Today (or rather, last night), i watched two football (i.e. soccer) matches. Arsenal v Tottenham in full and Fulham v Liverpool until Fulham scored their second goal.
The Arsenal match went along smoothly as usual, although i'm starting to think that Arshavin is slipping in form a little bit, and Van Persie and Eduardo also missed a few sitters. Maybe Arshavin and Van Persie are getting tired? They've been playing practically every game, which is something that neither Van Persie (who's usually had plenty of "injury breaks") nor Arshanvin (formerly playing in the slack-ass Russian league) are used to. Eduardo hasn't played a regular match in a very long time too.
But Fabregas was amazing as usual. Lol my mum mispronounced his name as "Fibre-gahs" and both of us started laughing and saying "fibre glass" and stuff. Okay that was totally random. Oh and i don't think i'm the only person to have noticed, but Alex Song is really becoming a MASSIVE defensive midfielder; he was nipping Tottenham attacks at the bud for the whole match. His defensive work was owning Tottenham, and his distribution is pretty solid and consistent too.
As for Liverpool...amagad; i'm sorry to say this, but their squad really really sucks at the moment, especially in attack (their defence may suck too but i think it's just a loss of form...i'm still confident in the abilities of Mascherano, Agger, and Skrtel especially). And no, i'm not just reacting to their loss to Fulham. I've been thinking that way since they sold off Alonso and bought an injured Aquilani, and continued to think as such even after they beat Manchester United.
Torres is a football god (his goal today was kickass as well), but apart from Gerrard and maybe Benayoun, it seems like none of Liverpool's attacking players can compare.
None of them can be trusted to score consistently - Thomas Vermaelen, the Arsenal
defender, seems to have more of a predatory instinct compared to Babel, Kuyt, Ngog, etc, etc, etc. None of them have enough pace - Babel was SUPPOSED to be fast (supposed to be the next Henry too) but i hardly see him outrun any defenders. All of them usually need plenty of touches to get the ball under control when they receive a pass - i saw this trait especially in Kuyt and Voronin - meaning that they have poor ball control overall.
And all this affects Liverpool's chances of winning. Because Torres (and to an extent, Benayoun) are the only first-teamers that can trusted to hit the target, defenders just need to focus on those two players whenever they get the ball; the marking on Torres by Fulham was especially tight. In fact, it seems like the other Liverpool players know how badly they shoot and they don't even attempt shots when they are under any kind of pressure, which makes it even more pathetic; Fulham park a bus in front of goal, and because the other players can't curl a shot over that wall, they miserably try to feed a through-ball to Torres which almost always gets cut out.
Because Liverpool's other attacking players lack pace, their attacks lack incisiveness. Because their players need a lot of touches to control the ball, it slows their attack by a lot and the opposing team can easily get back to defend.
Who is to blame? Well...i really can't think of anyone except for Rafa Benitez. A lot of people were flaming his decision to sub out Torres and Benayoun early, but that, to me, is hardly the problem. Benitez's signings have been really suspect; granted that some of them - like the Keane signing - were due to Rick Parry, a lot of them have proven to be duds. His purchase of Babel for 11.5 million pounds was pretty suspect, for one. So were all the millions he's spent on guys like Voronin, Morientes, Crouch, Bellamy, Pennant, Sissoko, Philip Degen (he signed a crappy Spanish fullback in the past as well, besides Arbeloa) Dossena, and Rieira (who is good, but currently not playing at all). It remains to be seen if the 20 million pounds spent on Aquilani is good money, too.
Compare all this to Manchester United's record for the past five years. I haven't really seen them make many signings of players that they end up selling after just one season to another club at a lower price. Either they keep the player until he becomes good, or they sell him off, mostly at a profit. They don't often have purchased rejects (at least since the Kleberson days...and even then, that's when they signed Cristiano Ronaldo); most of the rejects come from the youth academy - which i'd imagine would cost Manchester United less than the usual 5-10 million pounds a player that Benitez spends.
I don't even want to compare Benitez's record to Wenger because there'd be too many things to type. Let's just say that, within the current squad alone (ignoring past basement bargain talents like Henry, Vieira, Ljungberg, etc, etc, etc) i trust Fabregas and Van Persie to hit the target when it really matters. Walcott, Bendtner, Diaby, Denilson, Gallas, Nasri, Arshavin, Rosicky, Eduardo, and Vermaelen are all much more reliable than most of Liverpool's forwards as well - they won't scuff their shots too often (okay maybe i'm a bit optimistic about Bendtner...but he really IS getting better!). Vela, Ramsey, Wilshere and Merida also seem like exciting prospects. And the first seven and last four of the current players i mentioned cost Arsenal an average of about 2.5 million pounds each.
Other things might be blamed for the bad state of Liverpool FC as well.
Liverpool's coaching might be suspect. I haven't seen young players like Babel improve at all since arriving at Liverpool, and i get a feeling that the Liverpool coaches aren't very good at teaching their players how to shoot the ball.
Their tactics might be suspect too. I often see Liverpool forwards bringing the ball to the byline and crossing it into the box. Or their fullbacks, who're less ambitious than in other teams, would often carry the ball until somewhere before the penalty box before crossing it in. But...there's no one there to collect the crosses. Torres isn't exactly the tallest striker around, and with three defenders marking him, not to mention the usually giant goalkeeper, it's quite a tall task for him. Not only that, the other Liverpool forwards are short. Kuyt? Voronin? Please. I'm also not very confident of Kuyt's ability to head the ball, and this is the same for Babel, Ngog, etc, etc, etc.
I also often see Liverpool players passing the ball square to the other player directly, which i think slows their attack a lot since the other player would need to cushion the ball with a touch first and get it under control with another.
It's especially bad with forward passes...during the match earlier, i kept seeing players passing forward and square to forwards like Kuyt and Voronin, who would receive the ball with their backs to the goal. They would cushion the ball, and move a short distance away from the goal to control the ball. A Fulham player would come hounding after them, and they would be forced further back; every time they tried to pass the ball forward, they had to be forced back a bit. And because they could not look towards the direction of the goal, they could only dribble or pass back to a defender or occasionally right or left to someone else, meaning that the attack was always slow moving.
Arsenal and Manchester United players seem to pass it into space more often and let the receiving player run onto it, which i think speeds things up a lot (have you seen Fabregas's super curling pass???). But of course this could also be a question of technique; most of Arsenal's players need just one touch both to collect and control a direct, square pass anyway. Also, i do see Liverpool players sometimes using long range passes for the receiving player to run onto, except that, ever since the departure of Xabi Alonso, most of those long passes have gone wayward.
So, anyway, Liverpool are in a sad state, which is quite unfortunate for fans like my dad and Weiyu. I also feel for talented players like Torres and Gerrard who have to shoulder the club on their own without much reward. I might support Arsenal, but to be honest i feel quite bad for Liverpool's title drought. It'd be good for them to win one as well, for the sake of Gerrard and Torres, and to peg those arrogant United fans back and shut them up.
LOL if you didn't know that i am anti-Manure, this is the moment of truth...i totally detest Sir Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney hahaha! I also don't like Darren Fletcher, who seems to have discovered the accursed talent of being able to commit professional fouls without incurring a penalty or a card (or sometimes even the foul itself). I also think that Ferdinand is heavily overrated. I do, however, respect Vidic and Giggs.
Anyway, at the moment, the perfect season for me would be for Liverpool to win the EPL title and for Arsene Wenger to finally get his hands on the Champions League trophy.
And then after that, since Gerrard and Torres would be satisfied enough, Arsenal can win the EPL and Champions League titles for all the seasons after.
