From Kopblog
It`s often said that to win games when you`re not playing well is the mark of champions. However, if you can win those games while playing complete shite then I`m not sure what it`s a mark of, but it`s got to be something pretty damn good!
Despite our indifferent form on the pitch it`s hard not to feel good about things at the moment. The Premiership is just two games old but we are sitting joint top with a maximum haul of six points, and we haven`t even turned up yet!
Football really can be a strange game at times. On too many occasions in recent years, I`ve seen us play miles better than we are at the moment and yet fail to get the rewards our performances deserved. Saturday`s 2-1 win over Middlesbrough made it the first time in six years that we have opened up a season with two wins. We had the opportunity to do that at the start of last season when we opened up our campaign with a 2-1 win at Villa Park, thanks yet again to a late winner by Gerrard, and then in our second game we had the chavs at Anfield and played them off the park for the entire match, but late in the game referee Rob Dallas awarded them a penalty for absolutely nothing and they escaped with an undeserved point. Such has often been our fortune in the past but perhaps things are starting to change.
Winning ugly is something that we haven`t been particularly good at for a very long time. When Rafa first arrived, games like the couple we`ve played so far might well have been lost. More recently, even up to last season, those types of defeats had been turned into draws but hopefully the way we have started this season is a sign that those draws are now being turned into victories.
Obviously, I was exaggerating when I wrote at the beginning of this blog that we were playing complete shite. Our performance on Saturday showed some signs of improvement from the previous weekend, but in fairness it would have been hard pressed to be much worse. There isn`t really any fluency in our game at the moment and most of our play has been as flat as a witch`s tit.
As I said in the last blog, I think the results are more important than the performances at this stage but that said, we can`t keep on relying on winning ugly and clearly our play will have to quickly improve. Outside of the result and the delight of seeing Carra scoring(ish), the only really encouraging thing we could take from Saturday`s game was that the attacking partnership between Torres and Keane seems to be developing with every game, other than that there wasn`t much else for us to get excited about.
I suggest that Rafa call in the local paranormal society to investigate why so many of our players seemed to completely disappear for most of the game. With all due respect to Dynamo Dirk, it`s never a good sign for us when he turns out to be our best midfielder but that was the case on Saturday. Benny Onion on our left side, did a vanishing act that Houdini would have been proud of. Alonso seemed to start well but gradually drifted out of the game and Gerrard turned out to be a hero with his late winning goal but the guy just didn`t look fully fit and wasn`t really in the game. Babel hardly kicked the ball when he was brought on in the second half but full credit to El Zhar who did well in the 10 minutes or so that he was on the pitch.
I know that I promised in the last blog that I would be keeping my powder dry on any moaning until we actually dropped some points, but you all know what a weak-willed person I am and there`s a couple of gripes that I just have to get off my chest. Firstly, I can`t understand why the hell Arbeloa is in the team. As I said in the last blog, I think he is useful to have in the squad for his versatility. By that I mean that he is useful to bring on from the bench sometimes or to play him in the early rounds of the cups or even in the event of an injury crisis, but I don`t think he should be a starter in the first team particularly when we have better options.
He is not a particularly bad player and Shanks knows we`ve certainly had a lot worse but I`ve seen enough of him to know he is an accident waiting to happen and ultimately he will cost us points. There was a perfect example of this on Saturday when Mido in fairness took his goal very well, but he was given all the space in the world to pick his spot and was invited to shoot because Arbeloa backed off him instead of closing him down and that mistake could have been very costly to us.
There have been other such examples of his bad decision making in other games, some we`ve got away with and some we haven`t. Another one that sticks in my mind was our game last season when we had Arsenal at Anfield. We took an early lead in that one and despite the gooners than taking control of the vast majority of possession, they were struggling to break us down until we brought on Arbeloa. You might remember that Fabregas made a run in behind him in that game and had he gone with him there would have been no danger, but for some reason he let him go and he went on to score their equaliser from that position.
I know that Rafa brought in Degan in the summer to be our first choice right-back and he`s been out injured, but in the meantime I think Finnan should be in the team. I saw him play an hour of the Rep of Ireland`s friendly in Norway last week and he played well and looked fit. While Arbeloa may be younger and faster than him, Finnan is a much better defender and when he gets forward he is probably our best crosser. But the gaffer might be leaving him out because he is planning to sell him and if that`s the case I think Carra should play on the right with Skrtel and Agger in the middle. We`ve got some very big games coming up and we cannot afford any silly mistakes in defence, so in my view Arbeloa needs to be benched.
My second gripe is an old chestnut of mine that I`ve been banging on about on this blog for ages, our corner-kicks. I`ve often been full of praise for all of the progress Rafa has made on the playing side of things at the club but one of the areas where we haven`t seen any real signs of progress is our corner kicks and general set-plays. From watching our games I think it`s clear to see that there is obviously a lot of work put in on the training pitch in defending such situations but there is precious little evidence of any work we do on the attacking side.
If we are to go on the evidence that we see in every single one of our games, it would appear that our training routine for corner-kicks consists of us putting a sack of potatoes on the front post and asking our players to attempt to hit it as often as they can. It drives me mad when I see the amount of times our corner-kicks fail to beat the first man on the post. We talk about signing wingers and attacking full-backs to help us work openings in opposing defences and yet we consistently waste these opportunities to put teams under pressure in their own area.
Of course, we would all like to see the team playing fast free-flowing football and carving open teams with our wonderful interplay but that`s not always possible and its on just such occasions where a well taken corner-kick can nick you a result. We tend to force a lot of corners, probably an average of 7 or 8 per game and sometimes more. They are the ideal opportunity for us to bring the big men forward and even though most defences these days are very well drilled in defending them, I still think if you can stick 6 or 7 decent crosses into the box from these situations the chances are at least one will fall kindly and it just seems crazy to me that we don`t make better use of these opportunities.
We haven`t had a decent deliverer of corner-kicks at the club since Gary Mac. In the current side, Gerrard is very hit and miss, mostly miss, and Xabi Alonso for all his passing ability seems unable to deliver a decent ball into the box from a corner. Aurelio is probably the best we have at the moment. I think this has to be dealt with as a priority with more time dedicated to it in training and as potential new signings are being considered, as they apparently are at the moment, it should be one of the qualities that we look for. Having one or two players in the side that can truly deliver some quality crosses from a dead-ball situation would be of great benefit to us and its high time it was sorted out.
Anyway, on to other matters and the second leg of our CL qualifying tie against Standard Liege is on Wednesday. Even though we luckily managed to get a 0-0 draw in the first leg and have the second leg at Anfield, this is by no means a foregone conclusion. Liege was one of the toughest teams we could have got in the draw. They are the Belgian Champions and I believe they are unbeaten in more than 30 games domestically. I think we saw in the first leg that they are not a side who will come to Anfield and rollover for us, and obviously if they can pinch a goal they can spin this whole tie on its head.
That said, if we play anywhere close to our best on the night I would fancy us to see them off, but the problem is we have not played anywhere close to our best up to now. There is a lot of talk of us bringing in a player for the left wing before the transfer window closes but I think we can be pretty sure there will be no more moves authorised by the board if we don`t manage to get past Liege and qualify for the lucrative group stage of the CL.
I don`t think our starting line-up will be a lot different from Saturday`s, but I would like to see Arbeloa out of the side and I would like to see Babel starting, even though he was anonymous when he came on at the weekend he will give us the pace on the left that we missed in the first game and present a different set of problems for Liege to deal with.
If we are not on our game this could be a close one, but as I`m in an optimistic mood I`m hoping we can settle any nerves with an early goal and go on to win the game 3-0.
Keep the Faith
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