IT SEEMS a little unlikely that Kenny Dalglish follows commentators’ favourite Opta Joe on twitter but the increasingly media unfriendly Liverpool boss is sure to be well aware of the basic message the statistics service circulated in tabular form this week. The Merseysiders are, in the league at least, having a wretched 2012.
It is not entirely clear what Dalglish would have to do to seriously tarnish his reputation around Anfield. But his side’s showing in this season’s championship will not be doing much to enhance it.
Things in the first half of the season, some critics suggested, might have gone better but just now 34 points from 19 games, which is what they had amassed by new year, looks pretty decent. Since then the 18-times champions have managed just two wins and two draws in 11 outings, the third worst record in the Premier league after relegation dogfighters Wolves (five) and QPR (also eight).
Dalglish put last weekend’s defeat by Wigan down to tiredness. His side have been racking up domestic cup games over the last few months, with the League Cup already won and the FA Cup semi-final looming. For the club that has won more but for the European Cup/Champions League titles than any other in Britain, it is an embarrassing fallback position.
The Scot has not been helped by some of his big name stars. The Luis Suarez saga and consequent long suspension mired the club in controversy without producing that managerial old favourites: the siege mentality. But even when he has played, the striker has, with 13 goals in 31 for Liverpool this season, not approached his eight in nine strike rate for Uruguay.
Andy Carroll, meanwhile, has managed one in his last 11 league appearances. And even Steven Gerrard, who has featured nine times in the league since the start of January, has found it difficult to come up with his old magic.
Even the team’s generally solid defence has struggled of late with West Brom, Aston Villa and Stoke among the clubs to have kept things tighter in 2012.
The upshot is that Dalglish and his men head to Newcastle this weekend desperately needing points if they are merely to match their worst ever placing (eighth) in the Premier League era. Worse still, perhaps, it looks almost certain that in the year that marks the 10th anniversary of the last time they finished above Manchester United, they will finish more than the 32 points adrift of their old rivals than they were in 1993/94. The gap is 31 at present and both clubs have eight games to go.
Immediately behind Liverpool in the table at the moment are Sunderland, whose fortunes have moved in rather a different direction over the second half of the season. The revival at the Stadium of Light started in December when Martin O’Neill took over. A team that had won two of its opening 14 league games then took maximum points in four of the next six. Something very close to that form has been maintained since and in the 2012 table Sunderland are fourth behind the two Manchester clubs and Arsenal.
