Liverpool and schoolboy football: Attack, attack, attack

While it’s not exactly a coming together of fate and destiny nor a natural or probabilistic miracle, the end of the calendar year coinciding with the turn of the football season is more than just an artistic rendition of administrative beauty. The New Year, almost teasingly, presents an alluring opportunity for clubs, players, managers, chairmen/chairwomen and fans to make resolutions that they hope to keep, only to break them in the first week itself. The flying full-back with defensive frailties goes missing in the first minute of new year, the underachieving striker unerringly loses the plot when presented with an open goal, and the hopeful mid-fielder cannot manage to keep his feet on the ground when confronted with a rush of blood. The lonely goalkeeper, when not flapping his hands about helplessly, can only watch the self-destruction, stranded on the line.

How Brendan Rodgers will be wishing that his wards can keep their promises.

Liverpool, for all their points and shouts of a title charge, resemble young schoolboys, charged and restless, harrying after the ball, but with little thought towards responsibility.

Martin Skrtel: Own-goal scorer supreme

Fifth at the turn of the year is no mean achievement for a team with an attrition rate over the last few years high enough to rival that of a sinking Indian BPO firm. Liverpool have struggled for any semblance of stability on and off the pitch and began 2013-14 with a manager with an entire season under his belt for the first time since Rafa Benitez in 2009-10. Rodgers, slowly but surely, has been able to put his “philosophy” into place.

Rodgers identified the lack of goals as a problem early in his tenure, and one could not argue against the Northern Irishman.

After having scored 77 league goals in the agonisingly-close 2008-09 season, the club’s goal scoring prowess had been on the decline. Rafa Benitez’s last season saw the number of league goals drop by more than 20% to 61.

The fractured season of Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish witnessed another decline, albeit marginal, with the opposition breached only 59 times in 38 games. Kenny Dalglish’s season of total charge witnessed another alarming drop in goals scored, which numbered just 47: a measly 1.24 per match.

Then along came B-Rod, and goals scored soared to 71 in 2012-13. And the current season sees the Reds only behind the free-scoring Manchester City, with 44. Yes, in just 19 games.

Luis Suarez: Leading Liverpool’s goal-scoring charge

There is little to doubt that Liverpool’s game has improved since the dark times under Benitez, Hodgson and Dalglish. Goals are not the problem, especially against clubs in the bottom half of the table.

However, just as the goal-scoring and the head-rush associated with it attracts children to the striker’s position during pick-up games, defensive responsibilities seem to be forgotten by Liverpool under Rodgers, virtually becoming a game of who-scores-more-wins.

Rafa Benitez’s title-challenging Reds conceded just 27 goals in the league to end with a goal difference of 50. Twenty clean sheets out of 38 meant having Jamie Carragher in your Fantasy Football team was a top, top, top priority.

Benitez’s ill-fated last season saw the clean sheet percentage fall to 45%, with 35 goals conceded. Still less than one goal conceded per game, yes. But when coupled with the fall in goals scored, the writing was on the wall.

The Hodgson-Dalglish farce witnessed 14 clean sheets, 44 goals conceded, and a goal difference of 15.

Dalglish’s sole season in total command saw just 12 shut-outs, with the goal difference falling to a miserable seven.

Rodgers first season led to a return to the goal-scoring ways. Clean sheets rose to 16. However, the number of goals conceded was still above the worrying 40-point mark at 43.

This season has already seen 23 goals being conceded, at a rate of 1.21 per match, with just five clean sheets. No team with title aspirations can hope to fulfill them when leaking more than a goal per match.

Defensive deficiencies have not been new to Liverpool. If anything, it has been the Reds’ susceptibility at the back which has undermined their season, with only Sunderland and West Ham United – eleven each – having dropped more points than Liverpool (10), from positions of strength (either draw or winning positions). While it can be argued that six of them have come in the last two matches against Manchester City and Chelsea, the leaky back-line has been there for all to see. Straightforward set-piece duties have been ignored, with Martin Skrtel – having regained his place in the starting eleven with some sterling performances, admittedly – more concerned about exchanging jerseys before full-time. It sure is a funny season when your highest scoring defender has scored as many own-goals as goals for (Skrtel with two of each variety).

As for the goal scoring prowess, there are just two words: Luis Suarez, who sits atop the charts with 19 in 14 appearances in 2013-14, and 29 in the entire calendar year. After having missed nine league games. Take him out – purely as a hypothetical exercise – and all the excitement about a return to free-scoring ways of the past may be overstated.

For all the talk about scoring goals and free-flowing attacking football, Liverpool will never challenge for the title unless they can tighten the back. For too long has the left-back position been without an adequate cover for Jose Enrique. Although Glen Johnson is an assured presence on either flank, it’s not going to be long before his place in the eleven comes under scrutiny, if his performances this season have been anything to go by. Forget England; Johnson isn’t even the best right-back in Liverpool (read Seamus Coleman).

The heart of the defence, which is supposed to inspire confidence and be a bastion of ever-presence, has been nothing but a case of musical chairs. Kolo Toure, Martin Skrtel, Daniel Agger and Mamadou Sakho have all done their bit in the concession of goals. By stocking up on international defenders, Rodgers may have given himself quality options, but there will always be pressure to play them, even though he may not admit to it. Having made Daniel Agger the vice-captain, there is only so long that he can be kept on the bench. Add the acquisition of a centre-back for upwards of £15 million into the mix (Sakho), and one is not doing oneself any favours. What complicates matters even more is if the two best players for the position – Sakho and Agger – are left-footed. Skrtel, for all his last-ditch tackles and emphatic headers, is not a match for either of the two aforementioned players.

And we have not even started talking about Tiago Ilori and Sebastien Coates yet. While the latter is currently injured, the former is yet to get a look-in.

Few would have predicted at the beginning of the season that Liverpool would be so close to the top, let alone sitting pretty at Christmas. Then again, even fewer would have predicted Luis Suarez’s sensational spree on his return from suspension. What one could have foreseen, however, was the defensive generosity. Having begun the season with three consecutive clean sheets, Liverpool’s defensive season has gone off the boil.

At the heart of the victory: (L-R) Ronnie Rosenthal, Ian Rush, Ronnie Whelan, Alan Hansen and John Barnes celebrate after becoming league champions in May 1990.

A time will come in the coming six months when the team of 2013-14 will be compared to the electric 1987-88 side, with both comprising of exquisite players such as John Barnes, Peter Beardsely, John Aldridge, Kenny Dalglish, Luis Suarez, Phillipe Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge. The class of 1987-88 scored 87 goals in a 40-game season, and the current side are well on their to matching it.

Sir Tom Finney may have termed Liverpool’s 5-0 demolition of Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in April 1988 as the “finest exhibition” of the game he had ever seen, but the legendary title-winning side built by Kenny Dalglish had the steel of Alan Hansen and company at the back, a defensive line-up which let slip only 24 goals in 40 league games, keeping a clean sheet 21 times.

Come January 1, Liverpool will play Hull City at home, and no one would put it past them to go rampant and score half-a-dozen. Me? I’ll take a 1-0, thank you very much.