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Another lumbering performance from Liverpool’s £35m striker played its part in a Fulham victory than was hardly deserved

Liverpool brought the first chill blast of winter to the Cottage, and it blew them right back home. The misconceived refusal to give Charlie Adam a penalty and send off Philippe Senderos on the hour, a spoilsport decision to disallow a goal for Luis Suárez midway through the second half and a red card for the young midfielder Jay Spearing a few minutes later prefaced a crescendo of Fulham attacking which ended with a dreadful Pepe Reina error and a decisive tap-in for Clint Dempsey.

Seldom slow to complain when fortune frowns on his team, Kenny Dalglish was presented with enough excuses to moan from now until New Year’s Eve. If Martin Jol felt that his players deserved something for sticking to their task and making the most of 20 minutes of numerical superiority, any dispassionate audit of the match would end with the conclusion that the visitors were robbed.

Yet Liverpool’s team contained the biggest individual disappointment, while Fulham’s included a performance of infinite promise from a surprising source. Whereas Andy Carroll did little more than lumber about the pitch to no measurable effect during his 77 minutes in the action, Moussa Dembélé looked to have the makings of a player capable of delighting Craven Cottage for many seasons to come.

This was a good night not to be consigned to the bench, swathed in quilted gear and bobble hats. Excellent news, then, for Carroll, handed his seventh Premier League start in a season that has seen his fitness and application questioned. Dalglish paired Carroll and Suárez up front, with Craig Bellamy buzzing around them.

On paper that combination of complementary styles is potent enough to unsettle any Premier League defence, the only question being whether Suárez, Liverpool’s key goalscorer, responds well to the presence of a big centre-forward alongside him or prefers to work with the energetic unselfishness offered by Maxi Rodríguez or Dirk Kuyt.

On this occasion it was the Argentinian and the Dutchman who shivered in a wind that seemed to be threatening to turn the nearby Thames into a skating rink, while the Englishman had a chance to run around and cuddle up to Senderos and Brede Hangeland for additional warmth.

Two goals in 12 Premier League appearances this season, five of them as a substitute, is not much of a return on a £35m investment, but eight minutes into Monday night’s match Carroll came close to glory. Adam’s thoughtful pass found Suárez on the left, the Uruguayan cut the ball back at pace, and Carroll stretched out a boot but saw his effort from 12 yards out fly straight at Mark Schwarzer.

There would be a knockdown from Adam’s diagonal ball which led to a shot from Suárez that skimmed past the right-hand post, followed by an attempted shot from the Uruguayan’s angled pass that was foiled at source by Hangeland’s crunching block, but Carroll never really brought his strength and weight to bear on the match with any sort of consistency or incisiveness.

For most of the time Hangeland and Senderos looked as though they could cope quite comfortably with whatever threat he was able to produce. The Swiss centre-back’s nastiest moment came not from Carroll but from Adam, who took advantage of a mix-up in the Fulham midfield on the hour to dribble from the halfway line to the edge of the area, where Senderos barged him over and was extremely fortunate to see Kevin Friend award a free-kick and a yellow card rather than a penalty and a dismissal.

Behind the Liverpool forwards, good work was being done by the all-British midfield trio of Adam, the busy Jordan Henderson and the young Spearing. Dalglish’s resources are currently so stretched, following last week’s season-ending injury to the unlucky Lucas Leiva, that he has found it necessary to recall the highly promising 19-year-old Jonjo Shelvey from a loan at Blackpool, where he has impressed by scoring six goals in 10 games. Leiva is too good a player not to be missed, however, as Spearing demonstrated when a poorly judged and potentially dangerous tackle on Dembélé led to his dismissal with 18 minutes to go.

Dembélé is definitely someone to watch. The 24-year-old Belgium international, the son of a Malian father and a Belgian mother, cost a mere £5m from AZ Alkmaar when he joined Fulham in Mark Hughes’s first month as manager last year, and he looks to be in the best tradition of the club’s inside-forwards and attacking midfielders. Roving across the width of the pitch, but doing his best work in the arc behind the main striker, he covers the ground with a supple, low-slung grace, disguises his passes beautifully and needs only to refine his shooting.

