ডাকবাংলা

Howler at Home

Liverpool’s home form has let them down. Going into the Leicester City game, Liverpool fans and in fact, football fans across who follow the Premier League thought that this was the game where Liverpool could turn things around – especially when they were up one goal. they dominating the game and it was almost as if Liverpool were back! Then in the space of seven minutes – the free kick from Maddison was in, there was a mix-up with Alison and Kabak and at the end of those seven minutes, Liverpool lost 3-1 and that was just a devastating turnaround. This sort of typifies the fragility of the football club at the moment. I say this out of frustration right now, that Liverpool winning is against form and out of character than Liverpool losing which was the case two months ago. 

The discourse about Liverpool has also begun to change – it isn’t the case of a good team playing badly, it is just a bad team currently. The fixture against Leicester was an important one because of the positioning of both the clubs and Liverpool didn’t really have an answer. Alison’s father passed away recently, and if one sees the way he has been performing latterly, the question does arise, how much pressure is he playing under? It doesn’t mean that this is the only reason – but it does point to the underlying reasons why Liverpool hasn’t been playing so well. 

Liverpool need to figure out how to get themselves out of a rut – because they are in one right now. Their game against Everton is proof of just that. I commented on social media that every time Liverpool have come up against an English keeper – the keeper has played particularly well on the day. In the Everton game as well, Jordan Pickford had an outstanding game. As an opposition, if you can’t beat the goalie because the goalie is so good, then is it bad play or is it great goalkeeping? In the case of the derby match – Jordan Pickford came out on top.

Now Liverpool look forward to taking on Sheffield United, who are at the bottom of the league – a game which two or three months ago, we wouldn’t have even questioned the outcome. It is not as if Sheffield Utd are playing particularly well either but all of a sudden this becomes a tricky game for Liverpool. But in order to win, I think Liverpool need to change either their training – the way they are doing it, how they are training, how much training even. I think sometimes the argument put forward it train harder to get better, and sometimes it is train less to get better. 

Looking at the Premier League table right now, you have Everton with a game in hand, Aston Villa with two, Tottenham with one – and the latter two could go beyond Liverpool with a win each and there are genuine chances that Liverpool could finish mid-table if they continue this form. They had won a tricky match against Leipzig in the Champions League and the fans felt – that yes, we are back. But it was more that Leipzig was playing average football than the fact that Liverpool was playing fantastic football. It was almost like false dawn. They do need to change things – and they need to freshen things up and make a change immediately. 

Manchester City – where do we go with this? They are incredible right now – 19 games in a row undefeated in all competitions. I was at the game where they lost to the Spurs 2-0 initially, and I was feeling bad for City because Spurs were playing so defensively and not giving them much of a chance. But since then it has been a juggernaut and interestingly now them beating Spurs 3-0, which was comfortable. They also then went on to beat Arsenal, which I had thought would be a tricky game – although as many Manchester City fans would say, they could have beaten them 5-0. But it was way that they won that was very important – they scored very early and contained the game. This is something that I have seen with Barcelona where they can win a game at half-time and then kill the game off in the second half. The Arsenal game was similar to this – there was total control from City’s side. It’s almost looking like Pep Guardiola now has so much control over the game, that he is conserving player energy knowing that they have a fight ahead for four trophies thereafter. They are absolutely wonderful to watch at the moment. 

The weekend ahead promises to be an interesting one from the Premier League’s point of view – West Ham go to the Eithad – in fact, West Ham are in a positon where they never have before. You always want the best teams to play the best teams but a part of me wants West Ham to do well against Manchester City – it will be interesting to watch. David Moyes is bathing in the glory at the moment as West Ham have proved people wrong by playing so well and being so consistent this season but it has to be seen how he plans to approach the City game – will he be defend-defend and hope to get a draw out of it or he actually goes for the win. 

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