There has been a growing trend this season for an awful lot of Liverpool games. Brilliant 1st half. Free-flowing football. Movement, passing, directness, pace. Dominance in terms of play. But not in terms of goals. We usually lead at the break at HT by just the 1 goal, but in terms of play it seems like much much more.
We seem to come out after the break like a totally different team. Our passing is not the same, our directness is still not there. The whole team seems to relax, sit back and expect someone else (Suarez) to conjure something out of nothing, to do the creating and the goal we need to kill of the game.
Our failure to kill of games is seriously hurting us this season. How many times have we been the dominant team, failed to kill them off, and drop points. Three games spring to mind instantly. Sunderland + Norwich at home, Stoke away. All 3 games, we were clearly the dominant team, yet only come out of all 3 games with just 3 points. 9 should have been acquired.
This failure to kill of teams has an effect through the team. As we are failing to score, we are also conceding goals. Many which draw teams level with us, and something we fail to come back against. We have only kept 2 clean sheets this season, and in both instances the opposition had a man sent off. We have conceded in each of our last 6 games at Anfield.
Is the critical factor of this failure to kill off games our lack of a clinical striker? In the Norwich City game alone, we had 29 shots at goal. This resulted in just 1 goal. Luis Suarez had 11 alone, yet none resulted in a goal. 38 times this season a PL team has had fewer shots themselves than he had in 1 game. Unfortunately, Suarez is not the clinical striker we need. He is the creator.
Up until the Norwich game ( our first 8 games of the season ), we had a chance conversion rate of 9%. That is awful for a team that is looking to finish in a top 4 place, let alone challenge for any honours.
It still is early days in the season so all hope is not gone. We still have 29 games to go and many points to challenge for. We are still only 1 place off of a CL spot. But truly, we all know that the way we play lately, we should have a much higher goals and points tally. We should be higher up the table. Some of the football we are playing is brilliant, but our lack of clinical finishing is seriously hurting our season. Already. Will it be addressed, either on the training field or will it be addressed in January?
« Last Edit: Oct 22, 2011 09:54:19 pm by MsGerrard »
Logged