The End of the World As We Know It?

Much has been said of Liverpool's league season being over, but when all of the three sides mooted as title challengers have lost one game, with Liverpool only having lost two, it seems a silly statement to be making after just four league games have been registered, in a season where we have brought in six new players after a nearly twelve month run of games for some of our players who featured in the world cup over the summer.

As far as yesterday's game goes, and it's hard to be definitive with Chelsea playing forty minutes with just ten men, it was our best performance in the league against Chelsea in the Benitez reign. Still something was missing, and we seemed to lack drive and confidence. Chelsea were willing to run at us with the ball and create far more movement, whilst we seemed to want an extra few seconds on the ball during our attacks, and often looked bereft of ideas with Chelsea getting nine or ten men behind the ball after they went one up through a Drogba wonder goal.

Our finishing still appears to be suffering from the same malaise as in previous seasons, but with two new forwards trying to gel into the team this was perhaps to be expected at this stage. Still, on another day Gerrard might have taken another touch or sidefooted his best opportunity past the keeper, instead of blasting it straight at him, Kuyt's sizzler might have crept in under the bar, Crouch's header might have been two foot either side of the keeper, we may have been handed a penalty for Lampard's shove on Gerrard in the box, and we would not have such hysteria in the press or from Liverpool fans.

To the same extent that we handed Chelsea six points on Sunday, we could take those six back at Anfield on the return fixture. With Man Utd dropping points to a struggling Arsenal, perhaps their run has also been overhyped against weak sides this season.

I don't see anyone tipping Pompey for the title, so perhaps we should take it like we did in the old days pre-Sky, and wait until ten games have passed before pronouncing judgement on the season.

We have now played two of our hardest away fixtures, and though the results have not been encouraging, there is still time for this side to click and go on another unbeaten run like the two last season, especially with two notionally easier home games coming up where we can hopefully pick up maximum points and make our league position look more realistic.

p.s. for fair comparison, here's my reaction immediately after the match on RAWK, which has been tempered somewhat since through time and alcohol:

When Drogba scored, my reaction after the initial disappointment was "at least we'll have to have a go at them now". When Ballack was sent off, I thought "ok, so now we can really attack them". Ten minutes later I was still waiting for it to happen. We had our chances, and on another day we might have scored. But I never really felt that we attacked them with urgency.

That's what has disappointed most. We didn't really unsettle them with pace and movement for me, even when we went one man up. I think it's probably the best performance we've seen at Stamford Bridge in the last few seasons, and perhaps our best performance this season, but it was still some way short. People will say our finishing let us down, but I thought it was our drive. Every time they got the ball they ran right at us and moved it, whereas I felt we always paused for a second or two when we regained possession.

Gutted after that because I felt we had a real chance to take at least a point. Time for a drink.