Adjusting expectations

It’s been a season of adjusting expectations. After the disaster of last season, not many of us would have been expecting a title challenge this year and I think most of us would have accepted a trophy and top four as a successful season before a ball was kicked.

Things change however and a month ago we were sitting top of the league and dreaming of a quadruple to bring about a fairytale ending to Klopp’s reign at Anfield. These last few weeks though, that dream has not quite turned into a nightmare but has certainly gone up in smoke with something of a whimper.

The cup game against United has been pointed at as a turning point to our drop in form and that’s fair to an extent, however the warning signs have been there throughout the season from pretty much day one.

We can’t keep a clean sheet for love nor money and that wouldn’t be quite so bad if we were conceding late consolations every week but it’s the opposite. We tend to concede early and go behind in almost every game. 23 games in all competitions we’ve conceded first this season. For a club of our stature, that’s ridiculous and gives us a mountain to climb almost every week. We’ve proudly pointed to how many points we’ve won from losing positions but we really shouldn’t find ourselves in that position week in, week out which brings me to another point I’ve mentioned a number of times.

While Klopp is rightly lauded for the job he’s done at LFC and the trophies he’s won, in truth we’ve all too often found ourselves as the bridesmaid. We’ve lost four major finals and missed out on the league by a point on two occasions. Bad luck? Maybe. Or it could be we consistently run out of steam at the end of seasons. I mentioned after the Sheffield United game that a fundamental difference between us and City during this era is that City just put relegation fodder teams to the sword with minimal fuss, while we’ve consistently made hard work of beating the dross in the league and it’s not a new thing, it’s been the case throughout the Klopp era. Last minute winners are great entertainment but mean we’re having to play full throttle for the full 90 minutes in pretty much every match. Eventually that will take its toll when you get into the final stretch of the season.

It’s not just the bus parking teams though. In the two league games against United this season, we had 82 shots on goal and scored two of them, one of which was a penalty. That just isn’t good enough. You can chalk up the odd game like that to just ‘one of those games’ but you can’t say that when you struggle to convert your chances every single week and our conversion rate is very poor this season.

We have an £85 million striker on 11 league goals this season, who never scores against the big teams and is streaky and erratic at best. The fluke goal against Sheffield United aside, I actually can’t remember the last time Darwin scored and I’m certainly not confident when he’s presented with a chance. Diaz has also been guilty of poor finishing this season, Salah has stunk the place out since he came back from injury and then we see the likes of Curtis missing the target when clean through on goal at the weekend, Szoboszlai is another who’s erratic in his finishing and been pretty average all season after a strong start to the campaign. The likes of Gakpo and Elliot must be wondering what they’ve got to do to get a chance from the start in games.

If we look at what we HAVE won in Klopp’s time, in the CL final we beat a poor Spurs side who had fluked their way to the final, beaten a very average Chelsea team on penalties a couple of times (again without managing to score in the games) and the season we won the league was when City suffered a defensive injury crisis similar to what we experienced the season Van Dijk did his ACL.

This season we look like we’ll once again come up short, despite being head and shoulders the best team in the Europa league and being in a brilliant position in the league with 10 games to go. You never know however. Arsenal and City’s CL campaigns may yet derail their domestic form, especially if they get through against Madrid and Bayern respectively and then have to play each other in a double header.

Anyway, can you tell I’m still frustrated at recent results? Things can still change of course but in a season of adjusted expectations, it looks like we’ll need to adjust ours at least once more. Walk on!