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Will Liverpool ever get this chance again?

Liverpool have pushed Manchester United all the way this season in the league but were they ever good enough to win the title? Pundits are right to say Liverpool have improved from the past few seasons, but this still isn’i enough to stop United winning their 18th league title.

The Merseyside outfit are the first team in England to lose only two games over the course of a season and not win the title. The problem is that with one game to go they have drawn eleven games. United might have lost four games but they have won 27, compared to Liverpool’s 24. Liverpool drew at home to Hull, drew away to Wigan and drew with Stoke both home and away. With respect to these teams, title winning outfits finish them off, like United do year in, year out. Liverpool lost the title because of these consistent draws. United managed to grind out wins against these teams, despite performing beyond their best.

Why have Liverpool drawn all these games? They simply don’t know how to kill teams off, due to the lack of experience challenging for a title. Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres are world class players with bags of creativity, who are good enough to win the title. It will be no coincidence that seven of Liverpool’s 11 draws were when Gerrard and Torres were not playing. United have the strength in depth of creative players to cope without players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney.

Rafael Benitez likes to play with two holding midfielders then three ‘creative’ midfielders in front of them. When Gerrard can’t play where is the creativity? Ex-Manchester City loanee, Albert Riera plays on the left wing and he has looked a bargain, at £8 million pounds from Espanyol but who else is there? Dirk Kuyt has failed to impress up front so Benitez has used him on the right. There is no doubt that the Dutchman puts in a shift down that right flank but he is out of the action in that position and this prevents him from creating things. In 2007, Liverpool signed Ryan Babel for around £11.5 million. Big things were expected from this big money signing but he hasn’t done much since coming over to these shores. Babel rarely starts and when he does come on as a substitute, he doesn’t set the world a light. Is he really top four quality? Yossi Benayoun was certainly a success at West ham but this was a smaller club where he was the main man in the centre of midfield or on the wing. Benitez wants top quality players to win him the league but is Benayoun one of these? He doesn’t really have the pace to beat a player on the wing and he can’t command play in the centre like Gerrard does. The lack of quality means a lack of creativity.

Gerrard and Torres have scored 29 goals between them in the Premier League and these goals were most certainly missed in the 11 games they didn’t play in. Kuyt has scored 12 times along with seven from Benayoun but Riera is next on the goal scoring list with three. It is hard to see where the goals will come from when Gerrard or Torres are out. Well we have seen it this season. Ronaldo and Rooney might only have scored one goal more in total than Gerrard and Torres but they have made a combined amount of 67 appearances in the Premier League this season compared to 57 of Gerrard and Torres. If Gerrard and Torres made as many appearances as Ronaldo and Rooney then Liverpool could have quite easily won the title by now.

Liverpool have no doubt improved on last season but will they ever improve enough to win the league? Liverpool will have benefited from challenging for the title this season but Benitez didn’t really change the squad that much from last season. If Benitez doesn’t address this issue for next season then Chelsea are the more likely challengers to United. Benitez needs to concentrate more on improving his squad rather than improving his mind games because that is one title he will never wrestle away from Alex Ferguson.

Posted by Patrick Day on Monday, 18th May 2009

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