Disaster Looms Large for Liverpool

With the latest ignominy of losing to out-of-form, relegation candidates Wigan Athletic, Liverpool now stand not only on the precipice of being ousted from their perennial Champions League spot but a malaise that threatens to last a generation.

The troubles at Anfield run right the way through the club and show no sign of abating.  With the likes of Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur and particularly Manchester City better placed and playing better in the league, Liverpool’s grasp on their status as one of the elite clubs in England and Europe looks to have been terminally loosened.

The Owners

Most fans will point to the takeover of the club and the consequent saddling of debt to be the point where Liverpool entered its decline.  Certainly the siphoning off of revenue to pay for debt and interest repayments will have had an impact on their ability to compete financially, however another club – the one in Lancashire, you know the one – has been saddled with even more debt while still giving their manager money to spend with which they have won three league titles in a row.

The real problem with the owners is that no company can prosper when its decision makers do not act in concert.  For all the supposed evils of the Glazers, they have a company that is working towards common goals (even if one of those goals is debt repayment).  The same cannot be said of Liverpool and while there is such a schism at the very top of their management structure, their fortunes simple cannot improve.

The Manager

The man shouldering the lions share of the blame for the on-pitch decline is – and should probably always be – the manager.  Rafael Benitez does himself no favours however.  He is at best stilted and terse in his press conferences, sometimes his performances are farcical and other times a combination of both which actively undermine his team’s chances on the pitch.

In recent months, he has become more and more bizarre and it is looking that finally, the man who bought in practically the entire squad and has enjoyed the support of arguably the most loyal fanbase in football, has lost his grip on both.

Comments of corners being turned and reactions required are being duplicated and no longer having the desired effect.

And what is there to grasp hold of?  Liverpool are not even playing football that is fun to watch or imbued with any sense of ambition or flair.  Benitez has spent (and recouped) a huge amount of money yet his only real successes in the transfer market have been a goalkeeper, a striker with fitness problems, a defensive midfielder and a ball-playing midfielder who he sold to be replaced with a bench-warmer who is never fit (or it seems, good enough).

What is worse, many of the players who were bought in to make the team more adventurous have faded into obscurity almost immediately – where some managers improve players, Benitez almost uniformly, destroys them.

While he clearly manages to galvanise his team for the biggest games, the fixtures you would ordinarily expect them to win have huge question marks against them.

All the evidence points to Liverpool finishing outside the top four this season.  Indeed finishing above any of Aston Villa, Tottenham and Manchester City would be a surprise suggesting they will not have the distraction of any European football next season.

With his very vocal guarantee of a fourth place finish, the question is (and probably has been for some time) how the upper management can get rid of him.  Obviously the ideal would be for a club to buy him out of his contract, removing the managerial albatross and netting the club a profit.  Second best would be Benitez accepting he has reached the end of his tenure and taking either minimal or no, compensation.

Most likely of course will be a sacking followed by a protracted and expensive payout.

Worst of all, he stays.

The Players

Benitez has had five years to shape a squad to his desire yet it now comprises a mixture of the injury-prone, the ageing, the under performing and the overrated.

The players of genuine quality are Reina, Johnson, Agger, Mascherano, Gerrard and Torres.  Of these, only Reina and Mascherano have been consistently fit and playing this season.  Gerrard has had more injuries this season and has suffered an alarming dip in form.  For an all-action midfielder soon to turn 30, who relies on his energy levels so much, there is every chance that this dip in form could be permanent.  He has to decide whether to change his way of playing (and with it his position and the make up of the team) or to accept the waning of his influence.

Agger has played in 15 league games this season and has only once played more than 20.   At 25, time is on his side but if he wants to prove that he has the body to play an entire season, he had better prove it soon.

Torres whose stellar first season has been proceeded by a steady decline in output both in games played and goals scored per game and a steady increase in time spent injured.  How long he will remain at Liverpool without Champions League football or any real support from his team is a question they really don’t want to ask.

The problem for Liverpool has long been their creative reliance on Gerrard and Torres.  Now that one is in (probable) decline and both are suffering regularly from injuries, the squad simply doesn’t have the quality to cope.

In fact this current squad with so many regular injury worries, under-performers and transfer candidates (Torres, Mascherano) are arguably far weaker than any of the other teams going for fourth place.

One player they simply cannot rely on any more is their stalwart central defender Jamie Carragher whose passion has long been put into the shade by his decreasing pace (from a low starting point), increasingly suspect decision making and commonplace errors.

The Fans

Many clubs can lay claim to having great fans.  Newcastle United’s fans really do embody the full word, ‘fanatic’.  Tottenham’s fans give fantastic away support and fill their ground even on a cold evening for an early round, cup reply.  West Ham’s have put up with more disappointment than most of the league put together but still willingly turn up week in week out.

There is probably no set of fans more intelligent or loyal than those at Anfield, however.  They have put up with the poor results and terrible football months after life would have been made unbearable for Benitez at any other club.  but it has never been with the blind fervour that characterises other clubs; Newcastle support to the exclusion of rationality.  Spurs will never let their club settle for anything less than their scarcely met expectations.  But Liverpool supporters (and they are more that than they are fanatics) maintain a perspective that other fans can only muster after the act of winning and even then, only rarely.

The Anfield fan has a knowledge of football like no other; as a collective they instinctively know the immediate and long-term value of loyalty.  They support their players who have never performed in the hope that they will, one day.  They cheer their team in spirited defeat.  And it seems, regail their managers successes long after he has outlived his tenure.  In short, they are the fans any manager and player would want because they are just.

What is happening to their club from the owners to the players is far from just, and far from what the supporters deserve.  But this is football and it is business and the little man rarely gets what he deserves.  Such is Liverpool’s fate.

Without any prospect of a change at every level of the club, it is a fate that looks like being cemented for some considerable time.

Tagged as: Aston Villa, Fernando Torres, Jamie Carragher, Liverpool, Manchester City, Rafael Benitez, steven gerrard, Tottenham Hotspur