Simply unacceptable.

Sometimes I would like to crawl into Rafa’s head and find out what he is thinking, and last night that urge magnified itself a million fold as our boss made a stream of tactical errors that really confused me, and seemingly every other Liverpool fan.

Forget the fact we could/should have scored at least five goals and concentrate on the fact that the substitutions that were made were both poorly timed and ineffective.

Perhaps more worrying was the lack of fight in the players and the ease in which Aston Villa’s midfield so easily out fought ours. Defensive frailties were all too apparent and the way the club just turned off for the corner that led to Curtis Davies’ killer second was criminal.

We tried our hardest to get back into the game and we created a great many chances but the spark was gone and too many big name players went missing. Lucas who had been pretty decent against Stoke was back to his old self and just looked out of his depth. Mascherano wasn’t offering him too much support either and Stevie G was just plain awful.

But back to the substitutions. It made little sense to wait until the 66th minute to make changes in a home game when we were two goals down. Also bringing off Yossi Benayoun was a decision that really left me fuming, he was doing just fine and everyone knows that when the Israeli is in action, things happen. Quite why Riera remained on the bench was a mystery as well. Lets face it our subs bench is pretty weak as it is, and far less intimidating that any of the other usual ‘top four’ so to then not bring on the most effective of the bunch is just plain crazy.

Andriy Voronin pulled out of too many challenges and after three sub appearances I think we can all agree he is no better a player than the one who we opted to loan out last season. Basically the Ukrainian, Babel and Lucas are showing signs, yet again, of simply not being able to cut it and they are all in very real danger of seeing their Liverpool dream come to an end.

I will not state stupidly that our title hopes are over and I will not be stupid enough, or disloyal enough, to call for Rafa’s head. However he does need to read some players the riot act and needs to simply stop considering some options altogether. This was hopefully just a blip, an aberration, no need to panic but time for some home truths.

Liverpool

Reina 6 – Was at fault for the second goal and clearly ruffled by the awarding of the corner that led to the goal but needs to simply worry about his own job and not the referee’s.
Johnson 6 – Showed a couple of times that it is possible for a full back to be too attack minded.
Insua 6 – Not a good display
Carragher 6 – Oddly subdued game, seemed on a different wavelength
Skrtel 6 – Again like Carra, was just not there
Gerrard 5 – Should have scored early on and gave away stupid penalty. Not enough fight
Benayoun 7 – Decent display, always trying to get attacks going and always ready to dive in for the cause.
(Babel) 4 – Awful. On the pitch for all of 15 minutes but had many wayward shots and bad passes
Mascherano 5 – Has the Barcelona speculation affected his game? I hope not
Lucas 4 – Lucky to not be sent off. Loads of errors both in tackles and distribution
(Voronin) 5 – Nothing stuck to him and he bottled many tackles.
Torres 7 – Gave his all and was a consistent threat
Kuyt 6 – A pretty lacklustre display but by no means the worst in a Liverpool shirt.

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