Liverpool must move on

Monday, 19/09/2011

by Nick Teale, Shoot's Liverpool blogger

In terms of possession and dominance, yesterday's game at Spurs was the opposite of our defeat at Stoke. The result, however, wasn’t.

Of course the red cards helped Tottenham, and even with ten men we managed to keep the score at 1-0. But Harry Redknapp's side were dominant from the off and not one of our players put in a good performance.

Martin Skrtel really struggled at right back. Not just against Gareth Bale, but even losing out to little Jermain Defoe by allowing a high ball to bounce. There's also a growing feeling among fans that Jamie Carragher is finished as a player.

Once Glen Johnson (or Martin Kelly) is fit to return at right back I expect Skrtel will revert to a central role alongside Daniel Agger. Sebastian Coates looks good enough to put more pressure on Carra and Kelly is naturally a centre back too.

On Sunday, Tottenham showed Liverpool how impressive a scoreline can be when you take the chances you create. Against Stoke, regardless of the refereeing decisions that went against us, we could have won by four goals. We should have won by at least one, but we didn’t.

Spurs, on the other hand, took the chances they had created through such dominance. They thoroughly deserved their 4-0 victory and our indiscipline helped them achieve it comfortably.

Charlie Adam, in the brief time he was on the pitch, was all over the place with his passing and Jordan Henderson was once again missing in action. Lucas did well and made some fine tackles, proving again he is the key link in our midfield.

Andy Carroll had few chances and I thought he did well when he had the ball, especially considering he was playing out of position once we were down to ten men. Luis Suarez was a different story though and didn’t play well at all.

We’ve got Brighton in the League Cup on Wednesday night and it certainly won't be easy. Kenny Dalglish played a strong team against Exeter in the last round so I expect he will do the same on the South Coast.

If he does it will be a good opportunity for those players involved against Tottenham to move on from that game and go into our next Premier League game, against Wolves, on a positive note.

That's easier said than done though and anybody who thinks getting Brighton is an easy draw is very much mistaken.

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