State of Liverpool
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.
Tags: Liverpool, Luis Suarez, Soccer, Steven Gerrard
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Liverpool, Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.