If he was a little slow to warm to the contest on Monday night, greater coolness in the closing stages would have brought him a pair of goals. But a backheeled pass to Bryan Ruiz after 80 minutes started an exchange that ended with Dempsey’s shot bouncing off the top of the crossbar, a move worth the price of admission alone.

Premier League 2011-12FulhamLiverpoolPremier LeagueRichard Williamsguardian.co.uk

Stewart Downing is not living up to the price tag, Petr Cech struggles, defences go awol and the curious BBC commentator

Downing is failing to deliver

Plenty of criticism has been heaped on the Liverpool manager, Kenny Dalglish, for spending £35m on Andy Carroll and in many respects that criticism has been justified. But it seems Dalglish has got off scot-free for what may be his worst purchase of the summer, Stewart Downing. Whereas Carroll, at 22, has enough time to develop into the player his transfer fee expects him to be, Downing, at 27, does not. Traditional wisdom states that the former Aston Villa and Middlesbrough winger should be coming into the prime of his career but he has been desperately below par since joining the Merseyside club. While his passing is, for the most part, accurate too much of it is in areas that do not hurt the opposition.

And even when he does get into good positions, he wastes his crosses. The match against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday was the perfect example of this. He had a 72% pass completion rate but the vast majority of his passes and crosses near the penalty box failed to find a Liverpool player or trouble the West Bromwich defence. He has also failed to assist or score a single goal for Liverpool in the league this season. For a winger, and one that cost £20m and is a regular start for Dalglish’s side, these are damning statistics. Liverpool may have spent big on Carroll but Downing, in the long run, may end up costing them more. IMc

Cech can’t catch

Rightly or wrongly, Monday’s headlines will probably focus on John Terry, with the defender kindly recreating his slip of 2008 to give a laugh to all those ABCs out there. Perhaps, though, those headlines should focus on the performance of Peter Cech who had one of his worst ever games in the Chelsea goal. Admittedly the Chelsea defence were poor and there was not much he could do about Arsenal’s first and fourth goals but on three occasions the Czech keeper committed the cardinal sin of all goalkeepers: he got beaten at his near post. The final goal, and Robin van Persie’s third, will be of particular irritation to his manager, André Villas-Boas. Despite José Bosingwa doing his job and covering the angles, Cech, for some reason, moved to his left when the only real place the Arsenal captain could aim for is the keeper’s right. He duly conceded when he really should have saved.

He will also be angry to be beaten by Theo Walcott, a man whose goals come about as often as insightful analysis from Alan Shearer. Chelsea conceded five goals at home in the league for the first time since December 1989 when they lost 5-2 to Liverpool and have kept a clean sheet only once in the league this season.

Nevertheless Villas-Boas said after the match he would be sticking to his open style “because the philosophy is a personal value and a club value. You should never sell it cheap. We will stick to this philosophy.” But if they are to have any success in the league, or indeed Europe, Chelsea will need to change something and they will need Cech, and the defence in front of him, to recover the form that once made them one of the most formidable back lines in England. IMc

No case for the defence

It was another good weekend for those with a vested interest in the branding of the Premier League as the greatest in the world. With 35 goals in nine games, teams coming from behind to draw or win, late goals, and plenty of controversial incidents that will not result in a Football Association inquiry. The underlying cause of much of this drama was defending so bad that it would be an insult to the playground to call it schoolboy.

There were some decent individual performances and cohesive defensive displays – Nemanja Vidic impressed in Manchester United’s 1-0 win at Goodison Park, Fulham were solid in victory at the DW Stadium while the pairing of Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger in Liverpool’s defence gave Kenny Dalglish’s side a mobile and solid look to the heart of their back four. But that’s about it. Stamford Bridge was the main “look away now” arena for defensive purists. Andre the Giant would have contributed more to Arsenal’s defensive unit than André Santos while André Villas-Boas may be committed to playing with a high-line at Chelsea, as he did at Porto, but on the evidence of Saturday he needs to sit down and explain it to his team a couple more times because they do not seem to have the hang of it. Not that anyone will dwell on that as the game gets filed away on the shelf labelled “Classics” alongside the two 4-3 matches between Liverpool and Newcastle and various other imperfect afternoons.

