West Brom 2 Liverpool 1: Reflections

Having praised Jay Spearing for his performance at Sunderland, it’s only fair to point out he was completely ineffective at the Hawthorns.

Meireles was equally ineffective and in his case this is becoming the norm. I’m becoming increasingly concerned that he is Bruno Cheyrou Mk II. Barring a hot streak in which he scored the winner in a 1-0 victory at Stamford Bridge, Raul has been pretty anonymous and at times downright useless this season. Perhaps he’s being played out of position but in that case I would ask what is his position? With Gerrard now out for longer, Meireles has to start in central midfield alongside Lucas from now on. If he can’t deliver the goods, serious questions have to be asked over his future in the summer.

I thought Skrtel was our best defender but perhaps I won’t celebrate next time he scores considering we never win and always concede 2 when he does. It’s hard to know if Kenny could have done more to secure a decent result from this game.

Losing Johnson then Agger so early in the game severely restricted his ability to influence matters in terms of changing personnel. Meanwhile, with so many square pegs in round holes on the pitch, I’m not sure what more anyone could have done to get them to play better than they did. With hindsight, the key decision that I think Kenny got wrong was replacing the injured Johnson with Kyrgiakos and switching Agger to left-back. Had that change not been made, through cause and effect, Agger would not have got injured (at least not in the same way) and Kyrgiakos wouldn’t have conceded the first penalty and been culpable in the second.

Of course, we’ll never know what would have happened but to me, the key reason I think this was a wrong decision was that it removed our only central defender capable of playing football from central defence and left two stoppers alongside a third stopper at right-back. Once Agger got injured, we then had four stoppers across the back four and the chances of them influencing matters at the other end of the pitch from open play were miniscule. With hindsight, I think he should have left Agger in the middle and brought on Wilson. It’s easy to say that with hindsight though.

I’m sure that Kenny will be appointed permanent manager of Liverpool FC in the summer and there are many reasons why that would be a positive move. However, I still have some nagging doubts over his tactical capability. As a motivator, he is second to none and he has certainly inspired some great results and an unbelievable turnaround in our season. I’m still looking for some evidence that he can make an important tactical switch to affect a game in our favour when we need it. That was something Rafa did time and time again – especially in Europe – but so far under Kenny, matches have either gone our way or they haven’t. His substitutions have been mostly inconsequential in terms of affecting a game’s outcome and barring the unobvious selection of Jay Spearing in the derby and at Sunderland, there has been nothing unexpected about his team selections since he first deployed Johnson at left back to accommodate Kelly in only his second game in charge.

I’m honestly not sure how fair it is to criticise Kenny for any of that given that he inherited a threadbare squad lacking quality outside of the first XI that has since suffered multiple injuries to key personnel. I just question if, like in the Braga game, despite the limitations of the players available, Kenny could have done something different tactically to avoid a defeat. I think the only fair way to assess Kenny will be next season when hopefully he will have been able to recruit some, if not all, of the personnel we desperately require.

When he has options to choose from, only then can we judge him on what he does with those options. One thing is certain, with Johnson now likely to be out for a while with his hamstring injury and with Kelly looking unlikely to play again this season, we’re going to have to come up with a tactic that doesn’t involve overlapping full-backs.