Liverpool have made a stuttering start to the current Premier League campaign and look a shadow of the team that came so close last season to winning the title.
Are their title aspirations from last season a mere flash in the pan? It seems that way so far this season and they have fallen way short of the required standard to mount any sort of serious title challenge.
First of all, recruitment was a disaster over the summer. They had a lot of money to spend in the transfer market after the sale of Luis Suarez, and despite one or two decent transfers, the majority of the players they recruited did not add anything of any substance to the squad. In a world where you’re supposed to improve on what you have to move forward, Brendan Rodgers has merely added bodies of a similar or worse quality to what he already had, rather than actually bringing new players in that would have significantly improved the squad to actually push on from where they left off last season.
The panic buy of Mario Balotelli has mis-fired horribly on Liverpool so far; he was a marquee signing to keep the fans happy after losing their biggest star, but the wrong signing all together. They should have gone for someone who could have replaced Suarez’s goals and contribution to the team, not necessarily someone who was just a ‘big name’ maybe along the lines of Wilfried Bony who would have guaranteed a good return of goals, getting his head down and getting on with the job in hand.
Balotelli was nothing short of disastrous against QPR on Sunday; he was misplacing his passes, scuffing his shots, looking confused and out of place at the best of times. He has stood out like a sore thumb in most games he has featured in for his new club since his arrival and as much as this blog is not supposed to be revolving around the Italian, it has to be said that he was one of the reasons Liverpool struggled to score the goals they needed to kill the game off against QPR early on; he was given a large number of chances to provide a goal for team-mates but chose to sky the ball into ‘row z’ and an equal number of chances in front of the goal to slot the ball home which went equally as high.
Mario bashing aside, the whole team looks truly awful at the moment. It seems that apart from club captain Steven Gerrard, they have no one there at the moment with the drive and urgency to grab a game by the scruff of the neck and do something of any substance. They do not look hungry enough or organised enough as a unit at the moment, which is a far cry from the Liverpool of last season which you knew would have been all over the opposition in the first 20 minutes of any game and would be looking to create chance after chance, look fluid and organised in both attack and defence.
Sunday’s game made them look like they would concede a goal every time QPR came forward, apart from some heroics from Simon Mignolet and some very poor finishing from the QPR strikers, it could’ve been a lot worse for the Reds; it was a very scrappy and fortunate victory in the end.
Liverpool sit nine points behind the leaders Chelsea at the moment, in fifth place on 13 points. There already seems to be too big a gap to make up between them and the top, especially if you consider how poor they have been so far, and if they continue to play in this manner, the gap is only going to get bigger.
Whatever it is that Liverpool had last season, they have not got it this time around in the slightest. They look like they do not want to win a game let alone any silverware. Rodgers will have his work cut out and will have to kick his troops into shape.
He best also hope that he manages to do a bit better in the next transfer window as well, otherwise they might not even finish in the top four. Liverpool this season are not title contenders, they are average at best.