This season the four games between this season’s Champions League sides have seen 29 goals scored. In the 12 matches last season between teams competing in the Champions League there was 32 goals. Does that suggest a new emphasis on attacking, expansive play or merely a new low in the gradual deterioration of the top sides in English football? Sadly it may be the latter. And nearly everyone involved in marketing the Premier League loves it. EF

An assistant finally provides some assistance

Lee Mason was right to award Liverpool a penalty at The Hawthorns on Saturday evening. Jerome Thomas’s collision with Luis Suárez would have been a foul anywhere else on the pitch, so why not in the box? Just because there was no appeal from Suárez does not render the claim any less valid. It is not an lbw decision. What was remarkable about the incident is that it was a rare occasion when a referee’s assistant volunteered to make himself useful. Mason gave the penalty on the say-so of his assistant, Gary Beswick. Far too often the man with the flag will slink into the background when a big call is needed leaving a referee to make it on an incident he is not always in a position to judge. So credit where it is due to Beswick. The problem is that even though he got the decision right, the resulting 83 minutes of abuse he inevitably received as he ran the line may have led him to wonder if it was really worth it. EF

Dan O’Hagan may be Britain’s oddest commentator

Watching Match of the Day remains an enthralling experience but thanks to Messrs Lineker, Hansen, Shearer and Motson, listening to it has become a pretty banal pursuit. However, if Saturday’s edition of the show is anything to go by there may just be a fresh reason to take that finger off the mute button. Those who tuned in for the highlights of Norwich’s 3-3 draw with Blackburn could not fail to have been engrossed by a match that contained two goal-of-the-month contenders, a dramatic comeback and referring controversy, but they may well also have been distracted by the ever-so-odd commentary of Dan O’Hagan.

The BBC’s man at Carrow Road started well but then came Blackburn’s second goal, scored by Yakubu Ayegbeni after 62 minutes. O’Hagan expressed a textbook grunt as the striker lashed a long-range shot at goal (”Yakubuuuu!!”), but then, as the ball hit the back of the net, nothing. No emotion, no wonder, no recognition that the visitors had just retaken the lead. A one-off, perhaps? Not so. A couple of minutes later Christopher Samba made it 3-1 to Blackburn and this time O’Hagan did not even grunt. His voice remained flat from the build-up to the goal through to the moment the men in blue and white were celebrating.

It was as if he was commentating on another incident entirely. In fairness to the man with the microphone, he reacted to Blackburn’s opening goal, scored by Junior Hoilett, as well as Norwich’s three, in an appropriate fashion but it was hard to escape the feeling that in O’Hagan – who is described as “one of the world’s leading freelance television football commentators” on his official website – we may just have a maverick on our hands. SN

LiverpoolChelseaPremier League 2011-12Premier LeagueIan McCourtEvan FanningSachin Nakraniguardian.co.uk

Kenny Dalglish’s men have begun to turn the corner in their efforts to rebuild Liverpool’s standing in the market place

Until this week there was the sense of it being one long handshake – one big nod to the Kop tradition – but now Liverpool’s new owners are getting down to business, coveting a larger share of overseas TV rights and bemoaning the cost of modern players.

With their risky swipe at collectivism, John W Henry’s Fenway Sports Group placed Kenny Dalglish and his men under extra pressure to entertain the punters in Dubai and Hong Kong. To command a higher price in the entertainment market, you ought to have something decent to sell. And Liverpool showed enough in this 1-1 draw with Manchester United to avoid any demand for refunds in the distant lands where the Premier League plants its flags.

