adminBrendan Rodgers could do little but admit that his team fell short, but still attempted to place Liverpool’s Champions League venture in a positive context.
“We are going to fight as hard as we can to make sure it is not another five years,” he said, alluding to the length of the club’s previous absence from the competition. Drawing 1-1 with Basel meant that the rest of the 2014-15 campaign will be a fight to return, a quest that will in all likelihood make or break the Rodgers regime.
“We have been out of it for a long time and we came into it with a great excitement,” he said, but a reflection on his team’s six matches will be painful.
Liverpool exit the Champions League having put in the third-worst ever performance by a English club in the opening group stage — a mere five points collected via a win and a draw against Ludogorets and Tuesday’s stalemate with Basel.
Two seasons ago, Manchester City gained just three, and their group contained Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid and Ajax; Switzerland’s Basel and Bulgaria’s Ludogorets were well below the level of Jurgen Klopp’s peak Dortmund and the Dutch giants.
Back in the tournament’s ancient history, Blackburn Rovers gained just four points in the 1995-96 season, losing out to Spartak Moscow, Legia Warsaw and Rosenborg, though that was when only league champions could enter.
Thus, in modern context and with a single victory, and that from a late penalty against Ludogorets in the opening match, Rodgers’ team might be regarded as the poorest campaign of any English team. Roberto Mancini paid failure at City with his job, even after returning the club to the Champions League at the end of the season.
Rodgers now needs a fuel injection to kick-start a faltering domestic campaign. Fourth place or oblivion? Such opposing fates beckon him. Either that, or win the Europa League, which from this season opens up the possibility of qualifying for the Champions League for its winner.
“We hoped to qualify from this group and that would have kept us in the Champions League but we didn’t do that and the consequence is we go into the Europa League,” said Rodgers, attempting to reassert his usual positivity. “It is a prestigious tournament and this is the level we want to be working.”
With Everton also set to be in the knock-out rounds of the Europa League, Merseyside Saturdays will be free of Premier League football come February.
Rodgers and Toffees counterpart Roberto Martinez, an interested observer at Anfield on Tuesday, must deal with the purgatorial problems that playing Thursday-Sunday bring. It is a timetable that very few English clubs have mastered, with Tottenham the most obvious failures in rejoining the top-four cabal when they have attacked the Europa League.
Liverpool had an illustrious history in the UEFA Cup, the Europa League’s forerunner, winning it three times. Back in 1972-3 and 1975-6, it provided a building block for future European success. By 1977, Liverpool had won the old European Cup.
When winning the UEFA Cup in 2001, Liverpool reasserted itself as a club on the continental scene, and within four years, had won the Champions League.
Such progression is clearly what Rodgers aims for, but he will not be comforted by the four-year gaps between those building-block triumphs bringing changes in Liverpool management.
Bill Shankly won his sole European trophy in 1973, but it was Bob Paisley who collected “Old Big Ears,” as the trophy became known on Merseyside.
Gerard Houllier and a young Steven Gerrard celebrated victory in Dortmund in 2001, but it would be Rafa Benitez who masterminded the 2005 Istanbul triumph. Cold comfort for Rodgers, especially when the fruits of the club’s summer transfer business have gone so sour.
Lazar Markovic’s dismissal after his promising half-time arrival reflected how ill-fated that 100 million pound-plus spending looks so far.
Only Dejan Lovren and Rickie Lambert began against Basel, and both of those were selections by necessity. Lovren returned because of Kolo Toure’s groin problem, while Lambert is last man standing of the strikers, with Fabio Borini, an 11 million-pound signing from Roma in 2012, having not featured since Nov. 23. Meanwhile, Mario Balotelli, scorer of two goals since his 16 million-pound move from AC Milan in the summer, has been out since Nov. 8 through injury. — BBC.
Online Reporter