Alarm bells ring for Keane as Pool ponder price of failure

THERE are only so many times you can breath a sigh of relief before you begin to hyperventilate.

Whilst there is something eerily Mancunian (and encouraging) about the late goals and scrappy points we’re racking up, how often can we dodge bullets before one hits us between the eyes?

It was hard not to feel sympathy for Liege. Even their aggression had me yearning for a time when 11 red shirts had a ‘search and destroy’ policy.

Belgium isn’t Estonia and their champions ought to qualify automatically. Their fans’ exuberance and sheer delight in even being here made me green with envy.

They’ve ended a two-decade wait to be champions and revelled in the limelight. Anfield by contrast felt smug and jaded, that it was beneath us. We nearly paid the price.

Ah, the price. Money, money, money. Everyone fretted about the millions we’d lose had they taken just one chance. Back when we first won the trophy, first round exits to Forest and Tiblisi stung, but there was no sense of impending doom.

Our pride took the biggest hit and our wallets were an irrelevance. Defeat meant a revitalised pursuit of first place to give us the chance to try again. Now, barring a miracle, the same four teams know they’ll get another crack at it and early defeat impacts on the stock market far more than it does in the arena of Sport. They call that “progress”. As another funereal rendition of Fields trickled from the Kop it was hard to sing “we had Heighway on the wing”, when all we have now is Kuyt, El Zhar or the man of a thousand touches, Babel. That two of them produced the key moment only accentuated the unease.

The fine people at this newspaper don’t pay me to regurgitate the illiterate mantras of the common herd, so whatever the pundits are spewing forth we generally try to steer well clear.

But “width” or the lack of it is fast becoming this season’s “rotation”, a dead horse of a theory, endlessly flogged but not wholly without merit.

By Friday all eyes were on Hicks and Gillett’s financial reputation as it plummeted to earth, making an enormous crater where the new stadium should go. Added to the down-sizing of transfer ambitions (Barry to Downing to Milner to Riera), it meant any wispy sympathy or support for the Dynamic Duo had eroded.

Attention shifted to Villa Park, where boxing ropes were expected in the technical area. It may not actually be the noble art but it couldn’t have been any more shameful than the football match that followed.

The lack of Villa ambition and the loss of Torres didn’t help, but blaming Torres only perpetuates the myth that we would or could have played in any other way.

On Saturday I’d watched some of the Arsenal match and thoroughly wished I hadn’t. It only makes our own team’s ‘style’ all the more aggravating.

Four years into the manager’s regime and simple things like passing, movement and control seem beyond us. Why? Of course we’re hard to break down and a previously free-scoring opponent kept hitting our brick wall to no real effect. Is this our ambition? Seven points and second place is not to be casually dismissed, but if this continues it would be increasingly difficult to argue that such means justify the ends.

Alarm bells are now ringing for Robbie Keane. Is it too early to say that we have bought a player without any real role in mind? How can you say in July, “you’re so good I’m going to have my club spend £20 million they can ill afford to waste”, then say at the end of every game: “I don’t trust you enough to leave you out there to get the winner”? It’s beyond perverse.

A poor game taken in isolation can perhaps be forgiven.

But that’s the trouble isn’t it? This isn’t an isolated case; it’s been every game so far.

The early rash of internationals would normally have us frothing at the mouth. Instead they’re being welcomed with open arms.