That was as frustrating as it was disappointing. Like many have said the new faces disrupted the "cohesion" of the side.
I would profoundly disagree with that because our problem didn't come from a lack of cohesion. We where lethargic, without pace and our customary crispness of passing. The players looked like they where playing on a heavy pitch towards the end of the season, not at Anfield four games in. Their goal came from our defensive mistakes again but outside of our generous gift, they never looked like scoring. The lethargy wasn't just physical either but mental and I felt the most lethargic person there today was Rodgers. It was clear at half time our formation and tactics where not working and our players, for whatever reason, looked tired and it needed something to freshen it up yet he waited until the hour mark to bring on Sterling. I felt a double substitution was in order with Coutinho and Markovic needing to come off in place of Sterling and Lambert at half time because it just wasn't working for them today. It would have given us an injection of pace and a different formation and more threat up front because Balotelli looked to be struggling up on his own.
Whilst I'm not going to be overly worried at this stage of the season, one good performance from four matches isn't good enough and we really need to look at the cause for this because not all of them have had so many new faces in them. Our defence however, is a worry. By my reckoning, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we've had seven centre back partnerships under Brendan Rodgers - Carra/Skrtel, Carra/Agger, Agger/Skrtel, Skrtel/Toure, Skrtel/Sahko, Lovren/Sahko and Skrtel/Lovren - and yet our defence hasn't improved, they're still making silly individual mistakes. We can't carry on buying players hoping to find the best partnership, clearly the problem lies elsewhere.
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