I'm not expecting wonders, but I feel like we have a team that can play decent football, set up to win, set up to make our opposition feel the pressure.
Same here. Two points lost on the face of it, but fuck me, what a shot of belief I got from that performance. And the great thing is, the football we played yesterday is the kind that can be sustained. It doesn’t rely so much on luck or playing the percentages, it’s
proactive rather than
reactive, it's about making
our own luck. And while this team is still embryonic, I have to say, I’m relishing the prospect of watching it develop. We can still expect a tough season ahead, I doubt any of us are under any illusions on that score. I would still say that Arsenal have the inside track on fourth, for example. Yesterday, however, gave us a tantalising glimpse of where Brendan Rodgers is trying to lead this team and (hopefully) where Liverpool could end up a couple of seasons down the line with the right additions to the squad and the continued fusion of the quality players already at the club with the manager’s vision. And it’s exciting. On a purely
footballing level (i.e. forgetting about FSG and off-the-field issues for just a moment), it’s exciting, isn’t it? And if you disagree, fair enough, but I strongly advise you to check for a pulse if that’s the case.
I’ve seen people already making some comparisons with Rafa’s first season in charge. There are definitely parallels. Just like 2004/05, there will be bad days at the office. We’ve already seen one against West Brom, there will almost certainly be others. This squad, like the one we had in August 2004, has a lot of rough edges (although I would argue that it’s probably better than the one Rafa inherited). It’s painfully thin in places. There are some players in it who clearly have no future at Anfield. There are a lot of youngsters who will make mistakes, especially since they’ll be playing alongside other inexperienced players at times. Everyone is learning a new footballing philosophy. It will take time, especially since we are unable to go out and buy big-money, proven, readymade components to fit that philosophy like City can. And as well as the team played yesterday, possession was nonetheless rashly squandered on occasions, there were two bad defensive lapses which led to goals, and yes, Liverpool didn’t exactly create a ton of chances from open play (although, in fairness, they were playing against a very good team).
And yet there’s another, more positive feeling that I got watching yesterday’s game which also reminded me of 2004. Call it excitement, call it hope, call it optimism, but I just can’t shake it. Juan mentioned the early-season home games against West Brom and Norwich from 2004/05 as ones which gave you a sense of what was to come. Me, I recall our very first home league game under Rafa, also against Manchester City around this time of the season. Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia were in the stands for that game, as I recall, and after some of the turgid stuff served up during Gerard Houllier’s last couple of seasons in charge, Liverpool were a revelation that day, ending the game with 64% of the possession and, perhaps more noteworthy, coming from behind at half-time to win for the first time in a number of years (they repeated the feat a few weeks later too, going two goals down at Fulham before recovering in the second-half to win 4-2. By the end of the season, AC Milan were wondering what the fuck hit them during eight second-half minutes in Istanbul…) City were just another mid-table team back then and yesterday’s performance was almost certainly better, but the feeling of building towards something was the same. There was something in the way Liverpool played in that game which was different, and it was exciting.
It was similar yesterday. It wasn’t just in the need to play from the back, something which saw Pepe Reina hesitate time and time again on his kick outs while he looked for someone in a red shirt to pass short to. It was in the fearlessness on show all over the pitch – 17 year-old Raheem Sterling running at people, taking cross-field passes down with a perfect first-touch, then crossing with his left or right, Allen, Shelvey, Johnson and others calling for possession even when surrounded by two or three opposition players and playing their way out of trouble with calm, assured authority, the patience and intelligence in the passing, the movement, the willingness and the guts to try something that
might work. As Liverpool supporters we’ve seen all of these things before, of course, but there was a sustained aspect to these qualities yesterday that it’s difficult not to be excited by. That City, champions last season having scored 93 goals, created very little aside from Tevez’s chance in the first-half and a half-chance for Dzeko near the end and required two gifts to score at all, was the net result of that. Liverpool, despite what the possession stats say, bossed the game. And while it may be true to say that Liverpool teams generally do ok against the top sides and that the real necessity is to regularly beat the league’s
lesser teams, this really does feel like a brand of football that will serve us well no matter who we might be facing.
Going back to 2004 again – it took that team 5 years (and a long list of arrivals and departures) to challenge for a Premier League title. It may take this one as long, if it ever happens at all (that’s not pessimism, by the way, it’s realism). There’s a nucleus of talented players at the club, so we’re not exactly building from scratch, and yet Brendan Rodgers is facing many of the same difficulties that Rafa did. He may even be facing
more when you consider that City and Tottenham didn’t have the kind of stature back then that they do now. He’ll have to build without the money that some of his rivals have. Even if he leads his team into the Champions League immediately and stays there over a period of years (harder now than ever before), his club won’t have the ability to drop £20m+ on the likes of Mata, Oscar and Luiz, £30m+ on Hazard and £50m on Torres in the space of 18 months. He’ll never have a bench that includes David Silva and Eden Dzeko either. Like Rafa, he will have to build steadily, piece-by-piece. He’ll have to be smart, and while they may not have the profile of an Eden Hazard, the signings of Joe Allen and Fabio Borini look to be just that – smart. Players he trusts, players he knows will fit into his vision of the game, players who can fit into a team that, we hope, can become considerably more than the sum of its individual parts, just like Alonso and Garcia were back in 2004.
There are definitely parallels there, not alone between Allen and Alonso (and no, I’m not saying Allen is quite as good as that yet) but also between Borini and Garcia. Both duos were the main signings made by the new manager upon his arrival and, adjusted for inflation, the respective fees probably work out at more or less the same. And while the more expensive arrival of the two (Alonso/Allen) will hopefully go on to become Liverpool’s midfield general for years to come, creativity and goals are expected to come from the other (Garcia/Borini). Already I’m seeing signs that this could happen. I love Borini’s movement and intelligence and my gut is telling me that when he scores a couple of goals to get him going, he won’t stop. His first-half run yesterday, which ended with him missing the target by inches, was fantastic. He made some brilliant runs against Hearts on Thursday as well. He may never claim the place in Liverpool hearts that Garcia has (he would need to score a hat-trick, then a quarter-final winner, a semi-final winner and go on pick up a medal in the final of the Champions League to do that), but hopefully his contribution on the field can be longer-lasting and more consistent than the little Spaniard. His passion is also very welcome.
These two are looking like very shrewd signings, and that’s exactly what Brendan Rodgers needs to do because he clearly won’t be able to spend his way to success. Two players who fit his vision, his system, added to a squad containing quite a few of the same ilk. Hopefully Assaidi will prove similar. All of a sudden, I’m back to where I was in 2004, excited about where we’re heading and looking forward to seeing how the manager goes about implementing his vision over the long term. There will more than likely be plenty more setbacks and doubts expressed while he’s getting there, but we’ve made a start. Over the manager’s first two league games in charge, we’ve seen chances squandered, two penalties conceded, a suicidal back pass and a red card, but you’ve got to crawl before you can walk. Yesterday we even broke into a jog. There may be no Champions League victory at the end of this season like there was at the end of Rafa’s first, there may not even be a
Europa League win, but there are some compelling reasons to be optimistic for this season and beyond. This journey just got interesting.
