Brendan Rodgers admitted Liverpool lacked their usual spark, as the Reds fell to a disappointing 1-0 home defeat to Aston Villa.
The Reds conceded a ninth minute goal from Gabriel Agbonlahor, and couldn’t find the quality to unlock the Villa defence for the remainder of the 90 minutes.
“We started slowly in the game and only probably only started to click and up the tempo when we went 1-0 behind,” Rodgers told Sky Sports.
“I think the players gave everything. It was a bit of mixture, we couldn’t find that quality in the final third of the field and Aston Villa defended well.
“We just couldn’t find the final pass, we had enough of the ball but we just couldn’t create so much.
“It is sometimes what happens. Normally we’re a team which starts very, very fast, but for some reason we didn’t start like that.
“When a good team gets in front, it can be hard to break them down.
“We had enough of the ball, and we had enough time to get back into the game, but we couldn’t do that.”
I believe the problem was with the lack of movement in the final third, and for that I blame balotell, he was far too slow and he disrupted the usual free flowing balance of the team. Doesn’t bode well for the future! We badly missed the SAS!
The match overall was disappointing, final result notwithstanding. There seemed to be a general lack of penetration and quality for the finish. I only hope Liverpool get it together quickly before they lose too much ground on Chelsea and the title is gone before Christmas, again. Secondly, so as not to cost Rodgers his job. When owners spend the kind of money they spent, they expect results, if nothing else they expect at least to be in contention.