Tricky one to evaluate AVB on yesterday. On one hand, we won a very difficult game against a team that have been proving very difficult to beat lately. The first half performance was very encouraging and good to see. But we were very poor in the second and I thought we were very lucky to win the game in the end.
It's not his fault that Caulker wasn't available and we had to expose Gallas to Suarez. The only alternative would have been playing Naughton at LB and moving Vertonghen into the centre, but after Naughton got absolutely raped by Walcott last time out, I'm not sure I'd have felt comfortable with him against Sterling. It's also not his fault that Adebayor was suspended, leaving Defoe as the only real option up front. But a few other decisions did surprise me.
For starters - bringing Sigurdsson on made no sense. Why did Dempsey come off? He was actually playing well for a change! I've complained about AVB's indecisiveness on almost a weekly basis, so it was good to see him actually realising that something had to be changed, but that was a strange one. Once we lost Dempsey, Defoe was also completely isolated in attack. Yet we kept hoofing the ball in the air up to him, with a complete lack of composure, only for him to be shat on by Liverpool's defence as he's tiny, and to invite more pressure onto us. I personally would have preferred to see Huddlestone come on, with Dembele moving a little further forward, to improve our ball retention and also have a better option in attacking players when we countered. The other thing I thought he could have done was to exploit the fact that Downing didn't have a fudging clue what he was doing and move Bale onto the right-wing.
To be in 5th place and 3 points off third is ok, but it's nothing spectacular. Especially not when you consider that:
1. Chelsea have their lowest points tally at this stage of a season under Abramovic - yes, even worse than last year
2. Arsenal have their lowest points tally at this stage of a season since 1994 - they finished 12th that year.
3. Liverpool have their lowest points tally at this stage of a season since the first Premier League season in 1992. If you apply the three points for a win to old English First Division seasons, Liverpool haven't been worse off at this stage since 1964-65 when they had a record of W4 D3 L7.
4. We are 8 points behind where we were at this stage last season
5. 23 points from 14 games averages out to 62 points over a season - would have had us two places lower last season
I know you can't win every game, but even with the injuries we've had, I still feel our squad could have more points on the board than we have now and be taking more advantage of our rivals slipping up. Certainly, without those dreadful tactical decisions against Norwich, Chelsea and Arsenal, as well as the horror show against Wigan, we could be doing even better.
Get us top four at the end of the season AVB and I'll take my hat off to you. Until then, whilst we still play poor, negative football and you make bizarre tactical mistakes, I won't be impressed.