AND so it proved a false dawn. The midweek defeat of the second string at Arsenal aside, last Sunday’s domineering performance and victory over Manchester United was supposed to be the watershed moment in Liverpool’s season.
However on Halloween the Liverpool team played the biggest trick on their supporters so far, by leading them to believe the malaise was over.
Instead something spooked the Liverpool players into one of the worst displays of the campaign to date and which ever way you look at it, manager Rafael Benitez continues to be haunted by the frailties of his squad.
Regardless of the list of absentees, Fulham should not be beating the Anfield side in the manner they did on Saturday at Craven Cottage and yes, the scoreline was given gloss by the sending off of Philipp Degen and Jamie Carragher which was undeserved, but Benitez’s men were desperately poor.
To highlight the extent of the mire Liverpool find themselves in, with title dreams strewn on the floor and Champions League qualification hanging by a thread, was that Fulham equalled their biggest ever victory over Liverpool on the banks of the river Thames.
Playing against them in the old second division in 1956, Fulham’s match day programme at the time titled the report ‘Hope Gone’, in relation to Liverpool’s fading promotion aspirations at the time – quite an apt description of where even the most optimistic of supporter must be heading towards today.
What is more, Fulham had scored just twice in their previous eight games against Liverpool but that they were able to smash three past the helpless Pepe Reina tells much of the Anfield outfit’s troubles of late.
One can only hope Benitez can once more conjure a victory when it seems most unlikely, as on Wednesday night in Lyon essentially the same group of players who performed so meekly at Craven Cottage have to go to one of Europe’s fortresses, knowing a win is the only option.
Looking lost throughout, Liverpool went in search of leadership and spark and though they found their blonde-haired assassin up front in typically prolific fashion, there is only so much one man can do when his team-mates offer so little.
As Fernando Torres trudged off, still nursing his groin injury, out went the one remaining glimmer of hope three points could be garnered from this encounter because his replacement, easy target Ryan Babel, is not the man to motivate a lacklustre team.
Fulham headed into Saturday’s match on a three-game unbeaten streak in the Premier League and a creditable draw at Manchester City in their last outing but with the six changes Benitez made from the 2-1 loss at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday, Liverpool had ample quality not to make the ham-fisted display which in the end they produced.
In came Reina, Carragher, Javier Mascherano, Lucas Leiva, Yossi Benayoun and Torres and though they were the only players to emerge with partial credit – and partial is being generous – the players around them were anonymous at best.
Question marks continue to be raised over Carragher but he handled the front two of Fulham well, Bobby Zamora and Diomansy Kamara are a forceful pairing but the Liverpool skipper had an assured game.
However, when drawn across to close down Damien Duff’s left-wing cross, it was a shame Carragher’s proficiency in the art of defending was not met by some of his team-mates.
