Another well thought out, honest article from Paul Tomkins!!!
There are some strange statistics surrounding the Reds this season.
Despite a season of intermittent struggles at Anfield, Liverpool have scored the most home goals in the Premier League, along with Spurs, and conceded the fewest away from home, along with Chelsea.
The Reds overall away form is more-or-less identical to leaders Arsenal, and have lost fewer league games than Manchester United. And the clean sheet quota is still very high.
Then there's the Champions League, where the Reds have plundered 18 goals at Anfield in just five games. By my calculations the four goals against West Ham takes the tally for the season to 92 in all competitions, and so clearly the attacking side of the Reds' game has improved this season.
The addition of the sublime Torres, with 24 goals from open play, has obviously been a key factor, but also important is that other new players like Babel and Benayoun, who have been used more sporadically, have weighed in, too. That pair have 18 goals between them, and if you combine their time on the pitch it'd probably equal something close to Steven Gerrard's - who also has 18 goals.
Teams are being routed on a fairly regular basis, but contrary to what BenÃtez's critics see as his style, there hasn't been enough scrappy one-goal wins; the kind where one point is turned into three, often in the 98th minute. On some days the draws were deserved, as the team lost its way and its confidence, but many have been down to the failure to kill off the opposition and, at times, an absence of the luck that every successful team needs.
But I'm always encouraged by the team creating chances, whatever the result; I felt that the 0-0 draw at Manchester City, for example, was a good sign in terms of this team developing the attacking side of its game, as the home team were pegged back for 90 minutes. But had Liverpool been totally ready to make a championship challenge this term, one or two of those myriad chances would have crept in. Those are the fine lines.
As well as scoring more goals, Liverpool are clearly harder to beat, too. Again, that's another positive. Losing fewer league games than Manchester United definitely signals an improvement of sorts; but of course it's not how many games you lose, but how many points you win. But it's a start, something to build on.
Liverpool –– labelled the 'draw specialists' this season –– have only drawn three more games than leaders Arsenal, but nicking just one extra goal (or keeping late ones out, such as at home to Wigan) in those three extra draws would put the Reds above Chelsea and very much in the title race. You can't live on 'what ifs', but again, it shows the fine line between success and failure.
Several weeks back I wrote that every time Liverpool win, it is put down to the opposition being poor. This was again trotted out after the West Ham victory, such as one paper saying: "Rafa BenÃtez knows his players are unlikely to come up against such inferior opposition again this season as West Ham proved to be at Anfield."
West Ham were not at their best, clearly. But the success of this Liverpool team comes from frenetic closing down (as seen with the Valencia 'crushing machine'), and wringing the life out of the opposition. There were points in the game against the Hammers where the closing down of their defence by Kuyt, Mascherano, Gerrard, Alonso and Torres looked almost cruel.
Let me be clear: I don't think Dirk Kuyt is one of the greatest players in the world. But I love his attitude, and choose to focus on what he gives the team, not that which he cannot.
And something his detractors will never acknowledge is just how many attacks he helps start in the final third by either winning the ball or by hurrying defenders into mistakes. It's one thing your defenders winning the ball in their own half; but if your forwards do so in their area of the pitch, a chance is rarely far away. It's a form of destructive construction!
And as I said earlier in the week, which was backed up against West Ham, Kuyt knows how to feed a fellow striker from the wing, even if he's not going to cross like David Beckham or dance round players like Cristiano Ronaldo.
Perhaps part of the problem is fans comparing Kuyt unfavourably with players like Ronaldo, but how many wingers of that calibre exist? It's rare to find a skilful wide-man who, as Ronaldo has come to do, also puts the team winning ahead of achieving his own stepover quotient.
There are better individual footballers than Kuyt, and indeed several of them are in the Liverpool side, but he gives the team balance and, even more crucially, his perpetual motion drives the rest of the team on. It helps to keep the tempo high, and that's when the Reds are at their best.
All of the above observations confirm to me that Liverpool are on the right lines, even if those lines won't necessarily lead to glory; there are no guarantees, after all.
For a period this season, Liverpool simply weren't good enough, and the form was distinctly mid-table. But I always maintained that this particular cream will rise, and now the Reds sit in 4th place and go to Milan next week with a 2-0 lead.
I've been saying for a good while now that this league has got stronger and stronger –– not just the top four, but the teams who reach the Uefa Cup and further down. Everton are now a very good side, as much as it irks me to say it, and Aston Villa have improved under Martin O'Neill. Spurs now have a top-class manager, and yet are one of two very expensively-assembled teams in the bottom half of the table, with Saturday's opponents Newcastle slipping perilously close to the drop zone.
English teams having a good year in Europe doesn't say too much; but it's now been four or five impressive seasons in a row, and is growing increasingly so. England could have four of the best eight teams in the Champions League; last year it had three of the last four teams standing. And it's 2004 since an English team failed to contest the final, and 2003 since one failed to make the semi-final. Does this not suggest that the league has improved?
But for me, this has masked the improvements Liverpool have made on the whole under BenÃtez. That doesn't mean there isn't more room for improvement; clearly there is (although having said that, the addition of Martin Skrtel, with his pace, aggression and calm distribution, already looks to have improved the defensive options).
But the current top three, who were well ahead in their building –– either from financial investment or from the youth set-up dating back to the turn of the millennium –– have continued to strengthen too. Even the joint-best driver in the joint-best car couldn't make up too big a gap in at Silverstone after a pit stop to change many of the key components.
Perhaps the bottom few clubs tend to be worse these days –– Derby are pretty woeful –– and there's no doubt that it's far harder to bridge the gap from the second tier to the top division. But part of that is the increasing strength of the best teams; not only do the top four continue to rank amongst the continent's elite, but they have increasingly pulled away from the lower division and the base of the top league.
You can still get a freak result –– a 'Barnsley' –– but that's football. By contrast, teams who have established themselves in the Premier League for a few years can now afford to grow increasingly stronger.
To conclude, it's been a season of tweaks and alterations for the Reds: many new players who are now delivering the goods (half of last night's outfield players only joined the club since the turn of last year), a change of system, and an increased attacking threat. Players like Torres and Babel are getting better and better as the season progresses.
Your guess is as good as mine as to whether this form and vivacity will be taken into next season, and whether or not the one or two of the key defects can be eradicated. But it's possible that both could prove true.
Of course, new defects can always crop up –– that's football. You change one thing for the better and often something else is adversely affected.
But equally, you can suddenly get the balance just right. Here's hoping that's the case from now until May, and then much further beyond.
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