Dalglish hears for the first time that the Andy Carroll fee wasn't the £3.5m he'd originally authorized
With ten minutes to go at the Reebok Liverpool were trailing by two goals against a side in the bottom three with one of the worst home records in the league. You’d expect some kind of onslaught, a peppering of the Bolton box perhaps or at the very least a few speculative efforts from Steven Gerard. None were forthcoming. Liverpool gave up.
The result followed a no-score draw with Stoke and an embarrassing turnaround against Man City. The only bright light was a 1-0 backs-to-the-wall victory over the Manchester side. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This time last year The King had just returned and with it the sort of football Liverpool haven’t consistently tried to play for over a decade and at times – like in the 5-2 hammering of Fulham – they looked like the Liverpool that fans keep reminding us they used to be.
The squad was still short, though. They needed some width to supply Andy Carroll, they needed some defensive cover for the increasingly creaky Jamie Carragher and they needed some more creativity in midfield. All these issues were addressed in the summer and some people were even tipping Dalglish’s new look Liverpool for a tilt at the title. And why not? Manchester United were a team in transition who seem completely incapable of understanding that top teams cannot operate without a midfield, Man City were a highly paid team of strangers, while Chelsea decided to address their aging squad by taking the unusual approach of appointing an incredibly youthful manager instead of buying younger players.
Liverpool, at the very least, should be able to hang on to the short strings of these teams for much of the season, even if a title tilt seemed a touch beyond them. Of course, anything was possible with the King in charge.
And the £10m set-piece ability of Charlie Adam - who no longer takes the set-pieces
Then the season started. First up was Sunderland and Liverpool were brilliant. They tore into a ragged Sunderland side and but for some profligate finishing would have been much more than 1-0 up at the break. Stewart Downing was excellent that day, Jordan Henderson was neat and tidy and Luis Suarez was his usual energetic buzz-saw self. At least they were for forty five minutes. The second half they were awful. Disjointed, lose in possession and seemingly totally lacking in fitness; they were lucky to get away with a draw. And that’s been their season ever since. Occasionally excellent if wasteful in front of goal, often missing a creative spark and increasingly lacking in confidence, they’re a team who look out of sorts and worse, even leaderless.
There’s been some good performances (Chelsea away, United at home) bad performances (Tottenham Bolton away, Swansea at home) but mainly there’s been mediocre performances, 100 million pound should buy you a little more. Of course, football has the ability to change in an instant and two convincing wins in the coming week against the two Manchester teams would go a long way to lifting the air of doom around Anfield but the problem is not the games against the better sides it’s the ones against the smaller clubs.
In that wonderful way inferiority complexes work, you try that bit harder against teams you’re worried you’re not as good as, not because it’s your job as a professional to give your all but because you play for a club who are desperate to prove that they’re are still one of the big boys, that they can still compete against the best teams in the world and that their glorious history is not a noose around their neck but a signpost to what’s just up ahead.
Luck has played its part bemoan a lot of fans. Bolton weren’t lucky, though and that’s the hardest part of it. Liverpool are a once great side surrounded by the decaying remnants of their own history. It’s in their famous ground, now too small to compete with the other top sides in the league, it’s in their trophy cabinet that is fuller than any other side in England but which hasn’t been re-stocked in five years and it’s in the dugout in the guise of their manager and greatest ever player. It’s everywhere but on the pitch.
