That was a very sad display.... We just don't seem to have a formula to be consistently beating teams who sit 9 or 10 players behind the ball. Aside from last week, we have been very poor at converting from set plays this season, and this was the case again tonight. Suarez seemed to be completely isolated far too often and it frequently felt like he was the only player who had a chance at snatching a win for us.
My biggest complaint about our performance is that we consistently seem too content to play simple square passes instead of making a purposeful, penetrating pass to a forward player who is checking back to the ball. I noticed countless times when Adam, Hendo, Downing, and Kuyt in particular would just knock the ball sideways when they had an opportunity to find Luis or Maxi's feet with a vertical, penetrating pass. Our play seems to lack drive and purpose at the moment, and that is very sad thing to say about LFC. I do believe that Gerrard's return should help with this, but we need to be more ruthless - not just in front of goal, but in our entire game. We need to be attacking teams like Wigan for a full 90 minutes, not just for bits and pieces of the game.
My other main complaint has more to do with the personell. Downing and Kuyt have been total disappointments so far this season. Our attacking wide players need to be able to do 2 things:
1. Play simple pass and move footie when necessary AND
2. Take on defenders, beat a man or two off the dribble, and put the oppositions defense under pressure.
None of our wide options seem to be willing or able to beat a man or two, get to the byline and pull a ball back that begs to be finished off. In my opinion, we need to be looking to address our lack of creativity and penetration from out wide in January. We don't have a single player like Affelay, Krasic, Nani, Ribery, etc, while most of the other top teams in any of the top leagues have at least 2 or 3.
Rant over. Hopefully we can pull our heads out and get a result against Blackburn on Monday.
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