{"id":808,"date":"2017-02-09T17:06:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T17:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/?p=808"},"modified":"2017-02-09T17:06:43","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T17:06:43","slug":"liverpool-football-club-in-january-where-did-it-all-go-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/liverpool-football-club-in-january-where-did-it-all-go-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool Football Club In January: Where Did It All Go Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s be honest, wherever we go from here will feel like a bit of an anti-climax. When the champagne corks popped at midnight to herald in 2017 our win over Manchester City was still fresh in most people\u2019s minds. The cheers of Anfield had barely faded away and anything seemed possible, with the league leaders Chelsea just six points ahead of us and having to come to our place before the race was run. We were the top scorers in the Premier League and had spent the first half of the season playing some of the best football in the division.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_772\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-772\" class=\"size-large wp-image-772\" src=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/IMG_8087-e1483289314442-300x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/IMG_8087-e1483289314442-300x400.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/IMG_8087-e1483289314442-150x200.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/IMG_8087-e1483289314442-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-772\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Liverpool 1 &#8211; Man City 0<\/p><\/div>\n<p>To say that 2017 hasn\u2019t started that well so far is as much of an understatement as saying that Donald Trump quite likes Twitter. January has been about as close to a disastrous month as it\u2019s been possible to get and if things don\u2019t turn around pretty quickly then it\u2019s easy to see some supporters getting a bit twitchy. Out of both cups and with no chance of winning the league, fans are starting to once again ask questions of the owners and some are even calling radio phone-ins to ask for the manager to be sacked. How did we get here? Where did it all go wrong? They\u2019re the questions that must be answered in order to make sense of our season.<\/p>\n<h2>How Did We Get Here?<\/h2>\n<p>Football fans love seeing life as binary. Win or lose. Get a trophy or don\u2019t. Success or failure. However the reality is that the game is much more of a grey area than that. Saying \u2018our players aren\u2019t good enough\u2019 is fine, but no one was saying that when we went top earlier in the season, nor when we beat Chelsea 2-1 at Stamford Bridge or put four past Arsenal. Binary thinking means that when things are going well you think everything\u2019s amazing and when they start to go badly then it\u2019s because everything is terrible. If you think like that then you\u2019ll be forever disappointed if the targets you\u2019ve set in your head aren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n<p>When looking at what\u2019s gone wrong with a season it\u2019s important to consider various nuances. Here\u2019s a look at what I think we need to bear in mind when looking back at Liverpool\u2019s \u2018collapse\u2019.<\/p>\n<h3>It Hasn\u2019t Been That Bad<\/h3>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to look on what\u2019s happened in January as a complete and utter capitulation. You can say that our league form has dropped off so dramatically that the entire enterprise has been a waste of time. Neither of those things would be true, though. As things currently stand we have played 24 league games. After the same number of matches in the <strong>entire history of the Premier League<\/strong> we\u2019ve only had more points twice. We\u2019ve had the same number of points just once. Now it would be entirely fair to say that that is a reflection of how much we\u2019ve under-achieved in the Premier League era, but it\u2019s also the case that we\u2019ve perhaps overachieved so far this season.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en-gb\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/LFC?src=hash\">#LFC<\/a> after 24 matches in Premier League (1993 to 2017)<br \/>\n[data via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/premierleague\">@premierleague<\/a> &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LFChistory\">@LFChistory<\/a>] <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/EPL?src=hash\">#EPL<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/YNWA?src=hash\">#YNWA<\/a><br \/>\ntrimmed version <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BassTunedToRed\">@BassTunedToRed<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/CMDQ1N329n\">pic.twitter.com\/CMDQ1N329n<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 James Hillyard (@gasometre) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/gasometre\/status\/828726658744074240\">6 February 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\u201cutf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also worth pointing out that Arsenal, Tottenham and ourselves are having better campaigns at this point in time than in the majority of Premier League era seasons. We\u2019re all going great guns and the only reason we\u2019re not still in a title race is that Chelsea are playing at almost unprecedented levels. They are tearing through the league, losing just three games and only drawn two. That means that out of a possible 72 points they\u2019ve dropped a mere 13. They\u2019re on course for a 93 point season if they continue at the same rate. When we look back on our season we can\u2019t let that sort of record breaking scoring taint what we think of our own season.