Well, what can I say?!
I was confident we would sweep these aside after the pasting we gave Spurs, especially when you consider they have players like Senderos, Delph and Cleverly. Then I saw our line up and my confidence levels dropped massively and instantly thought Rodgers had got it wrong and that we were asking for trouble. To play Coutinho, Markovic, Lallana and Balotelli was completely the wrong choice at this stage of the season; none of them have ever played together and it was clear they hadn't, there was absolutely no understanding there at all. We should have started Sterling and I really don't understand why we didn't, it was best part of a week since the England game and I don't buy that bollocks about having to manage him properly and give him enough rest because if that's the case then we better not expect to be seeing him play a league game and Champions League game in succession.
Lallana had his moments where he was looking decent but on the whole I think he struggled, particularly early on when Hutton was it? was giving him the run around. IMO we should have started Sterling in place of him and then looked to bring him on around the hour mark instead of the other way round. At least then there would have been the understanding in attack between Sterling and Coutinho and Sterling has bit of one with Balotelli having both played against Spurs.
Markovic I think struggled to get into the game and was largely wasteful when he did get the ball.
Coutinho wasn't having a great game either by any stretch of the imagination but when Sterling came on he did seem to improve and was unlucky not to level the score.
Balotelli was out of position far too often and I think that was due to a severe lack of service, constantly he was out wide and we had nobody up top. Didn't help the fact he was getting kicked down off the ball either.
Something I was really hoping for was another clean sheet but by the break I was just relieved we were still in the game because in all honesty, they could easily have been 4 or 5-0 up, they were murdering us with deliveries into the box and was seeing Lovren largely at fault, kept on constantly losing his man and was getting easily beaten in the air.
Last season we were humiliated the way Villa played us off the park but IMO this performance was worse because at least we managed to score last time, they made us look so ordinary it was unbelievable and the amount of control they had of the game was unacceptable. We may have spent virtually the whole second half in their half but it was to no effect; there was no incisiveness, no creativity and we could have played for another 90 minutes and I doubt we'd have scored. It was almost like they were just sitting back and saying "come on then, give us what you got".
Our worst performance of the season so far and to have 2 defeats out 4 in a weekend when we could have taken advantage of those around us is not something I want to even think about.
We have a chance to put that performance behind us and hopefully we will smash it in the Champions League tonight and put us in good stead for our next outing against West Ham.
One thing for sure though, that performance was far from good enough and highlighted a lot of areas where we still need to improve.
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