White Suburban Punk

Liverpool sit in seventh place in the Barclays Premier League as of today, with 35 points through 21 games. They trail Arsenal by one point for fifth and Chelsea by five points for fourth. They are in the Carling Cup semifinals and hold a 1-0 lead over Manchester City, with the return leg next Wednesday at Anfield. And in the FA Cup, they have reached the 4th Round (32 teams left) and will face Manchester United at Anfield on Saturday, January 28.

In the big picture, the results so far aren’t too bad, certainly better than where they were at this time last year. The Premiership results have been the most disappointing, obviously. They have conceded only 18 goals, second in the league behind Man City (16), but have scored just 24 goals, by far the lowest in the top seven. League leaders Man City have scored 57.

Andy Carroll has scored just two league goals this year, while Luis Suarez leads the team with five. However, Suarez is currently sitting out with an astounding eight game suspension for allegedly racist remarks made to Manchester United’s Patrice Evra earlier in the year.  I wonder what Suarez’s grandfather (who is black) thinks of that.

Injury-wise, they lost midfielder Lucas for the year on a devastating knee injury. He had been having a very good season. Jay Spearing has gotten a bit more playing time in his absence. On the bright side, Skipper Steven Gerrard is finally healthy. He ended up hardly playing at all in the 2011 calendar year, but he is back in the starting 11 and has made his presence felt.

Liverpool’s home form has been dreadful, with four wins and seven draws in 11 games. They have tied Sunderland, Man U, Norwich, Swansea, Man City, Blackburn, and Stoke at Anfield. There are rumors the club is on the hunt for another striker in the January transfer window, but it would really take a colossal signing to make a significant difference. With Suarez in the lineup, Liverpool seemed to lead the league in unfulfilled scoring chances, but in the last game at home against Stoke, the team failed to even do that. Suarez himself has seemed a bit erratic in his finishing this season, but maybe playing with Gerrard on a consistent basis will bring about an improvement once he returns. It can hardly get much worse.

Looking ahead to the rest of the season, the club have an excellent chance of winning hardware in the Carling Cup. They are in good shape against Man City, and in the other semifinal, Crystal Palace leads Cardiff, 1-0, so they wouldn’t have to face a huge club at Wembley. They have also been performing well in the FA Cup, and the match against Man U at Anfield will be massive. However, I honestly don’t hold out much hope for the Premiership. It seems like every time they start playing well and get close to the top four, they immediately stumble with another embarrassing draw at home. They’ve dropped so many points already that it seems unlikely they could get on the kind of sustained run of excellent football that would be required to get back into the race. There are 17 league games remaining, though, so they have a lot of time to make up ground.

So, was it a successful football season?

Anytime your team loses its bowl game, the answer has to lean towards no. Wisconsin football has certainly come a long way, though. Not long ago, just making any bowl game was a successful season. But the expectations are much higher now. In the last two seasons, Wisconsin has taken the mantle from Ohio State as the best team in the Big Ten. But it’s tainted by back-to-back losses in the Rose Bowl.

Just think how harsh the last four losses have been for fans of this team. The game-tying two point conversion batted down in last year’s Rose Bowl. The Hail Mary at Michigan State. The inexplicable defensive breakdown at Ohio State. And then everything that went wrong in this year’s Rose Bowl. Each loss heartbreaking, stunning, a sucker punch to the stomach.

And where are the countervailing wins, the ones we didn’t deserve but pulled out? There haven’t been any, at least not in the last year. The Nebraska game had loads of pregame hype, but it was a rout. The Penn State game was for the division championship, and it was another rout. The Big Ten Championship was a wild, fantastic game, but it just seemed like it was the Badgers’ turn. Aren’t these things supposed to even out?

At this time last year, expectations for Wisconsin football were fairly low. There was a lot of talent coming back, but they didn’t have anyone to play quarterback. Russell Wilson transformed everything and showed Wisconsin fans how much better their program could be with a legitimately elite quarterback. The Badgers finished #10 in the AP poll and were quite literally two plays away from playing for the national championship.

This year’s situation is remarkably similar, but more serious. Wisconsin loses some great talent on the offensive line again, but it seems there is always more to come. Montee Ball decided to come back for his senior year, even though there is virtually no chance he will be able to approach the numbers he compiled this season. Once again, the quarterback position is the big question on the field. But now Bret Bielema also has to replace almost all of his offensive assistants. Paul Chryst took the head job at Pittsburgh and took several coaches with him, including the recruiting coordinator, Joe Rudolph. So this offseason will really be like none other for Bielema.

No matter who he gets to run the offense, given the turmoil at Penn State and the fact that Ohio State is ineligible for postseason play next year, it looks like it will be between Wisconsin and Purdue for next year’s division title, so another trip to the conference championship is likely. So even if they take a huge step backward, they may still be one game away from a third straight trip to Pasadena.

The day after the Rose Bowl, Wisconsin basketball lost at home to Michigan State on one of the most bizarre plays I’ve ever seen, where the clocks at the Kohl Center were out of sync so a Ryan Evans tying three pointer in overtime was disallowed. That was the second straight home loss, and the Badgers went on to lose at Michigan to make it three in a row. I guess they’re not as good as we thought they were. At this point, losses like these just feel like par for the course, like I almost feel numb to them. I don’t know, maybe it’s from growing up a Red Sox fan.