<\/p>\n<h3>Player Absences<\/h3>\n<p>Whichever way you look at it, Liverpool have been unfortunate when it comes to the list of players that missed large chunks of this season. Unlucky not just because of which players were absent but also the timing of their absences, with many of the most important cogs of the J\u00fcrgen Klopp machine missing at the same time. The German is a manager who likes his team to add up to more than the sum of their individual parts, but that falls down if those parts can\u2019t make it out onto the football pitch. Jordan Henderson is pretty much the only player in the squad who can do what he does in front of the defence, for example, so when he was out with a heel problem the whole thing fell apart.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_615\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-615\" class=\"size-large wp-image-615\" src=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Liverpools-Jordan-Henderson_EUO_CHEN-WEI-SENG-Bigstock-600x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Liverpools-Jordan-Henderson_EUO_CHEN-WEI-SENG-Bigstock-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Liverpools-Jordan-Henderson_EUO_CHEN-WEI-SENG-Bigstock-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Liverpools-Jordan-Henderson_EUO_CHEN-WEI-SENG-Bigstock-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Liverpools-Jordan-Henderson_EUO_CHEN-WEI-SENG-Bigstock.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-615\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">CHEN-WEI-SENG \/ Bigstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Likewise Joel Matip was brought in as a first-choice centre-back to play alongside Dejan Lovren and when the two were in the team together they looked strong. There was no way to predict that FIFA would drag their heels for so long over whether nor not Matip would be allowed to play during the African Cup of Nations, so when he was out we needed to use our third-choice centre-back. When <strong>he<\/strong> was out too we ended up using a defensive midfielder in the spot, which isn\u2019t ideal. Similarly Philippe Coutinho\u2019s absence through injury wasn\u2019t predictable and no one could have known that Daniel Sturridge, the player most had been crying out to start any time we failed to score, would be so out of sorts when he eventually made it into the side.<\/p>\n<p>The only absence that could have been predicted was that of Sadio Man\u00e9. We knew before we signed him that he\u2019d be heading off to AFCON, so why wasn\u2019t something done to mitigate his absence? Well, firstly virtually no Liverpool supporters heralded his arrival in the summer, instead asking why we were once again buying Southampton players. It wasn\u2019t immediately obvious that he\u2019d become the most important player in our team so it\u2019s entirely understandable that the manager didn\u2019t make a considerable effort to find an understudy. There\u2019s also that man Sturridge I mentioned before who Klopp will have been considering turning to for January, unaware that he\u2019d be in such poor form for the month.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_166\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-166\" class=\"size-large wp-image-166\" src=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Egidio-Arevalo-Rios-of-Uruguay-and-Daniel-Sturridge-of-England_EUO_AGIF-shutterstock-600x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Egidio-Arevalo-Rios-of-Uruguay-and-Daniel-Sturridge-of-England_EUO_AGIF-shutterstock-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Egidio-Arevalo-Rios-of-Uruguay-and-Daniel-Sturridge-of-England_EUO_AGIF-shutterstock-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Egidio-Arevalo-Rios-of-Uruguay-and-Daniel-Sturridge-of-England_EUO_AGIF-shutterstock.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-166\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">AGIF \/ shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201dWe should have bought in January then\u201d, is the inevitable reply. To an extent I agree. The problem is that things are rarely that simple. The manager has readily admitted that we had targets in January but couldn\u2019t bring them in. I\u2019d love to say that the club should have just \u2018done what it takes\u2019 or \u2018offered more money\u2019, but the Financial Fair Play rules make such things extremely complicated. What if there was a player who is worth \u00a320 million and we\u2019d have needed to spend \u00a350 million to get him in, should we have? What if the rules mean that if we did that we\u2019d only be allowed to spend \u00a360 million in the summer instead of \u00a3100 million? What if the player didn\u2019t immediately settle? Where would we go from there? It is, as I keep pointing out, more nuanced than fans would like to admit.<\/p>\n<h3>Form<\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019ve already touched on this with relation to Daniel Sturridge, but form has been a crucial factor this month. It\u2019s perfectly normal for players to lose their form for a few games or even weeks. The issue that we\u2019ve had is that so many of our lads have lost their form at the same time. Anyone who knows anything about football was saying that Roberto Firmino is best when he\u2019s down the middle. When you push him out wide you lose a lot of what he offers and you only need to see how well we were attacking against Swansea with him there compared to how blunt we looked when we pushed him wide to accommodate a \u2018proper\u2019 attacker to see that that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly the Brazilian had his house burgled and was caught drink-driving in the same week, meaning that his head was suddenly all over the place. His form dipped as a consequence and suddenly this player who had looked killer for most of the season stopped offering the same level of quality. he was still good, just not as good as before. So now the manager\u2019s turning to Daniel Sturridge, a player who would be considered one of the club\u2019s best strikers of all time if his conversion rate was the only stat that mattered. Instead it\u2019s his fitness levels that dominate conversations and his absences more relevant to how he\u2019s viewed than his goal scoring record.