thing was that they continued to look more dangerous than us and everything we did was in front of them. We’d pass it around, work the right side, get nowhere, come back out and move it over to the left, get nowhere and eventually lose it. It happened for the entire first half. They packed the defence and we had no answer.
The left side was particularly irritating, Gomez was willing enough and spent a lot of time in the opposition half, but he had to keep checking back onto his right foot and passing the ball backwards. Not really his fault, this is the drawback you have when you’re playing a right footed centre back on the left. The one time he tried to cross with his left foot he sliced it behind the goal. Milner and Coutinho were doing the same thing though, they’d be playing little triangles on the left side but always had to check back in onto their right foot, and West Ham had plenty of big bodies centrally.
They were just too big and strong for us all over the pitch and we didn’t deal with it. Even Benteke couldn’t dominate physically, while Skrtel had one of those horrible days he throws in three or four times a season against strikers that people would generally classify as being “a handful”.
We only seriously threatened their goal once in the entire first half, when the otherwise average Firmino hit the post with a brilliant 25 yard effort with his left foot. Very unlucky, and who knows, if that had gone in maybe it would have given the side a confidence boost and got them performing.
It didn’t go in though, and that would be the closest we’d go to scoring. It wasn’t long before we went 2-0 down and this one was really difficult to take. Lovren... just what the hell was he thinking?
I’ll tell you what I reckon he was thinking. He was thinking “I’m boss me, I’ve started this game like Franz fucking Beckenbauer. No wonder Brendan was bigging me up yesterday”. He lost his focus, forgot who he was and look what happened.
The thing is, he had started really well. He pinged a 40 yard ball with his left foot right on the money to Clyne. Then he did it again with his right foot. He won a couple of headers and dealt with a couple of situations when they tried to get him turned. So far so good. Then he started getting carried away, running into the West Ham half and losing the ball after trying to beat his man with a fucking stepover!!
A couple of minutes later he’s arsing about on the touchline instead of just putting it out for a throw in, and after initially getting away with it he then dawdled on the ball and had his pocket picked. A few seconds later Noble was putting the ball in the back of the net.
Anfield was furious. Of all the players to make a mistake like that, he was the worst it could have been. Rodgers must have been gutted, but I’ve got no sympathy for him as he set himself up for this fall by patting himself on the back far more than was justified in the build up. It’s a recurring theme, every time he runs his mouth after a few good results he ends up with egg on his face. I’m sick of it now, just show some fucking humility and stop telling everyone how great we are any time we’ve done ok. Will he ever learn?
As for Lovren, I do actually have some sympathy for him. Not much, because he really ought to know better than to be trying to do stuff he’s not really capable of, but seeing him just drop to the floor after the goal went in, I did feel a little bad for the guy. He knows how much stick he’s been given and that people are waiting for him to fuck up, so he must have been absolutely devastated. There’s a lesson to be learned from this though, and the lesson is: know your role, jabroni.
Skrtel and Milner had to go over and try to get his head back in the game, and to his credit he was fine after that. If you’d nipped down for a piss and missed West Ham’s second goal you’d have probably thought Lovren had a decent game, but when you make a mistake like that it doesn’t really matter how you’ve played in the rest of the game. For all but 10 seconds of the game he was fine, but that ten seconds is all anyone will remember.
It gives Rodgers a problem now though. The obvious thing to do would be to drop him and bring Sakho back for the next game, but it’s more complicated than that. Firstly, Rodgers has spent most of the last month or so doing his best to alienate Sakho. Secondly, he put his faith in Lovren and to drop him after one mistake in four otherwise fairly solid performances would be a little unfair given the lavish praise he'd heaped on him 24 hours earlier.
Thirdly, like it or not, Rodgers needs Lovren and dropping him could be counter productive. It’s all well and good to put Sakho in, but what happens when his hamstring inevitably goes and he’s sidelined for six weeks? It’s not like he’s shown any kind of reliability to date is it? Then you're recalling a Lovren who may be broken and who will be under even more pressure.
So I’d be shocked if Lovren gets dropped for the game at Old Trafford, Rodgers is going to do it completely his way whatever the consequences.
It was alarming how he reacted to adversity in this game though. The first half was shite, let’s make no bones about it. Changes were needed, but what I didn’t expect to see was him reverting to a back three again at the first sign of trouble.
This was the system he felt he had to play last season because he didn’t have players to operate the way he wanted to play. So now that he has the players he wants to play his favoured 4-3-3 (or variations of it), he ends up going back to three at the back the first time we fall behind? I can’t really get my head around it to be honest, it’s worrying because it smacked of panic.
