Sunday 7 December 2014

Match Review - Sunderland

Disappointed, very disappointed, we were starting to look better, we had got ourselves back in to a better position in the league, one or two of our big players had shown signs that they were playing themselves back into form and other results on Saturday had gone our way, then what happened, we let ourselves down.  I had no real complaints about the team the manager picked before the game.  I can see the argument that Gerrard should have played, but that only looks good with hindsight, before the game I wanted him rested for the Champions League game on Tuesday and I had thought that Coutinho had looked good in recent games and was relatively confident that we would be ok without our captain.

What went wrong, we simply appeared not to be interested yet again for the whole first half we created nothing, we had Sterling, Coutinho and Lallana on the pitch and did not even manage to create a half chance.  This is worrying our three most creative players and they managed nothing between them.  Perhaps we have been putting to much pressure on Sterling and Coutinho and Lallana has been struggling to fit in at his new club and it appears is struggling under the price tag but a whole half without any output between them is not acceptable and I hope that somebody at the club is pointing this out because all that I'm hearing is that we are working hard, things will get better and it looks to me like we are not working hard and because of this we will not get better.  It was easy for Sunderland to hold us at arms length, yes they did put everybody behind the ball but thats what we should expect teams like Sunderland to do and we should know how to go about breaking them down and we need our creative players to produce, to many times this season they haven't.

For the first half we played far to slowly, it looked like we thought we were in a friendly and I don't know why to many times this season this has been the case and we as a club are not doing anything about it, players strolling around, sideways and backwards passing, nobody getting in the box, nobody supporting our striker, the manager not doing anything to get support to our strikers still refusing to play two up, dodgy goalkeeping, terrible nervous defending and still nobody doing anything about any of it, our coaches and manager sitting paralysed on the bench, things will not improve on their own. 

In the second half things did improve slightly, it appeared that at half time the players had been told to speed things up a bit, I hope they had, one or two needed shaking warmly by the throat and reminding who they play for and why its important.  Then we got the boost we needed when Gerrard took to the field,  we did look more like a team trying to get in the top four, at least we pushed for a goal although if i'm honest we could have played for a week and never scored.  It was better after Gerrard took to the field but should we be still putting all our faith in our ageing captain, after all we have all been asking for him to be played less to act as more of an impact player.

The most frustrating game I have seen in a while, players need to pick up and they need to do it now.  If we play like this on Tuesday our season could be over its not acceptable for Liverpool players not to be challenging and several need reminding what is expected of them.

@lfclumo

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