A pile of money fetched for Luis Suarez was never going to do as much for Liverpool as Luis Suarez.
It's important not to get carried away with these things, so let's begin with a clarification: Liverpool have not had the worst season imaginable.
After all, nothing totally stupid has happened. The three worst things that can happen to a Premier League team are relegation, financial collapse and being bought by Mike Ashley, and Liverpool are currently threatened by none of the above. Many players have disappointed and underwhelmed, but none have gone missing, refused to play, or been exposed as an international jewel thief and had to spend most of the season moving between a network of safehouses across the continent.
But within the bounds of things that might reasonably have been expected to happen, it's been pretty close to as bad as could be. According to the Liverpool Echo's James Pearce, Rodgers set himself and his side three targets for this season. One — make it into the knockout stages of the Champions League — didn't survive past Christmas, while another — win a trophy — died yesterday afternoon. The third — re-qualify for the Champions League — is looking distinctly unwell.
The ins and outs of the season are, by now, familiar: a miserable summer of transfer business; the disintegration of Daniel Sturridge; the disaffection of Raheem Sterling; the ongoing problem of what to do with Steven Gerrard in his valedictory season; the chaotic defending of the first half of the season; the weird, limp apology of a Champions League campaign; Brendan Rodgers' occasional tactical anarchy; Brendan Rodgers' peculiar man-management. Pick your favourite and go at it.
The bigger question, though, is whether all of the above adds up to a more serious, long-lasting. It looks exceptionally likely that this season's top four will be Chelsea first, then Arsenal and the Manchester clubs. Which is to say, the four most predictable and obvious candidates for the top four. Or, if you prefer, the four richest.
Two of those teams, Chelsea and Manchester City, are there by virtue of being backed by, respectively, an comically rich individual and a comically rich nation-state, who have decided to spend some of that comical wealth on football. Maybe they just really like football. Maybe they're up to something else. That's not hugely important.
As for the other two, they have earned their status thanks to two managerial appointments of remarkable efficacy and timing: United appointed Alex Ferguson, stuck with him, and he came good just as the Premier League and the Champions League came into being and began to grow. Arsenal appointed Arsene Wenger a couple of years later, and he arrived carrying secret knowledge from far-off lands about previously undiscovered things like "training," "broccoli," and "not constantly drinking lager."
All of which is to say that for a team to establish itself as part of the establishment — as a perennial, year-on-year competitor — takes something epochal, and to disrupt that establishment takes something remarkable. In the last five seasons, only Tottenham and Liverpool have disturbed the top four, and both times they were able to call on a world-class talent (Gareth Bale, Luis Suarez) while one of the other lot (Chelsea, Manchester United) were in a state of disarray. Perhaps Liverpool might have done just as well even with a decent United side to contend with, but it certainly looks as though a team wanting to get into the top four needs to be brilliant and needs somebody else to be rubbish.
Coming into this season Liverpool were trying to transmute themselves from ambitious outsiders to establishment member. In a sense that's been their task ever since Manchester City bought their way into the big-time, but this time they were trying to do it with a second-place finish, a large, Suarez-shaped pile of money and the carrot of Champions League football. They failed.
Ultimately, it's a failure that can be sliced two ways. The tendency is to assume that the failure belongs to Liverpool and Liverpool's decisions, in particular the transfers; after all, they didn't buy a single player whose interest in the club was dependent on Champions League football. Dejan Lovren, Adam Lallana, Emre Can, Javi Moreno, Javier Manquillo, maybe even Mario Balotelli. These are all players who would have come to Liverpool for the name, for the club, and for the Europa League. Perhaps that should have been a sign.
Alternatively, perhaps it was an impossible task to begin with. Perhaps the Premier League, at this moment in footballing history, is a competition that can only end up somewhere surprising as part of a smash-and-grab, in the tiny window between a team finding somebody brilliant — a player, a manager — and the big beasts noticing and whipping out the chequebook.
Perhaps the most important moment of the entire season, in a symbolic sense, didn't come at Wembley or in Basel, but back in the summer, when Alexis Sanchez looked at his options and plumped for Arsenal. That decision, and the failure of Liverpool to pick up anybody else of a similar standing, might just be down to his preference for London and some generalised committee incompetence. But it might also be evidence that there are big clubs and then there are Big Clubs, and that Liverpool, while certainly the former, aren't yet the latter. More, it suggests that the transformation from the former to the latter can't be achieved on the back of a second-place finish and a trip to Europe's top table.
In essence, Liverpool are now back where they were two seasons ago, except they don't have a Suarez, they don't have the money that comes from a losing a Suarez, and their manager is no longer on a smooth upward curve. Perhaps Rodgers has it in him to conjure something remarkable from what he has and can get, and he could certainly make a good case that he deserves the opportunity.
But when the game's rigged, those on the losing side need to find new, exciting ways to play. Rodgers almost managed it; from where he is now, with that campaign a memory, it looks less possible than ever. Smash-and-grabs are hard enough the first time around. Hardly anybody gets to have a second go.
Source SBNation.com - All Posts http://ift.tt/1DExRSA
No comments:
Post a Comment