At what point does the result become more important than the performance?

Liverpool are currently in the middle of their worst start to a league season for 10,000 years.... or something, maybe its not that long but its BAD, Sky Sports told me so! We opened the season with a poor 3-0 defeat away to West Brom, got a battling draw at home to the defending Champions, suffered defeat to an impressive Arsenal and had another battling draw at Sunderland. These results were poor but worse was to come with a home defeat to fierce rivals Man Utd. This run of league form has left us with a points haul which is paltry in any man’s language, except a German man, in his language its “dürftig”. The total is 2 points from a possible 15. I can hear you say it, “this is Liverpool?”. Surely the fans have had enough of this manager already. Surely they are booing the team off the park and a baying mob is gathering outside Anfield every night with pitch forks and flaming sticks demanding the player’s head on a plate? Well the thing is, they are not..... and dont call me Shirley! The reason they are not is because, through this haze of poor results, there has been a level of improvement. There have been bumps of course, its not been a complete incline. Against City we looked strong, but we lost a little something going into the Arsenal game. We battled at Sunderland but didn’t set the world alight. 

           Then came the international break, which was immediately followed by our first “proper” Europa League game against Young Boys of Berne. Going into this game I had passed comment that I had yet to see a proper show of Rodger’s influence. There had been glimpses but nothing tangible enough to convince me that we were on a steady path. Then Rodger’s made the decision which most fans agreed with by throwing our Young Boys into the game against Berne’s Young... (yeah you’ve all heard the joke by now, I’ll spare you). What followed was an exhibition. Again it wasn’t infallible, we conceded 3 goals, but we came back twice to win a game away from home and we dominated the game for the most part. Its a competition few care about (I do, but we’ll speak about that again) and we put out a junior team, not even a reserve team, this was a team of mostly youth players. With that in mind, it shouldn’t have bothered most fans what we managed to do. The win and performance by a team far removed from our first 11 in a devalued competition shouldn’t have meant anything. It did though. It struck a chord. It showed us what was possible. It showed us this manager has a plan, and when its followed, this is what can happen.

The main men returned for the next game, the big one, the home tie versus ManU. From the first minute, Liverpool looked up for this one. The immediate effort and commitment maybe owes some credit to the magnitude of the game following the Truth about the 96 deaths at Hillsborough finally being released to the wider public, but the quality of the performance does not. The quality could only have come from the mentality preached by the manager and the talent of the players. We even went down to 10 men after 20 minutes or so but still the performance levels remained and we held control of the game for the most part, even taking the lead at the start of the second half. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be in the end, the numerical advantage took its toll in the long run and a more than dubious penalty decision offered the 3 points to ManU and they took them without a question. At the end of the game, fans were understandably disappointed but few were downhearted. The only frustrations which were spoken were those against the referee.

The kids returned, along with a significant new face to beat a strong West Brom side at the Hawthorns in the Carling Cup. The significant new face is another reason for the optimism of the fans as Jerome Sinclair became the new holder of the record for youngest ever Liverpool player in a competitive game, in a funny twist of fate Sinclair was on the pitch at the same time as the previous record holder Jack Robinson. This was another strong performance and another new face Nuri Sahin managed to score his first goals for the club.

From what I have written above I think its pretty clear to see why Liverpool fans are keeping their chins up right now and why optimism is trumping pessimism at the moment. But that is exactly what brings us up to here and the question which opened this article, at what point does the result become more important than the performance? Up to now we’ve been able to acknowledge the fact that our opening to the season was particularly difficult in itself, when you put on top of that the new manager and the forming of a new team plus implementation of a new mentality certain allowances were always going to be made. The way the team has been improving over that difficult start has made the allowances last a little longer, but that difficult start is past us now. What we are facing into is a run of 3 very winnable games. First up comes Norwich away and while we have been able to take good performances up to now, and we will expect a good performance on Saturday too, will that be enough or would the fans forgo a performance at this point for the sake of 3 points? I mean, of course, in an ideal world we would have both but as we have learned over the last few season, just because we should, or could, win doesn’t mean we will. If that turns out to that we do not win but keep our performance levels will the patience of the fans be extended or will the pressure suddenly be heaped upon the manager? I’d be interested to see people post their own opinions in the comments section below to know what people think. Lets hope this is a question which doesn’t have to be answered just yet. There is plenty to be optimistic about, if we can get our first league win under Rodgers on Saturday the fans will have something tangible to hang their belief on and will help him prove himself to the players and encourage them to keep working with them. If not..... well, we’ll have to look at that next week.