It’s all over. My predictions over how many points the likes of Spurs, City and Villa will drop between now and the end of the season may well be proven to be accurate but ultimately my hopes for Liverpool clinching fourth depended on us taking 16 points from our final 6 matches. We have taken just 2 from our first 2 of those and now cannot mathematically achieve 70 points.
Today’s result was harsh and an unfair reflection of the game. From the first whistle to the last, we dominated Fulham whose ambitions for this game extended no further than a clean sheet. We made scoring chances but Mark Schwarzer has been one of those keepers over the years who always plays a blinder against us and in truth, he was required to make no extraordinary saves and therein lies the problem.
The likes of Aquilani, Ngog and even Babel continually threatened to threaten without ever managing to do so. From Maxi Rodriguez and Glen Johnson we got industry but ultimately little real quality and in games such as this, a moment of genuine quality is required.
Of course, had referee Andre Mariner emerged from puberty with a set of balls, Jonathan Greening would have been correctly sent off in the 36th minute and Liverpool would have faced 9 men behind the ball instead of 10. We will never get to find out if, under those circumstances, Fulham would have tired and capitulated. As it was, it was a relatively simple task for them to shut out Liverpool for 90 minutes.
The substitutes Kuyt, Benayoun and Pacheco added nothing to Liverpool as an attacking force and it speaks volumes that our best efforts came from defensive midfielder Javier Mascherano, our centre-half turned left-back Daniel Agger, and our centre-half Sotirios Krygiakos.
Last season it was said that we were a two-man team: those men being Torres and Gerrard. Though I don’t agree with the statement, I agree that last season with those two men on the pitch, Liverpool were infinitely more likely to win matches and without one or both they often struggled to break down resilient defences. This season, the statement could easily be changed to ‘Liverpool is a one-man team’ such has been the deterioration in Steven Gerrard’s game.
With no Torres on the field today, Liverpool needed someone to deliver a performance of real attacking quality. Had Liverpool’s captain delivered a captain’s performance, perhaps we might have taken 3 points and still been in the race for fourth place. Instead, yet another game passed Gerrard by and his most noticeable contribution was to contort his face in yet another childish display of frustration as a teammate’s pass found an opponent instead of his skipper.
People frequently attempt to scaremonger saying Gerrard will leave if we don’t finish fourth. We won’t finish fourth and Gerrard is as culpable as anyone else for that. Unlike much of the dross and nearly-men Rafa has been forced to sign due to the financial constraints placed upon the club by the bastard Americans, Gerrard is a player with the ability to elevate his team to new heights. This campaign he has dragged them to lower depths more often than not.
Gerrard can fucking go. Torres is the one outfield player left at the club who can truly be described as one of the best players in the world and sadly that is the problem. Torres aside, we are a Europa League team and being a Europa League team is now something we will have to get used to.
Part of me thinks we should now go all out to win the Europa even if it means resting players for our remaining League fixtures. If we win the competition, we’ll be back in it next season irrespective of where we finish and if we don’t I just hope that wherever we finish jolts the owners into the belated realisation that the fault for this season’s regression lies not with the manager but with the lack of investment in the team at a time when three rival teams have been heavily invested in.
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