IF Jimmy Tarbuck finds himself struggling for comic material, he could do worse than take a few hints from the Liverpool backline.
By PHIL THOMAS
Not that Reds boss Brendan Rodgers was exactly splitting his sides last night, after the latest dose of joke defending.
Famous Scouse wit Tarby was among the guests in the directors’ box.
But not even he will have found the slightest humour in the way the Reds are leaking goals right now.
Rodgers certainly did not as he launched into a full-blooded attack on his slapdash stars, who have not kept a clean sheet since August 23 — nine games ago.
After seeing his side cough up a 1-0 lead thanks to Jonjo Shelvey’s header, he said: “We were lazy, loose and sloppy, simple as that.
“It was very frustrating, because I felt we were the much better side but lost our concentration. I thought we had moved on from that.
“We totally dominated in the first half and some of our play was very good.
“But we were so loose at the start of the second half it was frightening.
“Our concentration was so bad, we were 3-1 down before we knew it and it was too late by then.
“You have to earn the right to win the game, but we didn’t do that at the start of the second half.
“We didn’t do what I call the dirty work, tracking runs and if you don’t do that, you don’t earn the right to win.
“You can’t keep having to score two, three or even five goals just to win a game. Maybe we thought it was too comfortable, but at this level it never is.”
For a while it looked like it could be, as Shelvey arrived in the box to nod home the opener from Stewart Downing’s cross.
Yet just 31 seconds after the break Glen Johnson’s woeful concentration saw him cough up possession 30 yards out.
Andrea Lazzari whipped in a cross with his first touch and Antonio Di Natale drilled home.
That was bad enough, yet two manic second-half minutes turned the whole game on its head.
First Lazzari curled over another free-kick, and young defender Sebastian Coates, 21, only managed to nod the ball past his own keeper.
And then 34-year-old Di Natale showed that while the legs may be creaking, the brain certainly is not, as he juggled the ball superbly as he waited for support.
When it arrived, in the shape of Giovanni Pasquale — no relation to Joe — his scudding low 20-yard drive bulleted past Pepe Reina.
By then Rodgers had already thrown on the big guns, in the shape of Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez, and from that moment it was up and at ’em.
If Shelvey had not somehow knocked the ball AWAY from the Udinese goal just a yard out, maybe things would have been different.
Even then, when Suarez whipped in a magnificent free-kick of his own, you thought Liverpool could produce another of those famous European fightbacks.
Raheem Sterling, Johnson, Downing… you name them, they all seemed to have a chance to pull it out of the fire. But Udinese stood firm — even though they did ride their luck at times.
One day, perhaps the Reds will be recounting the day they, too, managed to hang onto a lead.
But the way they are defending right now, that very suggestion would get a belly laugh even Tarby in his prime would struggle to command.
DREAM TEAM
STAR MAN – ANTONIO DI NATALE (Udinese)
LIVERPOOL: Reina 7, Johnson 6, Carragher 6, Coates 6, Robinson 6, Henderson 6 (Gerrard 7), Allen 7, Shelvey 7, Downing 6, Borini 5 (Sterling 6), Assaidi 5 (Suarez 7). Subs not used: Jones, Skrtel, Wisdom, Sahin.
