Brendan Rodgers’ team have had a lopsided start to this season, and no mistake, and this was another of those days when he and the Liverpool supporters were left cursing his side’s luck and their lack of a cutting edge.
As it stand right now they have taken an anaemic eight points from their first six matches, a dreadful tally which has them sitting at 13th in the table and looking at a long hard slog in front of them.
One thing you can’t fault the Liverpool boss for though is creativity in his team selections.
After last week’s 4-3-3 and all the issues that went with that, the Anfield faithful saw this one open with a 3-4-1-2 attacking formation that was designed to get goals.
Liverpool need that.
Including this game, they’ve scored a pitiful four times, which when you take into account the firepower at their disposal is pretty alarming for the manager.
How alarming can be guessed at by his decision to start Daniel Sturridge.
The big Englishman hasn’t played in over five months and that told.
In spite of his looking a little leg weary, he did create chances and John Ruddy had to perform well to keep him out.
What will really alarm Rodgers will be the touch heavy performance of Benteke, who performed slugglishly and managed to tweak his hamstring and was subbed at half time for Danny Ings.
That turned out to be a good thing, because he soon had the fans forgetting about the former Aston Villa man’s absence, scoring the game’s opener within two minutes of setting foot on the pitch.
Ings, in fact, looked pretty good and his running and his power were a threat all through the second half.
Yet it wasn’t enough, and neither was his goal.
In 61 minutes, newly minted captain Martin struck for Norwich, his third goal of the season, and coming on an afternoon where he’d found himself in the team despite his wife giving birth to a new baby. The goal came as a result of Mignolet’s error, when he punched a cross ball straight to the penalty spot, where Martin was waiting.
It seemed to sum up Liverpool’s start to the campaign.
The draw puts Norwich level on points with the Anfield side, a pretty decent statistic as they’re the newly promoted team.
It was the home side who’d started the season with ambitions of sealing a Champions League spot at the very least and who look, already, like a team lacking something key.
The injury to Jordan Henderson, which will keep him out for two months, hasn’t helped and adds to the overall feeling of a club in stormy waters.
Liverpool and Rodgers have to sort things out fast.
Man of the Match:
John Ruddy made some very good saves, to the frustration of the Liverpool manager and his players who had gone for goals and might have got more of them had the Norwich keeper not been in such good form on the day.