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Defensive Dalglish Needs an Attacker

Kenny Dalglish insists there is not too much wrong with his Liverpool side but, in the wake of Sunday's shock defeat at home to West Brom, surely the grim statistics cannot lie?

The Reds have played 17 Premier League games at home so far this season and their record reads: Won 5, drew 9, lost 3. That is the club's worst Anfield return in the modern era and, even though success in the cups has kept the majority of fans happy with Dalglish in charge overall, the league form is simply not good enough - whichever way you look at it.

Dalglish certainly has a point when he says performances have often deserved more than what they have actually got from their home games this season. On plenty of occasions, his side have dominated possession and created more and better chances than the opposition in front of their own fans, but they have often come away with just a draw for their efforts and - as the above stats show - three times they have been beaten.

Of those three losses, Dalglish will say the games against Arsenal and the Baggies were ones they should, on the balance of play, won fairly comfortably. Both matches saw his side carve out enough chances to secure a result while they also had the misfortune of hitting the woodwork in both defeats - something we will come back to later.

The other Anfield defeat was a dismal 2-1 reverse against relegation fodder Wigan when they were deservedly beaten – a coupon buster if there ever was one for punters gambling online

The draws against Man United, Man City and Spurs could be viewed as acceptable results given that trio's league campaigns, but other points against Blackburn, Stoke, Swansea, Sunderland and Norwich are unacceptable results and scores that clearly show Liverpool's failings.

So what are they?

Well, quite simply they do not have a striker to put the ball away on a regular basis. Luis Suarez is more of a creator than penalty-area predator and, while he will chip in with a decent amount of goals, the Urugayan cannot be relied upon to deliver enough. Dirk Kuyt was a prolific goalgetter when he joined from Feyenoord in 2006 but he was quickly turned into a workmanlike right-midfielder by former boss Rafa Benitez - a tag he has never been able to shake off since.

Craig Bellamy's long-standing injury problems prevent him from playing too many games on the trot so that rules him out of the equation, while captain Steven Gerrard has also had his injury toils this year and is a box-to-box midfielder not a goalscoring centre-forward. Then there's the enigma that is Andy Carroll.

Fans are quite rightly asking that Dalglish surely should have known all this in January, though, so his lack of action in the transfer window means the blame for the lack of goals - and therefore wins - falls at his door.

It is true that they have had bad luck this season - hitting the woodwork 30 times is an unbelievable record and probably a one-off - while they have been on the end of some debatable refereeing decisions too where penalties have been denied and given against them when replays after have shown the officials to be in the wrong. But there is only so much fans can take of hard-luck stories and only so far they can go to explain a team's failings.

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