Blackburn R 0 Liverpool 0:FEAR OF crime can erode psychological well-being, alter routine habits and prompt withdrawal from even the mildest risk taking. Well before Liverpool's team bus pulled up outside Ewood Park, they were victims of this syndrome. It left them so fixated with avoiding another painful mugging at the hands of a Sam Allardyce team that they neglected to register the reality that Blackburn are in the throes of a surprising metamorphosis.
The probability of being roughed up by Rovers these days has duly diminished to the point whereby Stoke City and even Everton can comfortably be classified as significantly more aggressively direct.
Liverpool’s manager, Rafael Benitez, still bears the bruises of clashes with Allardyce’s old Bolton charges and his side’s resultant nervousness ensured they created a solitary phase of play from which they could have scored, when the substitute David Ngog hit the bar following Glen Johnson’s cross and Chris Samba brilliantly blocked Dirk Kuyt’s follow up.
“It’s easier to defend against Liverpool this season than in previous ones,” Samba said. “They didn’t impress me as much as Chelsea and Manchester United, I don’t think they are as good. Liverpool don’t look as strong as in the past, they are struggling. We should have won.”
It might have been different had Benitez – without the injured Fernando Torres – started by pairing Ngog with Kuyt rather than leaving the Dutchman alone up front. Or, indeed, if Liverpool’s manager had liberated Alberto Aquilani from the bench; surely the €22 million Italian could have coped with Brett Emerton and company? Instead Benitez’s decision to “protect” Aquilani simply reminded everyone of the depth of the loss inflicted by Xabi Alonso’s summertime departure for Spain. Without Alonso’s passing ability, the Merseysiders only real openings came courtesy of Johnson’s overlaps and odd flashes of improvisation on Steven Gerrard’s part.
With Yossi Benayoun and, particularly, Albert Riera failing to offer invention, Javier Mascherano clearly briefed to concentrate on defensive duties and Lucas Leiva looking as un-Brazilian as ever, Gerrard’s 500th league game for his home-town club proved horribly anti-climactic. How the England midfielder must wonder if the grass might have been greener had his proposed move to Chelsea in 2005 not collapsed.
Back then only Everton really threatened Liverpool’s place in a leading quartet many believed would endure for decades but, suddenly, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa are upwardly mobile and Gerrard cannot take qualification for next season’s Europa League, let alone Champions League, as a given.
“Liverpool are looking to get into the top four,” said Samba, “but there are a few other teams also capable of that now.”
At least Benitez was able to blame malign influences on Saturday, arguing: “It was a very difficult game against a very direct and physical side with lots of long balls.”
Rovers are still no Arsenal but even Allardyce’s arch-critics have to accept he has modified his once gruesome modus operandi. Instead of subjecting Liverpool to a relentless aerial bombardment, Rovers regularly kept the ball down before counter-attacking intelligently.
Their manager, newly recovered from minor heart surgery, conceded change is in the air. Reflecting on his time at Bolton and Newcastle Allardyce said: “Every game I was trying to shift the furniture to try and stop opposition players who were better than ours. But I am getting to the stage now where, more often than not, we are a match for the opposition. We were today.”
True enough; yet if only Benitez had been a little less timid, the match’s topography could have altered dramatically. “We have to start winning,” said Jose Reina, Liverpool’s goalkeeper. “I would swap a clean sheet for a victory all day long.”
