FOOTBALL: 'And Aurelio just swam off.'

Sometimes, I do really hate Liverpool football club.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a Liverpool supporter until I die. I'll always back the club, through good or for ill. I'm from nowhere near Liverpool, but my dad raised me as a Liverpudlian so I'm essentially born and bred Liverpool fan, and so Liverpool's results tend to dictate my mood, like most fans I guess.

Thus after Tuesdays game against Fiorentina, I stumbled home miserable having drank a few pints of cider too much, while trying to piece together what exactly happened.
So what happened? Exactly what happened against Tottenham is what happened.
Fiorentina worked very, very hard that night, closing down the ball well in the middle of the park, but Liverpool made it easy for them to do that and moreover, we made it easy for them to score through a combination of bad team play in the midfield and then the wingbacks being exposed as a result. As is a general theme in the Tottenham and Fiorentina game, the failiure of the midfield to take control or even try and impose themselves was essentially a haemmorage for the team - causing all the problems from back to front and contributing to our loss.

So all stares fall on Lucas. Liverpool fans do find it very easy to critisize Lucas and I will leap to defend him - he is not Alonso, like many players are not Alonso. Lucas is far more like Mascherano then Alonso and actually this season I think Lucas is still playing far better then Mascherano. But in a game where Fiorentina were closing down furiously for long periods of the game, Lucas's short passes drew Liverpool narrow where we were easy to take the ball from, putting Liverpool on the backfoot for most of the match and giving us very little option in attack. Lucas struggled against the closing down and in the end Lucas and Aurelio were snuffed out like they were midtable midfielders or worse.

And Aurelio? He was just as bad as Lucas was. He simply wasnt in the game - he was supposed to be an Alonso esque player next to Lucas with his long passing and techinical skill - but he was nothing of the sort and I would have rather had Mascherano in that position in hindsight (such a wonderful thing), because for all his experience, the Brazillian full back by trade did very little to help Insua at all. And on Tuesday night, Insua did suffer. Both goals origionated from his side of the pitch, and for leaving a young full back ineperienced in the champions league against a top class winger in a team like Fiorentina's, the buck is as much Aurelios as it was Insua's.

Because eventually yes, the midfield's failiure caused chaos in Liverpools plans. Over the past years Liverpool have progressed and become a very good attacking side, and this year we still are. Its defensively that the problems have begun with the loss of Alonso, because he could control the midfield like Mascherano and Lucas cant, and it led to Fiorentinas first goal.

Because any top attacking team in a top league right now need to control the midfield to be successful. That way you can get the ball into that dangerous final third regularly. If you do that, you can lose the ball five out of six times and still score a goal on the sixth attempt. Losing the ball in the middle of the park five times out of six will not lead to goals on the sixth attempt, it will lead to the final third, while those five times you lose the ball a champions league team like Fiorentina can take advantage and slice you to bits. Losing the ball too much in the midfield is for an attackign team like Liverpool, who push their wingbacks up to support the attack, is almost completely unacceptable. Lucas can play the simple passes, but when the Fiorentina team gathered about him like sharks around meat, he got eaten. And Aurelio just swam off.

Liverpools wingbacks Insua and Johnson have far more to think about with Liverpools midfield being more unstable, and With Lucas and Aurelios combined failiures to win the ball in the middle of the park when they should have cut out Fiorentinas buildup in its tracks led to Insua - the youngest player in the squad, to playing Jovetic well onside and very much clean through. Jovetic scored twice thanks to the midfield meltdown and its effect on the defence, and has officially become my most hated 19/20 year old playing in Italy. Job well done for him. Meanwhile Liverpool have a problem. Against those teams who work hard to close Liverpool down in the middle it melts down the spine that Benitez has worked so hard on for years.

Luckily playing the strong teams is not a particularly weak point of Lucas's. Liverpool travel down to Chelsea on Sunday for easily their toughest game so far. Whoever is in that midfield come 4pm needs to have more ambition to spread the ball further and wider, allow Liverpool to stretch when they have the ball and compress when they dont. Chelsea have arguably the strongest midfield in the league and though I hear their champions league game was far from a stroll, they will be well and truely fired up for the game Saturday in front of their own fans - our second biggest rivals behind Everton/ Manchester United and champions league nemesis, just as we are theirs.

If it were me, I would be bring the wingers back. And I would be careful about bringing the wing backs too far forward too quickly. Drogba will love that, especially if we again give up the ball too easily in midfield.
Still, what do I know. Hopefully, we can do what we did last year and expose their tactics. Chelsea seem to be playing the diamond formation more nowadays, but it is a different beast to the Chelsea under Scolari. Now they are flexible and can adapt their tactics, so I suspect it wont be enough to simply stop the wing backs this time around. We will need more.

Still, Im with Liverpool untill the bitter end. Contrary to deranged journalist predictions after the first round of the season, we could win any of the trophies this year, without a doubt. If we lose to Chelsea on Sunday I will still believe that.
So to whatever end. But we must not perform like we did on Tuesday night again.
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Next: A piece on writing. Till then, Cheerio.

Crash.