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_288\" style=\"width: 543px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-288\" class=\"size-large wp-image-288\" src=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Firmino-and-Lallana-Discuss-Mid-Game-533x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"533\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Firmino-and-Lallana-Discuss-Mid-Game-533x400.jpg 533w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Firmino-and-Lallana-Discuss-Mid-Game-267x200.jpg 267w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Firmino-and-Lallana-Discuss-Mid-Game-65x50.jpg 65w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 533px) 100vw, 533px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-288\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Firmino<\/p><\/div>\n<p>He picked up an injury just when he would have been most useful to the team and everyone said \u2018here we go again\u2019, happily ignoring the fact that he\u2019s actually been fit and firing for the best part of eighteen months now. He came into the team but failed to score in the same unnerving manner of his past, so suddenly he\u2019s \u2018a waste of space\u2019 and has \u2018lost it\u2019. Divock Origi, meanwhile, is playing inconsistently in a manner that isn\u2019t exactly unheard of for a young player. When he\u2019s on his game he looks like a world beater, but isn\u2019t yet experience enough to know how to play like that week-in, week-out. Accordingly we have no in-form striker to turn to at a time when goals are drying up all over the pitch. Far from ideal.<\/p>\n<p>James Milner genuinely looked like the best left-back in the league from August to December, yet since the turn of the year he looks like a converted midfielder playing out of position. Should Klopp have abandoned a project that appeared to be working at the first sign of trouble? Or ask a player that is full of talent and experience to keep going and play himself into form? The answer might have been easier if our other option in the position was a brainless dimwit. Adam Lallana\u2019s form has also dipped of late, yet he was regularly up there as our player of the month for the first part of the campaign. The manager earned plaudits for moving him back into central midfield but he was an attacking midfielder originally, so was it so outrageous of Klopp to push him up to replace Man\u00e9?<\/p>\n<h3>The Squad<\/h3>\n<p>This is perhaps the most crucial part of the whole problem. Much like Leicester last season, Antonio Conte hasn\u2019t had to make too many changes to his starting XI. When you\u2019ve got a decent team then you want to get it onto the pitch as often as possible. As I\u2019ve already explained, J\u00fcrgen Klopp hasn\u2019t had that option for the entire season, so he\u2019s had to turn to his squad. The problematic thing is that his squad isn\u2019t good enough and we\u2019ve been seeing the weaknesses in it when we\u2019ve had to use it.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_620\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-620\" class=\"size-large wp-image-620\" src=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Sadio-Mane_EUO_Photo-Works-Bigstock-600x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Sadio-Mane_EUO_Photo-Works-Bigstock-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Sadio-Mane_EUO_Photo-Works-Bigstock-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Sadio-Mane_EUO_Photo-Works-Bigstock-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Sadio-Mane_EUO_Photo-Works-Bigstock.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-620\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo-Works \/ Bigstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>More than a few Liverpool fans suggested that Klopp could use Sheyi Ojo when Sadio Man\u00e9 went off to AFCON but the youngster\u2019s been out injured and hasn\u2019t looked ready. Chucking him in might well have damaged him irreparably moving forward so would it have been worth it? The major issue that J\u00fcrgen Klopp has to face up to is that the kids aren\u2019t ready and the fringe players aren\u2019t good enough. Lucas Leiva, Alberto Moreno, Kevin Stewart, even Emre Can. None of them are the sort of players that you\u2019d want to turn to when the going gets tough and ask them to carry your team.<\/p>\n<p>So players have been absent or out of form and the lads that have needed to come in and replace them haven\u2019t been up to the task. That\u2019s the reality of where things have gone wrong. The question is, what can the manager do about it and where do we go from here? I\u2019ll have a look at that next week\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s be honest, wherever we go from here will feel like a bit of an anti-climax. When the champagne corks popped at midnight to herald in 2017 our win over Manchester City was still fresh in most people\u2019s minds. The cheers of Anfield had barely faded away and anything seemed possible, with the league leaders Chelsea just six points ahead of us and having to come to our place before the race was run. We were the top scorers in the Premier League and had spent the first half of the season playing some of the best football in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}