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Tomkins: A new beginning - Liverpool FC I loathe the kind of 'punditry' that says, just six months on from a 2nd-placed finish, that Liverpool have never looked further away from landing the title. It's so bereft of logic, it's laughable. It's pure nonsense. I'm sure you've seen the kind of comments I'm referring to. They come thick and fast at times like this, so it doesn't hurt to take stock and look at the true picture. For me, it's far easier for a good side to have a relatively poor season than for the opposite to occur. Can an average 100m runner accidentally finish 2nd in the Olympics? Of course not. Could the world-record holder conceivably finish 5th? Yes; especially if he's not at his fittest, or slips on his way out of the blocks. Teams underachieve and overachieve all the time, but never by large amounts. However, overachieving is more difficult, because you can't play better than you actually are, so it relies on others being well below par; but you can quite easily underachieve if you're missing too many players, or lacking confidence. And the bigger the sample you look at, the less chance there is for anomalies to crop up. So - was last season, with 86 points, and the title still a possibility going into May, an accident? Or is this season the accident? Well, what is the bigger sample? Last season we can judge on 38 league games; this season, in terms of the league, is only 15 games old. (Ditto Europe: five very good-to-excellent campaigns surely tell us more than one substandard one? Man United went out at the group stages in 2006, and won the title a year later, and the Champions League a further 12 months down the line; doesn't mean such changes in fortune automatically follow, but it does show that demises are over-hyped.) At the mid-point of last season, Liverpool were written off after a number of draws; "nowhere near good enough" came the cry from many in the media. In the end, they were very nearly good enough. "Not enough goals", said the experts last January. Then Robbie Keane was sold, and despite being a striker down, the scoring rate more-or-less doubled; the Reds finished as the league's top scorers and put four past Chelsea and Madrid in Europe. Last season, the Reds were as close as they've been to the title in 19 years. In terms of points accrued, Liverpool won 75% of those available, the second-best ever in the club's history. So, that was an accident, was it? It may have involved a little overachievement, but certainly not much. Of course, that was last season, this is a new season. Fair enough. But what has changed? Have ten players departed, and ten new ones arrived? No. Xabi Alonso has gone. However, let's remember, it's not been the loss of Maradona, Pele or Puskas. Or all three. Alonso was an excellent player, but he wasn't a great goalscorer, or even a direct creator of chances. He was someone who kept the team ticking over, and that's important. But would he have done as well had he still been here and so many others been injured, as has been the case? Unlikely. In terms of directly creating openings, it wasn't as if Alonso would ever do what Lucas did at Blackburn, and get to the byline in open to create a clear chance. So I don't see Alonso, who never scored more than a handful himself, as this 'ultra-positive' player, and Lucas as this 'negative' understudy. Of course, even though his style has its differences, Alonso's natural replacement is Aquilani, whose injury lasted longer than expected. That meant he was even more behind in terms of fitness, making it catch-22 as to when to introduce him; further complicating matters. However, Alonso's departure and Aquilani's absence are lesser factors in the dip in the Reds' overall form. The same applies to the lack of a recognised back-up striker to Torres. While the Spaniard has the club's best goals-per-minute ratio this term, at a stunning 111 minutes for every strike, David N'Gog is only fractionally behind. The Frenchman has also notched in some vital games. So, while Liverpool have missed their no.9, I don't think you can expect much more from any understudy. (All the hysteria over Michael Owen this week, and it's easy to overlook that even after that hat-trick, N'Gog has a better goals-per-game record this season, and even more so in Premiership matches.) What we would expect, however, is more goals from Steven Gerrard; but aside from missing games, he's spent a lot of time playing either with an injury or recovering from one. Again, that's difficult for any manager to work around. So therefore, for me, it all comes down to two main things. First, the form of key players earlier in the season. And second, the injuries to key players throughout the season. (And often, both have gone hand-in-hand.) Add to this the momentum factor, where a poor start takes the wind from your sails, ramps up pressure and causes mass hysteria (so that every game becomes gets the dreaded "must win" tag), and you have something approaching the 'perfect storm'. A negativity builds up in the press, and it takes its toll. Of late, on top of celebrating the return to fitness of Gerrard, Torres and Aquilani, people are commenting on how it's great to see Carragher and Mascherano back to their best. So it's clear that neither began the season on form. The Argentine had a lot of unsettling speculation over the summer, and more pertinently, the massive burden of a faltering World Cup campaign for his country, for which, as captain, he shouldered much of the responsibility (whether it was his fault or not). As soon as they qualified, he almost instantly 'returned' as his old self in Liverpool colours. Coincidence? I doubt it. A key player, off colour, but now back on track. Carragher also had a poor start to the season by his standards, but after almost 600 games, perhaps he was due such a spell. We can hardly criticise his consistency, can we? The club has had few more constantly reliable performers in its history. Most crucial, perhaps, has been the lack of any defensive stability, due to what can only be called an injury crisis. This almost certainly added to Carragher's struggles; and even he ended up crocked at one point. Add that the regular left-back is in his first full season in the side, and that the right-back is new to the club, along with injuries to Agger and Skrtel, and you can see the challenge the manager has faced, and the added pressure on Carragher. It's fair to say that other teams are now experiencing injury crises. But with a bit of momentum already in their season, it's possibly easier to absorb. Then there's the lack of players to punish them; just when Man United ran out of fit defenders, ahead of travelling to West Ham, they found that their opponents had run out of fit strikers. (To show that teams struggle without their best defenders, you only have to look at United conceding three at home to CSKA Moscow. And look at Arsenal's scoring record since losing Van Persie; from not drawing a blank up to November, they've now registered four in the six games since he got injured.) Liverpool have used 13 different defensive line-ups this season, in just 23 games. Most of those changes have been enforced. If you take Johnson, Carragher, Agger and Insua as the strongest defence (although Aurelio may well take over from the youngster), in four games, it has yet to concede a goal. I think that tells its own story. But when you consider that 12 defenders have been used this season, five of whom had never started for the first team prior to August, four are 21 or under, and seven have played with, or are recovering from, injury, and you can see that the platform teams need to build upon has been far from ideal. (Thanks to Tomkins Times' subscriber Andrew Fanko for help with the research.) You can get results despite this, but rarely a winning momentum. Injure Torres and Gerrard as well, and that only makes it harder. Experience many of these problems from the opening week, and it's an uphill struggle; a vicious circle. Scoring goals this season has been less of a problem than conceding, which is why the three clean sheets in a row with the same back four (and Reina) was something to feel positive about. It's a case of ifs and buts, and perhaps Liverpool would still be struggling if Torres, Gerrard, Carragher, Mascherano, Agger, Aurelio, et al, had been fit and/or firing on cylinders all season long, and Aquilani was only out until September, as expected. But I doubt it (even if a couple of them still had the same problems). Add them all together, however, and yes, it's been below what we've come to expect from Liverpool in recent years. It might make the title a distant dream this season, but it doesn't define the strength of the team right now, or where it's heading in the future. If anyone thinks that a line-up of Reina, Johnson, Agger, Carragher, Aurelio, Benayoun, Kuyt, Mascherano, Aquilani, Gerrard and Torres is behind where we were in 2004, then (with all due respect withdrawn) they need their head examined. The rest of the season is a chance to build understanding and confidence, and get an idea of just how good the side can be, if everyone is fit and in form. -------------------------------------------------