Good Game Bad Game [vs Tottenham Hotspur]

Good Game Bad Game [vs Tottenham Hotspur]
There were too many mediocre players out there on this occasion for me to even to attempt to split them between those who played well and those who didn’t. This team played as if they didn’t know each other – which, from a playing perspective, is true – and as a result every aspect of Liverpool’s game failed to click.

Faced with Tottenham Hotspur, a team riding the confidence wave and with practically the first eleven out there, there was only going to be one conclusion.

Yet the nagging doubt at the back of my head is that, had Liverpool been fractionally more careful then they could have won this. But they weren’t and that’s that.

As I said in the introduction, there were too many mediocre performances. Worryingly, these didn’t come from the youngsters like Damien Plessis and Nabil El Zhar both of whom had decent games in my mind, but rather from people like Philip Degen and Andrea Dossena.

The two full-backs were atrocious which can turn out to be a significant problem. The concept of defending seems alien to Dossena and it was telling that, when Insua came on, it was the Argentine who slotted in at left-back.

As for Degen: what can you say? I struggle to think of a player who has played a worse game than he did against Spurs. Of course, it is still early on and all that but let’s just say that I’m hoping that his contract only covered one season. If I were Stephen Darby, I’d be knocking on Benitez’s door this morning asking why a player as limited as Degen was ahead of me.

Incidentally, both Darby and Insua looked good when they came on. Question is: how ready is Benitez to play them instead of the players that he brought in for a considerable amount of money? Not that I want to turn this into a debate about Liverpool’s youngsters and how they compare to Arsenal’s which unavoidably some will try to do this morning.

Yet perhaps the most worrying (although a better word is probably frustrating) aspect of the night was Ryan Babel’s form. The Dutchman clearly has lost a bit of spark and performances levels have slipped lately. Against Tottenham he played like a petulant boy, eager on doing everything on his own and in doing so he kept going down blind alleys.

I’m sure that Rafa will take some pointers from this game with the main one being that the squad isn’t that good but at the end of the day this was the League Cup and if elimination is the price that Liverpool have to pay for resting some of key players then so be it.