At the beginning of this season I had the wonderful Caroline Sturken on the podcast to try and make some predictions as to how the league would pan to in 20/21. Both Caroline and I were absolutely sure, as I know many of you were, that Liverpool would once again win the title. Caroline suggested that it may not be as easy as it had been last year, but we were both pretty confident that it would happen.
Here we stand however, at the beginning of January, and Liverpool are some 4 points off top spot and right in the mix with the rest of the clubs in the top 6. Not only this but Liverpool haven’t scored in 3 games, and they face a very tough challenge next week against Spurs, so what went wrong for the Reds?
Injuries
There is absolutely no doubt that losing Van Dijk, Matip and Joe Gomez all at the same time had damaging consequences on this team, no team in the league could lose all of their center backs and survive. What we did see however was that Liverpool team rally and they were still churning out performances, yet they couldn’t quite keep it going. Beyond the positional injuries, few understand just what VVD gives the rest of the team, he really is the anchor that allows everything else to happen.
Fallible
What this Liverpool team have achieved over the last 2 seasons has been nothing short of breathtaking, they have smashed records all over the place and went unbeaten for almost 2 years, they still haven’t been beaten at Anfield since 2018! This year however, a couple of poor results and the 7-2 drubbing at the hands of Aston Villa has meant that those players now realize that they are not superhuman, which is how they will have felt in recent years. This happens to clubs who fly so high and it has certainly happened with Liverpool.
Stale Strikers
Mane, Firmino and Salah, things have just dried up and those players have become stale. Salah is still scoring of course, although a few penalties have helped to bump those figures up. New signing Diego Jota looked to be the perfect tonic for Liverpool and he has really it the ground running. Sadly however Jota was injured and the result has been 3 games without a single goal, and a front 3 which looks stale and out of ideas.
Positives
The title race is not over by any stretch of the imagination for Liverpool, but they need to change things quickly. Once they can get Henderson out of defense and into midfield with Thiago, once they get Trent back on form and once Jota is once again pushing for those positions and creating competition for places, that is when this Liverpool side will be back to their best, but they had better hurry up whilst there is still time.
What do you make of Liverpool’s season so far.
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