From beaten finalists in the CL and comfortably third in the league, Rafa finds himself in a battle for his job, a battle for a CL place next season and indeed a battle for Liverpool's respectability. Where could it all have gone so wrong, when so much money was spent in the summer and a truly world class striker, the elusive 20 goal per season striker, now calls Anfield his home.  Can this season's Liverpool really be worse, despite all the spending, all the hype, all the star power?

Obviously, yes, they are worse. In this blog, i dissect Liverpool's summer moves and why they have doomed Rafa's men to such ignominy.

Summer spending was rampant in the premier league and Liverpool, not Chelsea for once, were it's main culprits.  Let's look at the changes.

In: Torres, Mascherano, Voronin, Babel, Benayoun, Itandje

Out:  Zenden, Bellamy, Dudek, Fowler, Sinama-Pongolle

Mistake #1:
-Buying 3 forwards.

The fab three that were going to take Liverpool to the Premiership title.

What makes a great strike force on any team is a balance between individual attributes of the forwards as well as a mutual understanding between them. Liverpool has neither.

With the sale of Bellamy, the fastest player on the team is now Torres.  However he is also the best dribbler, the best finisher and probably the best target man too.  That is the very definition of imbalance.. with a player like that, it behooves a team to structure their whole offense around him, like Arsenal did with Henry and Chelsea with Drogba. This, Rafa did not do, prefering to pretend Kuyt and Voronin were made of the same stuff and roundly ignoring Peter Crouch.

But there were other balance issues as well. While Voronin, a good deal coming on a Bosman as he did, is exactly the same kind of player as Kuyt and thus brings nothing new to the team.  Bundesliga enthusiasts will remember he excelled alongside Berbatov at Leverkusen; he was the aggressive, pestering, ball winning sidekick of the masterful Bulgarian. He could have done the same for Torres, but Kuyt was preferred.  This begs the question; why bring in a player who is a weaker version of someone you already have?

Ryan Babel is another study in wasted potential.  He brings a thunderous right foot (and a club-like left one) as well as some silky touches in tight spaces, skills benefiting a forward.  Yet due to Liverpool's deficiencies in wide positions and overcrowding up front, he has been forced to play wide.

Of Torres, the worst thing that can be said is that he is not employed to maximize his potential.  He is used as 'one of four' but he is by so far the best of the bunch that he becomes the everyman, exerting an unhealthy dominance over the other forwards which makes them lose confidence. It is to this phenomenon that I attribute Dirk Kuyt's staggering loss of form.

In this writer's humble opinion, Rafa's best system would have been to choose his most favorite companion to Torres and play them together in all the league games, bringing the others off the bench and in cup games.

Finally, Liverpool are missing the dimension that Bellamy gave them much more than I am sure even Rafa predicted.  His speed made defenses have to play much deeper to avoid a spring of the trap, which gave Gerrard more room to maneuver.  Nobody on this Liverpool strikeforce has that dimension to them, and that predictability has hurt Liverpool.

Mistake #2
-NOT buying cover at CB.


Daniel Agger: Why did Rafa not plan for his or Carra's absence better?

Even if you can argue Rafa couldn't know he would be without Agger for most of the season, he certainly could have planned better. Everyone knows Sami Hyypia is not what he used to be, and Liverpool do not have an aerially dominant midfielder or fullback in the mold of Essien or Sagna who could command centrally.  Ask yourself, where would Chelsea be right now if they only had Ben Haim to rely on in Terry's absence..??  Alex has held that team together with Carvalho and Terry variably missing.  If he had swapped Chelsea's Blue for Liverpool's red, I boldly predict their positions would currently be reversed.

Martin Skrtel comes too late even if he is the very incarnation of the dominant defender Liverpool craved in Agger's absence.  He should have been signed in the summer instead of any one of Voronin, Babel, or Benayoun.

Mistake#3
-Not having a single wide player worthy of the name.


Harsh but true: which of them would you want on YOUR team?

Harry Kewell has been injured since time immemorial and all the signs are he forgot to play football while he was out, kind of like Damien Duff.  This seems to happen to wide players after a lengthy layoff; they just have such a hard time recovering that spark that made them so good in that position which is perhaps more physically demanding than any other excepting fullback.

Benayoun is Liverpool's best dribbler but he does not have any speed to speak of and is best deployed centrally, behind the forwards.  He is therefore incompatible with Liverpool's favored 4-4-2. A fundamental mistake to buy a player so thoroughly incompatible with your system; Gerrard always has been the playmaker.

Pennant was plucked from the Championship and while he shows nice touches and good crosses at times, he is a pale imitation of the league's other dominant wingers, Hleb, Cole, Giggs, Young and even Downing (not even speaking of Ronaldo).  Certainly not a player coveted by other top clubs, few expect him to do much when he comes on, yet he is one of only 4 Liverpool players in an advanced position when he is playing. No club aspiring to the heights of the Champions' league and Premiership trophy can have weak links.

Finally Babel, the pick of the lot, is no crosser.  His considerable dribbling and shooting skills go to waste on the flanks where he is unable to deliver a telling ball for all his trickery. This particular problem was most evident in that infamous game in Istanbul.. no, not against Milan but against Bestikas.  The one Liverpool ignominiously lost.

Mistake #4
Marginalization of Xabi Alonso


How much better is Mascherano, really?

Probably the best passing, best shooting and most quietly efficient of any holding midfielder in the league, Alonso's subtle impact stabilizing Pool's midfield is often overlooked.  But without him, Steven Gerrard just is not as effective.

By acquiring Javier Mascherano in the summer, Rafa willingly or unwillingly sent a message to Alonso that he was not happy with the quality Liverpool had in the holding midfield role and wanted an upgrade.  Well, now he has it; 18 million pounds and one unhappy, under-performing fellow Spaniard later.

Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no doubt of Mascherano's quality, but he is not so well balanced as Alonso who's threat as a shooter from 20, 30, even 40 yards out was never to be underestimated. His absence is just another way in which Liverpool have become a little more predictable. Nobody would seriously suspect Mascherano of being able to trouble a goalkeeper from that kind of range.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I believe Liverpool are where they are now. Rafa has not been perfect, especially on the transfer market where past purchases such as Fabio aurelio continue to haunt him. He has been every bit the manager he always was.. but he has had a badly unbalanced squad to work with, and however you rotate that, the end product still looks the same.