COMMENT: Lessons must be learned from Liverpool's narrow victory

Aug 28 2008 by Nick Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

EVEN just a handful of games into the season, a few lessons have already been learned. Mainly, that playing badly is okay if you get the result.

And apparently, if you’re getting really carried away with Liverpool’s 100% start to the Premier League campaign, it’s the mark of champions.

But it’s not the mark of European champions. In fact, at the moment it’s the mark of nothing more than a confused bunch of under-achievers desperately wondering where their next coherent passing move is coming from and tiding themselves over with face-saving interventions at opportune times.

And when all else failed, that was what they fell back on once again last night, only this time with the added indignity of needing the best part of two hours to do it.

The hope was that Liverpool would up their game considerably, not just from that dreadful first leg in Belgium, but the subsequent underwhelming league games.

But the only standard they raised last night was the one from Liege – giving them a belief that they could inflict one of the home side’s biggest European upsets.

For most of this second leg, the home threat was minimal and that is worrying.

It’s the competition in which they are supposed to thrive not flounder. Build-up was tentative and often turgid, narrow enough to make cycle lanes jealous.

And the most alarming aspects of Liverpool’s current inability to open things up was almost exposed to the full by their opponents last night.

Standard weren’t simply sitting back and smiling about the lack of variety and invention that stood before them.

They wanted to capitalise, sensing – as anyone would in the current circumstances – that an away goal would be relatively easy to defend.

They should have got it too in an early period that mirrored the opening to the first leg two weeks earlier, the brilliant Belgian supporters packing half of the lower Anfield Road ensuring the atmosphere was just as inspiring to their heroes too.

And it was a similar story in midfield, where the tough tackling and tight marking squeezed all the control and composure out of Liverpool’s play.

They sat back a bit more in the second half, making the priority to continue their relentless frustrating of the five-times European champion. As a result it was all too tense for everyone’s comfort – except Sir Alex Ferguson, watching on and wondering what squeaky-bum time was doing turning up in August.