Liverpool are up the creek with two injured paddles

This isn’t really a new post, it is more of a follow on from my rant about the poverty of talent that Benitez has contaminated the Liverpool squad with. My good friend Jonny Charwat left a comment about the fairly obvious point that Liverpool were composed of two world class players and should an injury befall them, there would be hell  to pay.

Have Liverpool ever signed someone worse...

Well now they are without a fully fit Torres and Gerrard, and they have only won one game in seven. Put simply, their players aren’t good enough and they haven’t been for some time, I know there are off-the-field problems but top level professionals should be able to get over that. Their draw midweek against Lyon was indicative of Liverpool troubles; they only have themselves to blame. Kyrgiakos and Insua conspired to involve themselves in some truly shocking defending, allowing Lyon to have two men clear on goal. The point is not only what were those two defenders doing in that instance but what were they doing wearing that shirt at all. 

These two players are currently sub-standard even by mid-table standards. Insua probably has a bright future ahead of him and obviously he needs games to make sure he matures properly but Kyrgiakos has never played at the highest level and the highlight of his career was at Rangers, who would come somewhere between 10th and 17th if they were in the Premiership (although that’s another post).

... of course they have

Liverpool’s defence is a serious cause for concern, Reina is excellent but Johnson is flawed, Carragher is past his best, Skrtel is not fulfilling his early potential, Agger is injury prone, Insua is inexperienced, Hyppia is no longer there and the less said about Kyrgiakos the better. That old war-horse Jamie Carragher is starting to creak and he lacks the natural ability and athletisism to bail himself out from the tight situations he once thrived in. Liverpool are hemorrhaging goals and their strikers are not helping them out. 

I really cannot stress enough how poor some of their players are and to start a season with only one decent striker is crazy, I mean clinically insane. Torres has no decent replacement; Ngog is not good enough for Liverpool. For god’s sake (little g) Tottenham have Crouch and Pavlyuchenko scratching for games despite both having 6-7 years experience as established high level performers. Benitez does have Kuyt and Babel,  both of whom started their careers as strikers, but El Sulk in his infinite wisdom doesn’t ever play them there. Having one striker is mental not just in case of injury but because it completely limits Liverpool tactically.

Benitez is doing everything he can to surpass the worst manager in Scouse history

They can’t effectively mix it up, if they need a late goal and they change formation to two or three up front, they are forced to call on wingers or substandard strikers to bail them out. Going back to Spurs, in the same situation they could throw on all their strikers and have a front line with 196 international caps and 84 goals as opposed to Liverpool’s 162 caps and, more importantly, 41 goals and Tottenham aren’t even title contenders.

As it stands, confidence is low, their manager is too stubborn to ring the necessary changes, their players are complete spice and their two world class players are unlikely to be fully fit for some time. In short, they are going to have to turn this around quickly if they are to avoid being over taken by the resurgent Manchester City, Aston Villa and Everton. Rant over, oh yeah, and sack Benitez and don’t get me started on Lucas Leiva.

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