We sold Suarez, and bought Lambert as back up, and three major attacking signings. The combined pre-season minutes for those 3 players at Liverpool was 45 minutes against Olympiakos. Two have been injured until the season was well underway and are thus rusty - and presumably in the preseason stage of building up (match) fitness. The other is Balotelli who, surprise surprise, manages to look simultaneously a classy player in cameos, but out of synch with his teammates. Oh, and Sturridge got injured too.
Basically we've taken out 50 goals on last year and people are amazed we haven't immediately got this years team firing when they're coming back from injuries and have barely played with the team? Sturridge would have helped tie us over. He got injured at a terrible time for us. It's not about expecting Sturridge to stay fit for every game, because that's unlikely, but he was probably going to be our biggest player the first 10 games (still will be given he's back next week). Last year we started slowly and he scored the goals the first few weeks until Suarez got back. We needed to have him around to be able to do that when we got Balotelli settled, when we nursed Lallana back to health, ideally when we did the same with Markovic too. Also, both seasons under Rodgers so far Gerrard has been a slow starter, and Phil last year (prior to injury) and this looks like he may be the same. Basically, someone who scores big goals would've been great to give everyone else a bit of breathing space these opening weeks.
Hasn't been the case so you get what we've got. A disjointed, often rusty attack with little cohesion. Take West Ham at the weekend. If you look at our better players that game - who were they? Sterling had a good game. Lallana had a promising game. Balotelli showed good signs. The team were shit and weren't too much of a threat. But in isolation you had 3 players who looked like they could do something, but none of it really happening together. Y'know, 'cos we're talking about players who have barely played together.
I think there's a bit of a pattern that's emerging under Rodgers. First 5-10 games are a bit of a slow one. You get the odd peak in there like Norwich away in the first season, or West Brom at home last year - worth remembering that before that point, even when we put 3 past Palace, people were complaining about our 2nd half drop-offs in games.
Games 10-20 are when you start to see a consistently higher level of performance. You've got Spurs, West Ham last year. Fulham, Wigan the year before (also in the first season this is around the time of the Europa League win in Udinese and when our home form really starts to settle down - Arsenal, United and Udinese win at home in the space of Rodgers first 10 league games, only Villa in the 2nd block of 10). Still get the odd blip in there, last year it was Hull, the year before it was Villa and Stoke, but the form is beginning to settle down and you can see the level the team is at.
Game 20 or so onwards are just throttle-down to the finish. Not going to win them all but the performances are at a good level and, y'know, we seem much fresher and faster as a team. We get 33 of our 61 points in 2012/13 from this point out, and 45 of our 84 in 2013-14 from here.
I'm just using these as rough markers by the way. I'm not saying we'll start caning teams from exactly that point onwards, but I'm fairly sure they're sign posts in performance. At the moment we don't have the strike-force we did last year to compensate for everything else with goals. What I think you'll start to see before November is Sturridge do some of that, and hopefully from then until the new year we'll get a bit of a taste of what Lallana, Markovic, Balotelli etc can contribute in that department, rather than being Sturridge/Sterling reliant.
Personally I think Rodgers is exceptional at coaching attack, as evidenced by the past two seasons, and that it's nothing more than a case of needing to coach players for a bit of time before they show it. It's an inevitable teething problem of having such a big turnover - a necessary one with the extra games (not to mention the fact that no one individual could replace Suarez).
