Two Liverpool Fans

All Of Liverpool FC’s Weaknesses On Show

In a poor game where the handshake (or rather the no-handshake) was the highlight of the day, Liverpool FC’s weaknesses were all on show against a rather wasteful Manchester United side.

I’ll be the first to say that Manchester United deserved a bigger win. Maybe that’s what Liverpool needed in the first place. Something to wake them up and help Kenny Dalglish realize that the passion is lacking in some of those players, along with the fact that his summer shopping spree has ultimately failed.

Liverpool FC lacked the cutting edge against the Red Devils. We couldn’t keep the ball, we couldn’t steal the ball, and we started with Stewart Downing. It sums up the display of Liverpool FC at Old Trafford yesterday afternoon. Our build-up play was slower than John Terry’s racism trial and we continually passed the ball backwards. Generally, Kenny Dalglish set up the team very negatively.

This was shown by the fact that there was arguably 30 meters in length alone between Luis Suarez and Liverpool’s next most offensive player for almost 60 minutes of the game. We lost the ball way to early (we didn’t gain any distance with our attacks) and it was just a poor performance from the men in white.

Once again, I have to reiterate the fact that I think that our youngster Martin Kelly would have done a better job than Glen Johnson. In all honesty, his only solid contribution to the game came in the opening 10 minutes of the game, where he managed to get two shots that came relatively close to an early goal for the visitors, but apart from that, the Englishman was poor.

His positioning for Wayne Rooney’s first goal in particular was terrible. Caught on the wrong side of Rooney after coming off the line. He should have really been going at least towards the ball to try and attack it on the odd chance that it goes straight through. And went through it did. Rooney had arguably the easiest job in the world to knock it past a helpless Pepe Reina.

Then comes the second question. Why was Stewart Downing playing? Let’s face the facts. He’s either a very poor player, or he’s a hot and cold player, whom is colder much more than he is hot. Perhaps the fact that Kenny Dalglish brought him off the same time as he brought Carroll on worked against him. He has very little pace, barely any trickery and has almost no understanding whatsoever with our leftback Jose Enrique. He was missing for the entire time we were on the pitch.

But I think that Charlie Adam did himself a favour with his impact following his arrival on the pitch from the bench. He managed to close down the Manchester United players well and also distribute the ball well. Not to mention the fact that he delivered the almost straight cross into the box which resulted in the Luis Suarez goal. He was brilliant to watch and perhaps one of the few positives Liverpool FC can take from the game.

Suarez scoring his first goal in a while now was just a bonus. Nothing more, nothing less. In the end, it perhaps did nothing but bolster the Uruguayan’s confidence ahead of the cup ties next week.

As Spotted on The Six Pointer