Having spent heavily in the
transfer window, Brendan Rogers will have been looking for his Liverpool side
to gel quickly this campaign. Stoke City away will not have been the fixture
Reds fans wanted to start with after an embarrassing 6-1 defeat in Gerrard’s
departing match at the end of last season, despite Rogers’ claims. Christian
Benteke made his Liverpool debut as they seek to find an answer to their
attacking problem following Luis Suarez’s exit in 2014. However it was Philippe
Coutinho who secured the 1-0 victory as his thunderbolt on 86 minutes rifled
into the back of Jack Butland’s net. With so many debuts across the Liverpool
team, they will be happy to have left the Brittania Stadium with 3 points.
Against Bournemouth in their match on Monday night, Liverpool appeared to have the rub of the green as refereeing decisions fell in their favour, bringing about a 1-0 victory. Conceding early on, the Reds were lucky to have seen Tommy Elfwick’s header disallowed, and perhaps even more fortunate that the linesman saw nothing wrong with Philippe Coutinho’s clear lunge towards the ball, despite being in a clear offside position, as the cross came in for Benteke’s goal. A less than convincing performance against the Premier League new boys, Liverpool were lucky to get away with 1 point, let alone 3. Nonetheless, another clean sheet for Simon Mignolet is a massive positive to take away from the match.
Liverpool will need to be far
more decisive when attacking, and the team will need a little more time to
fully cooperate in order to threaten for a Champions League place this season.
Rogers will need to hope his signings buy into his ethos quickly, otherwise the
Reds will be punished for performances like those seen so far when playing
higher quality opposition.
No comments
Post a Comment