Well that was certainly a kick in the knickers. John Arne is one of my favourite players. Damn damn damn damn damn. I’d grown accustomed to the face of disappointed Chelsea fans.
Still, even if we do go on to lose the tie, Liverpool will once again have dramatically overachieved in Europe as compared to the league. The media always throw up their hands as if this is some kind of deep mystery – it happens too often to be a fluke, but what’s the reason? The only explanation proferred so far is that this has something to do with Rafa Benitez’s cunning tactical mastery, but the same thing happened under Gerard Houllier.
There is in fact no mystery to this. The simple fact is that Liverpool are (both under Houllier and Benitez) better in defence than attack.
Goals are to a large extent random events. A team may score 4 in one game and just one in the next, even with the same attack against the same defence. So if your attack isn’t great you’ll draw a lot of games (the ones where you get a little unlucky). And the way to do well in the league is to win consistently – 3 points for a win. But in Europe the game effectively lasts 180 minutes, which means that a team with a great defence but a not-so-great attack has twice along to achieve a separation between goals scored and goals conceded.
I don’t think I am expressing a controversial opinion when I say Liverpool need more quality going forwards.