Getting Moreno on made sense because we were crying out for someone with a left foot on that side. The thing is though, we saw last season that he just can’t play wing back, he needs someone in front of him. In fairness Coutinho was supposed to be tucked in on the left before he got sent off (I’ll get to that in a sec), but did we really need three centre backs and Lucas against West Ham’s one frontman when we were already 2-0 down?
Emre Can was woeful and taking him off was probably an easy enough call, but what we needed more than anything was support for Benteke. Ings should have been on at half time but instead we got that three at the back bullshit with full backs asked to be wingers. Clyne had been good in the first half but the switch to wing backs fucked him up too and he was ineffective after the break.
In fairness Coutinho’s departure probably killed whatever plan Rodgers had, but chances are it wouldn’t have worked anyway as the seven minutes we saw of it were just as poor as what had gone before it. Coutinho was really frustrated and had been booked for dissent just before half time. Let's face it, Kevin Friend would try the patience of Mother Theresa.
The second booking was a joke though. The West Ham player not only milked it, I reckon he actually played to draw the foul. He cleverly changed direction as Coutinho slid in, and then he made sure he fell over the Brazilian as he lay in front of him. That was never a yellow card in a million years, but even less so when it meant a sending off. Kevin Friend is an absolute cunt, I hate him. He’s got the most punchable face I’ve ever seen and he’s the worst ref in the league by a mile. And when Lee Mason is also in that league that shows you just how bad this fucker is. Or maybe he’s just that bad when he refs our games?
Anyway, if there was any remote chance of us coming back into the game it went when Coutinho left the field. It was all over and we all knew it. The injustice of it all stirred the Kop into some noise and they did their best to lift the team, but that team wasn’t for lifting unfortunately. On the subject of the Kop, for the second game running they chanted Rodgers' name only for him to blank them. What's his fucking problem?
Benteke had a penalty shout when Ogbonna was dragging the shirt off his back, but as if we were getting that from Friend. There were a few half chances as Milner dragged a shot wide, Lovren hit one straight at the keeper and also put one over the bar when he couldn’t adjust his feet quickly enough after Benteke’s knock down. That was about it though, and not even the ridiculous sending off of Noble made a difference.
West Ham rubbed further salt in the open wound with a third goal in stoppage time, when Skrtel did that fucking irritating backing off shit he does far too often and allowed Sakho to stroll into the box and roll one into the bottom corner.
The optimistic view would be to say this was just one game, we’re on seven points which isn’t bad and we’ve kept clean sheets in three of the four games we’ve played. There’s nothing to fear from United, they’re as fucked up as we are and even without Coutinho we could go and win at Old Trafford. It’s not all doom and gloom yet, but it just doesn’t feel right does it?
Aside from 45 minutes at Arsenal our football hasn’t been good and we can’t expect to be keeping clean sheets all the time. Poor Benteke was so isolated it was ridiculous, and the lack of service that came his way was appalling really. How could it be that bad? He got better service than that when he was struggling at Villa under Paul Lambert, and it needs sorting quick.
I’m so pissed off. At myself as much as anything, as I allowed those opening three results to build my hopes up. It might seem a bit knee jerk to go into panic mode after one bad game, but it was just how bad it was that’s got to me. It was completely abject, as poor as anything we’ve seen in years. One shot on target, and that was a 30 yarder from a centre half. Truly dismal.
I’m worried now. Away from home I actually think we’ll mostly be ok, but loads of teams will approach games at Anfield exactly how West Ham did (and how Palace did last season), and at the moment it doesn’t look like we’ve got any answers to it.
It’s too soon to completely panic because we do have virtually a whole new team and it’s only natural that it will take time to fully click, but I would have liked to have just seen a glimpse here and there that it was coming together, and Rodgers’ bizarre response to going behind doesn’t fill me with confidence moving forward either.
I feel like we're almost in uncharted waters here. Things are happening to us that we're simply not used to and it's therefore difficult to know how to react. Losing home games 3-0 to mid table sides? That just doesn't happen. Ever. It didn't even happen when we were really crap under Hodgson, or in the death throes of the Houllier and Benitez reigns. It was only a few months ago we were suffering our heaviest defeat in over half a century too, and that came a week after Palace had won 3-1 at Anfield (a result that flattered us and could easily have been worse).
How many more of these kind of results will Rodgers get away with? The three game unbeaten start hinted at this team putting down strong foundations for the season, but after this it feels like it was built on sand. Old Trafford next and then Norwich and Villa head to Anfield for fixtures that now look every bit as tricky as this one. Rodgers needs a quick response if things aren't going to start getting out of hand.
Mignolet: Clyne, Skrtel, Lovren, Gomez (Ibe); Lucas, Milner, Can (Moreno); Firmino (Ings), Coutinho; Benteke:
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