One look at the table at this admittedly early stage of the season and it’s pretty obvious. We are dropping way too many points at home and if we don’t sort this out sooner rather than later then we can forget any thoughts about getting back into the Champions League.
7 games in and 5 draws is far too many.. 10 points dropped which if we’d won all those games would mean we’d be a point off Man City which would be a lot better position to be in than we are now.
Obviously it is a bit too simple to just say we should have just won all our games and we’d be top of the league. But we have dropped some stupid points. From those 5 draws, we were winning in 3 of those.. Sunderland, Norwich and Man United all of which finished 1-1. Coupled with another 1-1 against Man City and you begin to notice a pattern. Points against the Mancs are not exactly points thrown away – but it highlights the main problem we have which is not enough goals. Home games against Norwich, Sunderland and Swansea should really have produced more than 2 goals.
Even including all the home games we’ve only managed 9 goals in 7 games, the only team with less home goals in the top half of the table is Everton – and if we’re only doing slightly better than Everton than clearly we have issues.
So why aren’t we scoring enough goals? Well one of the more obvious answers would be to point the finger at our £35m investment. This again is a little too straightforward. Whilst it’s fair to say Andy Carroll hasn’t exactly set the world on fire this season I think it’s a little unfair. Especially as he's managed 2 goals in the last 2 games in which he played for the full 90 minutes, against Everton and West Brom.
You would have thought he might have kicked on a bit, especially after the Everton goal as you do get the impression that he's a confidence player - like all strikers really. He is only a young lad as well so it may take him some time.. especially as you consider that he'd only actually played in a handful of Premier League games before we signed him.. and it's hardly his fault that we felt the need to spend quite so much on someone with so little experience.
I think our main problem at the moment is that we are too unbalanced.. Enrique and Downing do seem to be forming a decent partnership down the left, but it's fair to say that the same isn't happening down the right.
Dalglish has changed things round a bit.. with Kuyt, Henderson and more recently Maxi playing there but I don't think any of them link up with Johnson in the same way. Personally I think don't think it would be unreasonable to have expected another winger with the Torres & Babel money if we'd have haggled a bit with Newcastle.. quite what the rush was in January I'm not entirely sure, but this is all ifs and buts and not getting us anywhere.
Personally I would like to see Johnson moved into midfield with Kelly at full back, but again this isn't a particularly original idea. I do think that Johnson is our best option as a right winger though and I'm not too convinced of his defensive capabilities.
Quite whether he's be happy playing out of position with the Euro's on the horizon in the summer is another question.
I think that would help us stretch teams if we could attack effectively down either flank.. whether that's with Johnson or if we go spending the pennies again in January. We might even start to get our monies worth out of Carroll, but having said that if that starts happening we'll be challenging for the title by the time May gets here.
