Wijnaldum: “People Don’t Miss On Purpose - Everyone Is Trying To Score A Goal”

So many questions arose from Sunday’s meeting with Newcastle. Truthfully, we shouldn’t have been surprised by the defensive comprehension of a Rafael Benitez team. He did that for us once upon a time. Those days are long gone, and now we’re in some kind of limbo - unable to score and hardly able to keep the other team from scoring. How many synonyms for frustrating are there? (Please don’t answer that). Of course, if it’s frustrating for a supporter it must be even more so for the players and everyone else involved. Georginio Wijnaldum featured against his former club and (briefly) manager on Sunday and echoed everyone’s anguish.

“We didn’t score the chances we had and that makes it frustrating, because I think we deserved to win,” Wijnaldum told Liverpoolfc.com following the match. Stop me if you’ve heard this one but with the majority of the possession and shots taken, sure. They absolutely deserved to win, for doing the majority of the work. The match didn’t pan out that way though, due to Liverpool’s inability to convert the shots they took, and the chances they gave away.

“We gave two chances away – one was the goal and the other was in the second half from a set-piece. We had clear chances, good opportunities to score a goal but unfortunately we didn’t take them,” the midfielder continued.

“We are unlucky at this moment. But if we score the chances we have, those things [the Newcastle equaliser] can happen and at the end nobody will speak about it again.

“Now, because we didn’t score the chances we had and we conceded one where we were not concentrated enough, everyone will talk about the goal they scored.”

He’s right. When the season started, Liverpool had one of the most scintillating attacks in the league, even without Philippe Coutinho. It didn’t really matter how many goals they conceded because more goals were scored. Now that bite has been lost somehow, and the Reds are lucky to pull a draw by the skin of their teeth. How does that problem get solved?

When asked, Wijnaldum responded: “It’s difficult to say. People don’t miss on purpose – everyone is trying to score a goal.

“But we are not lucky now with the finishing. First of all, it’s good that you create that many chances but we have to make another step to score them.”

Luck. Concentration. Whatever it is, Liverpool need to find it, preferably before Manchester United come to visit in two weeks.