For the devout and superstitious supporters of Liverpool Football Club, Saturday's surprise 1-0 defeat at home to Aston Villa would have been marked with curious suspicion. Although this Premier League season is only four games young, the defeat to Aston Villa meant that so far in the league campaign the Anfield Club have only taken six points from a possible twelve. At this stage of their league campaign last year, the Reds had amassed ten from twelve.
Prior to the start of this season, Liverpool lost their influential but maniacal talisman Luis Suarez to Barcelona for £75 million. Suarez played a determining role in the club's ascent to second position in the last campaign with 33 goals, winning individual honours such as the Premier League Golden Boot, the PFA Player's Player of the Year award and the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year accolade too. Much talk in the close-season was if the Reds' form would plummet having sold their best player just as it had happened to Tottenham Hotspur when Gareth Bale had left White Hart Lane to join Spanish giants Real Madrid for a world record transfer fee of £85.3 million. Liverpool may well replicate the season Tottenham endured last year eventually finishing fifth in the league culminating in the dismissals of first, Andre Villas-Boas in December of last year following a 5-0 home defeat to Liverpool, and secondly, his successor Tim Sherwood last May.
In an attempt to lessen the not large but yawning hole that emerged once Luis Suarez's transfer to the Camp Nou had been officially confirmed, Liverpool spent over £100 million recruiting Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren (all from Southampton), Mario Balotelli, Divock Origi (who has been loaned back by Lille - the club he had signed from), Lazar Markovic, Javier Manquillo, Alberto Moreno and Emre Can over the summer. Whilst Balotelli and Lambert were signed to score goals, Lallana and Markovic joined to add some much needed creativity- another crucial aspect of Suarez's game (accumulating twenty-one assists in the league last season). Inevitably, the Merseyside club's transfer dealings drew similar comparisons to Tottenham's transfer activity last summer when owner Daniel Levy sanctioned the arrivals of Erik Lamela, Christian Eriksen, Vlad Chriches, Etienne Capoue, Paulinho, Roberto Soldado and Nacer Chadli in deals north of £110.5 million. Spurs' season was perhaps characterised by the new signings inability, and to an extent, disinclination to gel together and adapt to new surroundings leading to Villas-Boas and Sherwood's aforementioned departures.
Irrespective of Tottenham's form last year, what would be most pertinent to Liverpool fans is a worrying 'second-season syndrome' decline the club seem to go through the season after they finish second in the Premier League. In the 2001-2002 campaign, Liverpool under the Gerard Houllier regime had finished seven points adrift of Arsenal in the league - their highest league position since 1991. The key to Liverpool's success that season was their strong form when playing at Anfield having amassed more points than any other team at home that season. Michael Owen was also instrumental in the Reds' title push with nineteen goals in the league that season. Owen's unyielding efforts in front of goal are best revealed by the fact that the second highest goalscorer after the him was his club and country team-mate Emile Heskey with nine goals. Robbie Fowler had left his boyhood team to join Leeds United for £11 million midway through that season.
Prior to the 2002-03 campaign, Houllier was expected to significantly strengthen his squad if Liverpool were to be successful in their title push (John Arne Riise was the only notable addition in the 01-02 season). Of the reputable names signed, Salif Diao and El-Hadji Diouf, who both joined from French clubs CS Sedan-Ardnennes and RC Lens on the back of very promising performances representing Senegal in the 2002 World Cup, and French midfielder Bruno Cheyrou had also signed from Ligue 1 outfit Lille, were expected to inject more verve into the team. Nearly everything went wrong however.
Diouf who costed £10 million and was signed instead of making Nicolas Anelka's loan move from Paris Saint-Germain a permanent one after a successful six-month loan deal the previous season, was the striker Houllier hoped would wrestle the title away from rivals Arsenal and Manchester United, as well as easing the goal-scoring burden off Michael Owen's shoulders. On his Anfield debut against Southampton, Diouf netted twice in a 3-0 win. Nonetheless, his next goal did not come until March 2003. During that time, the Reds had gone a morale-crushing twelve games without a win in the league, a run stretching over two months. Diouf finished the season with a disconcerting three goals in twenty-nine games and was shunted midway through the season to the right-flank to accommodate Heskey and Owen's partnership. Liverpool ended the season in fifth place, losing out on a Champions League spot on the last game of the season to direct rivals Chelsea succumbing to a 2-1 loss at Stamford Bridge. The overachievers during that season, Blackburn Rovers, under the leadership of Kop legend Graeme Souness ended only four points adrift of Liverpool in sixth place.
