Dalglish: Anfield woes just bad luck
Of course there are a variety of small factors that explain why Kenny Dalglish’s side dropped two points against Norwich, just as they did against Sunderland on the opening day, while they also struggled to find a way past Wolves at home.
Just as against Sunderland and Wolves, they had more than enough opportunities to kill the game thanks to a blistering start but, for a number of reasons, did not take them.
And their inability to keep a clean sheet in front of their own fans — you have to go back to 2003 for a longer run without one at Anfield — spells problems.
Sitting in the top half of the table, Norwich have shown they are no fools and Paul Lambert’s men have already pushed Chelsea and Manchester United close on their own grounds.
But for all the goodwill they generated from those performances, they left Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford with nothing.
That Dalglish, who put the draw down to bad fortune, rightly claimed that Norwich had much more of the game against the champions only adds weight to the theory that not much is wrong within his team — but all is not quite right either.
And crucially, the problems are at either end of the field.
“We’ll look at the chances created, and there’s a team that’s gone to Manchester United three weeks ago and come away unlucky, with no points,” Dalglish said. “Maybe they got the luck here.
“It will certainly have been a more difficult game for them here than what it was at Old Trafford. We just want to finish off [chances] and let the boys get their reward, they definitely deserve it.
“I just keep waiting for our luck to change, as soon as our luck changes we’ll be all right and that’s all it is. I don’t think anybody could say we played badly or that we didn’t deserve more than what we got from all of those games. I don’t think there’s a game yet where we’ve taken more from the game than we actually deserved.
“I think we’ve been brilliant in creating the chances. So we’ll look at the positive. The finishing side, obviously we’ve got to add to it when you look at the facts and figures and reflect on what they’ve actually done and what they’ve actually created. You wouldn’t bet against us scoring five or six on any given day.”
He is quite right but the reality is that his team converted just one of 25 shots on goal, although they did hit the woodwork three times, and their defensive worries mean that they are always likely to give even lowly sides a chance of staying in a contest.
Certainly the line-up on Saturday was brimming with attacking intent but although Luis Suarez has quickly proved himself among the outstanding talents in the Premier League, there do not appear to be enough alternatives around him.
For all his many qualities, the Uruguayan, who Dalglish claims is not receiving enough protection from referees, is not the 25 to 30-goal a season striker that most Champions League teams can call on.
After Craig Bellamy, making his first league start since returning to Anfield in the summer, opened the scoring the lumbering centre-forward that came off the bench to score at the Kop end was Norwich’s £400,000 Grant Holt rather than Liverpool’s £35 million man Andy Carroll. After Carroll wasted his big chance, missing with a close-range header, Norwich were grateful to John Ruddy for a block on Suarez’s volley to snatch them a point.
“We have that belief we can get results at places like Anfield,” Holt said. “We always look to have a go, to try and win the games, because really we only know one way.
“Maybe that’s a little bit naive at times in that sense, maybe we should sit in a bit more, but we got our reward here and we will keep doing it because the manager has instilled into us the idea we have to go and get wins to do well in this division, so we’ll try that, even at places like Anfield and Old Trafford.”
The difference is, it did not work at Old Trafford.
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