As hard as they tried, Liverpool were unable to put a dampener on the Christmas spirit this year. The previous two Boxing Day fixtures have brought misery to LFC fans, but yesterday the team managed to grind out a 1-0 victory at Turf Moor despite putting in a wholly uninspiring performance. The result leaves us in 9th place going into the final game of 2014, an important match against 8th placed Swansea.
It was immediately clear that Liverpool weren’t going to be treating us to the same level of performance we saw against Arsenal. Most of the players looked like they had Christmas hangovers; they were sluggish in possession and, when they didn’t have the ball, allowed Burnley much too much space. Danny Ings came very close to punishing us within the first 15 minutes – he hit the post, and frankly the goal would have been deserved. Far from provoking a reds response, this great chance seemed to cause Liverpool’s defence to become even shakier. The rest of the first half passed in a blur of near misses from the hosts and abysmal play from the visitors, and being able to go in at half time level pegging was a gift that the Liverpool players had by no means earned.
Source: liverpoolfc.com
One of the main problems of the half was the failure of Steven Gerrard to get at all involved. Other than one good ball to Lallana which set up our only chance of the half, he was completely invisible for the full 45 minutes. We might as well have been playing with 10 men; it was genuinely easy to forget that he was on the pitch. The defence also unsurprisingly continued to be an issue – Skrtel was particularly poor in the first half, and Toure was below his usual standard. The goalkeeping farce reached new lows when Brad Jones was subbed off early on through injury, marking the return of Simon “he might never play for us again” Mignolet. This was a good thing, as despite his faults Mignolet is unquestionably better than Jones (who wouldn’t look out of place in a League 2 outfit), but the sight of Jones walking off and Mignolet running on in his place was comical in the extreme. The only positive of the half was the performance of Mamadou Sakho, who showed exactly why many Liverpool fans have been infuriated by his lack of game time. He put in some solid challenges and certainly inspired more confidence than his defensive partners. Admittedly his pass accuracy was quite disappointing – 80% is fairly low considering that passing is supposedly one of his main assets – but this can be attributed largely to rustiness.
The second half saw a slight improvement. This was not difficult: in a season full of “worst half I can remember” claims, the first half of this game was definitely up there. Burnley continued to threaten, but their constant pressure and high work rate was beginning to take its toll and Liverpool were consequently being afforded more and more space as the half progressed. In the 62nd minute they capitalised on this – it took a moment of magic from Coutinho and a cool head from Sterling, but against the run of play it was Liverpool who got the goal. The Coutinho assist is surely the best goal assist we’ll witness this season; whilst facing the other way, he showed immense awareness to hook the ball cleverly into the path of Raheem Sterling. The 20 year old rounded the keeper well and slotted the ball beyond the desperate lunges of the Burnley defenders who had tracked back and into the net. In the midst of Hodgson-esque badness a moment seemingly plucked right from last season was produced, and in the end this proved enough to win us the game.
Source: liverpoolfc.com
It is an old footballing cliché that ‘the three points is all that matters’, and after yesterday’s performance many Liverpool fans will be clinging to that. Whilst this shocking level of performance doesn’t bode well for future games – surely any club who weren’t sitting in the relegation zone would have punished our poor play – the fact that we were able to grind out the win is encouraging. We now only have 1 defeat in our last 9 games; whilst this stat disguises the multiple flaws of the team, it does show that we are slowly but surely improving. If we can force wins in our next 3 matches, all against beatable opponents, the position will be much brighter heading into the second half of the season.
James Martin
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