Interesting to see - again - the divergence of opinion about Downing's performance. Myself, I thought it was pretty good (again). Certainly, if we're looking to identify problems they're elsewhere.
I think much of the confusion about Downing comes from what people expect from wingers. In particular it comes from what value they put on crossing the ball. Is Downing there to ping lovely balls on to the top of Carroll's head? Or is he there to widen the pitch, take out defenders, and carry the ball quickly through the zones? If it's the first you'd have to admit that he hasn't been very successful. But if it's the second you'd probably agree that he's made a big difference to Liverpool's stultifying play of recent times.
Someone said that defenders weren't bothering to double-up on him the other day. That's correct. In fact they were tripling, especially towards the end. And even then Downing was either still getting his cross in (and thereby taking 3 of their men out of the game) or finding an unmarked Johnson to do it for him. Once he even dribbled his way past all three. The pity was that we couldn't capitalise on the lad's ability to take the extra creative burden. And, yes, sometimes he picked the wrong final pass.
Naturally I'd like to see Downing ping the ball onto Carroll's unmarked head. But I'm a realist. That's not going to happen too often. Not because Downing's no good at crossing (or even that Carroll's no good at finding space), but because modern footballers find dealing with crosses quite easy. It's a bit less easy if you are hit on the break by a sequence of first-time balls, but Blackburn - as even Downing's detractors will have noticed - weren't hit on the break once yesterday for the simple and obvious reason that they never attacked in numbers.
Therefore the problem wasn't the accuracy - or not - of Downing's crosses. It was the fact that alternatives to crossing weren't explored enough. This can also be said of the left flank where Enrique (and towards the end Bellamy) also found few heads. Indeed it's been the story of our season so far.
A team that commands quality possession in the opponent's half like we do, and which has such pace and technique on the flanks should be exploiting the middle of the pitch better than we are doing. It's the difference between us and Tottenham at the moment. They have Modric and van der Vaart in the final third who like to cut through teams in the middle and use Bale's ability to widen the pitch and attract markers to do just that. We have a sedentary Charlie Adam and a young lad (in Henderson) who is enthusiastic but not wise yet.
When Gerrard came on yesterday things looked much better. His ability to move at pace with the ball down the middle and take out opponents with a positive first touch showed what is possible. Our best chances of scoring all happened with Gerrard on the pitch. Alas, Downing squandered one of the best opportunities when he tried to place the ball in the corner instead of passing the ball back to Gerrard.
Charlie Adam? I like him but he's playing a game that's 20 years out of date. He's a Hoddle or a Hudson type. Trap the ball, look up, sling a lovely 30 yard pass out to the flanks, put your hands on your hips and saunter around until next time. He seems to slow play down when we need to quicken it. And he's still not keen on doing the defensive work. There was a truly mystifying bit of marking on 15 minutes where Adam went on walk about and decided to mark their centre back. A better team than Blackburn would have cut us open and scored. Sure, he gives us some lovely moments - but in exactly the same way as Dunne has been giving Blackburn some lovely moments this season. He's a bit 1970s too.