Or “EPL”, as Henry called it in David Conn’s Guardian interview this week, as in English Premier League. “We knew virtually nothing about Liverpool Football Club nor EPL,” Henry admitted, in a week when Ian Ayre, his managing director, floated the idea of unequal sharing and heard the English game blow a raspberry.

As this game ignited with Rio Ferdinand’s clip on Charlie Adam and a subsequent Steven Gerrard free-kick, 68 minutes in, it was odd to think this passion play was framed, in part, in the offices of a New York merchant bank: Inner Circle Sports, who advised not only Fenway on their takeover, but Tom Hicks and George Gillett. At the other end of the pitch chugged a side who are owned by residents of Florida.

Nice of Gary Neville, then, to say on Sky that Liverpool have their “identity” back. With no clear plan for stadium building or redevelopment, and a £35m striker who didn’t kick a ball here, Liverpool may be viewed as a mildly confused aristocrat still trying to recover from a run of bad experiences. On the pitch, though, events are starting to turn their way. Helped by Sir Alex Ferguson’s decision to start without Wayne Rooney, Nani and Javier Hernández, Liverpool were able to assert their hunger in a first half that confirmed Gerrard’s steady return to form. The old ground-burning, comic-strip Stevie G has yet to reappear, but he is finding his rhythm again after six months out.

He can still turn a game, too, especially when Ryan Giggs peels away from a wall. That lapse by United’s oldest player opened the gap for Gerrard to swing his free-kick past David de Gea. By then, Nani and Rooney were stripping for action, but Liverpool held the advantage. Anfield’s joy was doused when Hernández connected with a Danny Welbeck flick-on with 15 minutes to go. At the end, though, Liverpool bore the greater look of satisfaction.

For this campaign to yield a dividend, as Inner Circle might say, Dalglish needs his summer signings to exert a rapid catalytic effect. In the industry, most experts say Liverpool have made solid additions without yet adding a lot of title-winning lustre. Luis Suárez is the best acquisition of the past two years: not only for his movement, but for his footwork in tight spaces around the area. Compression is a challenge Suárez solves by dancing out of trouble.

Below the Suárez tier of virtuosity, Stewart Downing is destructive in bursts and intelligent in his positional awareness. In his mid-20s, he rations his attacks on full-backs more than Dalglish may like, concentrating more on accurate delivery. Behind him, José Enrique posted one of his best performances since joining from Newcastle, snuffing out Park Ji-sung and hounding Chris Smalling, United’s right-back.

In the centre, Adam is a constant irritant to opposition midfielders. Not the most athletic runner, Adam compensates with craft. His tumble for Gerrard’s free-kick was preceded by an audacious slalom through three United players. Jordan Henderson, the most speculative of Dalglish’s signings, made a pleasing impact when replacing Lucas Leiva. At this point in the reconstruction only Andy Carroll presents a problem of integration, of style and tone.

In large measure, football, even at this level, is a straightforward process of performing simple tasks: receiving and giving the ball, moving into space, creating angles and taking up the correct positions. But the best sides do much more. Only when Rooney, Hernández and Nani came on to rescue United did you see the champions in plot-changing mode. Until then, they were workmanlike.

These are the assets Liverpool crave. They possess them in Suárez and Gerrard, and sometimes Downing, Dirk Kuyt and Craig Bellamy. Adam’s run towards the Kop for the Gerrard free‑kick was another spark of possibility. It conveyed boldness, conviction, ambition. It was Liverpool in their best match-grabbing mode, not subservient to United, not stuck in a rebuilding phase. When a late chance fell to Martin Skrtel, conversely, you felt the inevitability of his miss and saw the upper-mid-table mediocrity Liverpool are trying to take to the dump.

John W Henry’s musings this week said the figures are hurting. Knowing “nothing about the EPL” before they swooped on a household name in chaos, they now know too much about what it takes to compete with United or Chelsea or Manchester City.

So high were Liverpool in the European hierarchy, it was impossible to imagine a complete collapse. The sheer force of history held them up until new owners could come in. It is a bit soon, though, to confuse that history with the current box-office appeal of this squad, abroad. That still needs