Thursday, March 6, 2008

Can Liverpool Sustain Their New Found Momentum?

Or will it be a rather unfamiliar sad end to their season which has constantly threaten to be derailed week to week with unending stories of boardroom disputes and ownership changes? While the team played well enough against a disinterested West Ham side that bordered on embarrassment, fans and owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks continued to bicker and one wonders if this will ever end considering that Hicks has steadfastly refused to sell the club till his own private valuation is met or he would just sit tight and pump any profits from Liverpool to his other two American sports franchises, which do not exactly do very well in any case on most occasions. Surely he must realise that if this were to continue till the end of the season, players like Gerrard and Torres might actually horror of horrors, start to consider their futures elsewhere because nobody wants to play for an unsettled club which has its trophy tilts threatened by instability within the club. It is a lose lose situation for the large Texan and if he were truly a businessman, he should realise that business in sports has a large emotional quotient tied to it and it might be better for him to take what he can now and leave.

On the field, Torres made Liverpool look good upfront despite players missing a whole boatload of chances created. The good thing is that the Anfield club continues to create lots of chances, but the bad thing is that without Torres, they continue to look toothless upfront and confidence never carries from game to game, in fact, they often have to rely on scoring first and early before the nerves are settled, even in front of their own fans. Benitez really should spend less time on his tactical selections and strategies as they are good enough and perhaps employ a decent sports psychologist to get the mental part of his team's game up to par with everything else. The real quality that separates the Manchester Uniteds and Arsenals from Liverpool is the mental edge that even mediocre players like Darren Fletcher seem to have compared to other more talented Liverpool players like Babel or Alonso, regardless of position. And it is this factor that Liverpool must brush up on in order to sustain their new found momentum on the last remaining Champions League spot in the English Premier League, or risk losing it to a 'small club' that Benitez so famously, and foolishly, branded Everton.

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