Six years on from that rather forgettable season and with Diouf, Diao and Houllier firmly consigned to the past (not that the latter was seen as a failure at Liverpool), the Reds were now under the reign of Rafael Benitez. The outspoken Spaniard had won the Champions League in 2005 defeating AC Milan in Istanbul and the FA Cup against West Ham in Cardiff a year later, winning both matches on penalties after 3-3 thrillers after extra time. In the 2008-09 season, Benitez had engineered Liverpool to another strong second-place finish in the league, pushing arch-rivals Manchester United until the penultimate game of the season. With a total of 86 points, Benitez had overhauled Houllier's points record, resulting in Liverpool's most successful season to date since the inception of the Premier League in its current format in 1992.
Similar to Houllier's situation, avid Liverpool supporters, including Anfield icon Alan Hansen, were expecting Benitez to go one place better and win the title. The £30 million sale of Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid, who was part of Liverpool's impregnable spine from 2004 to 2009 along with the likes of Pepe Reina, Jamie Carragher, Sami Hyypia, Javier Mascherano, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres had hit Liverpool extremely hard. Alonso was arguably just as important to the Liverpool side as Gerrard was. Unhinging opposition defences with an unearthly talent of phenomenal passing, breaking-up play, and displaying a calm, unflappable demeanor on the pitch, Alonso was instrumental in Liverpool's stirring cup final comeback victories against Milan and West Ham, in addition to Liverpool's second-place finish in 08-09.
So Benitez replacing his compatriot Alonso with the talented but injury-prone Alberto Aquilani from Roma for £17 million would have never truly gone down well amongst the club's most ardent supporters. Ironically, Aquilani was injured upon his arrival at Merseyside and did not make his league debut until 9th November 2009, coming on us a late substitute against Birmingham City in a 2-2 draw at Anfield. The signing of Aquilani represented one of the numerous amount of problems that was to happen during that season. Liverpool had already started the 2009-10 campaign with a 2-1 defeat away to Tottenham. In their second home game of the season the Reds lost 3-1 to an Aston Villa side inspired by Ashley Young. Their travails away from home were well documented having failed to take a single point at Spurs, Portsmouth, Fulham and Wigan to name a few. Their prolific striker Fernando Torres had suffered lengthy spells in the sidelines though still scored eighteen goals. Furthermore, fringe players such as Albert Riera, Ryan Babel and Yossi Benayoun all became increasingly frustrated with Benitez regarding a lack of game-time opportunities and voiced their deep-rooted concerns to the media.
Liverpool eventually finished the season a lowly seventh position which at the time was their worst season in the league since the 1998-99 campaign. Their away record, which had undermined the whole of their season, read at the end: Played 19, Won 5, Drawn 6, Lost 8. Benitez had his contracted terminated by mutual consent a month later bringing to an end his six-year stay as Liverpool manager and was replaced by Roy Hodgson. Fernando Torres left Liverpool just over six months later to join Chelsea for a then British transfer record of £50 million.
Brendan Rodgers must surely be acutely aware of the examples of both the second-season syndromes Liverpool experienced in 2002-03 and 2009-10 and will be at pains to ensure that the club's promising project does not show any signs of stagnating, particularly after last season's success. Although only four games have been played in the league thus far, Liverpool's performances, aside from the Tottenham result three weeks ago, suggests better performances are needed. In the 09/10 season, Liverpool had collected exactly the dame amount of points from the same amount of games as they have at the start of this season. And in the 02/03 season, after four games, Houllier's side were only two points better off. Perhaps it is too easy to read into such statistics and inevitably the new signings will take time to adapt as they get accustomed to each other, but as recent history indicates, Brendan Rodgers will feel that his side will need to register a win against West Ham at Upton Park tomorrow evening before the club's most loyal supporters start thinking superstitiously.
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