Toothless Liverpool Prove Need for Attacking Overhaul in West Brom Stalemate

Last season, Liverpool scored 101 goals. With five games left to play of the current campaign, they've managed just 47. A 0-0 draw against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday afternoon summed up their struggles.

"We just don’t score as many goals, it’s as simple as that," proffered Brendan Rodgers post-match, per the Press Association (via This Is Anfield).

Rui Vieira/Associated Press

Rodgers' side huffed and puffed but failed to break down Tony Pulis' defensively stubborn West Brom, which would come as little surprise given the evidence available pre-match. Pulis has never lost a Premier League home game against the Reds, while Rodgers' two league visits to the Hawthorns as Liverpool boss had resulted in a 3-0 defeat and a 1-1 draw.

You could be forgiven for thinking we've seen this match before this season. Back in October, a Liverpool team featuring Mario Balotelli as the lone centre-forward and Steven Gerrard as the holding midfielder failed to break down an organised defence and drew 0-0 with Hull City at Anfield.

It was around this time that Rodgers started looking for solutions to his side's problems, experimenting with three at the back for the first time in the following Premier League game, away to Newcastle United. A 1-0 defeat saw that put on the back burner.

Eventually, Liverpool moved to 3-4-2-1 in December, enjoying success up until this month. Having moved back to 4-3-3 for the two matches prior to last week's dismal FA Cup semi-final performance, Rodgers went back to 3-4-2-1 vs. Aston Villa, then reverted back to 4-3-3 with this match. Such tactical inconsistency certainly isn't helping his side at present. This was far from fluid.

Balotelli started up front in a league game for the first time since November 8, while Gerrard was back in the deep-lying-playmaker role that had been scrapped at the match Rodgers has previously said, per the Daily Mail, was the turning point, away to Crystal Palace.

Quite why Rodgers has completely backtracked again is puzzling; reinstating Balotelli up front despite giving numerous proclamations of why the Italian doesn't work in that lone centre-forward role, and having witnessed Gerrard's difficulties at the base of midfield only as recently as the second half of last week's showing at Wembley. 

Rui Vieira/Associated Press

Rodgers moved Jordon Ibe into an attacking role alongside Raheem Sterling behind Balotelli, with Philippe Coutinho deeper in midfield. Clearly the idea was to get plenty of midfield runners, but West Brom's reluctance to even attempt to do anything other than sit deep made this difficult to achieve. Instead, Balotelli came deeper into midfield, especially in the first-half, leaving little presence up front. We've been here before.

Balotelli showed glimpses of attacking quality but lacked service, and ultimately, his statistics for the match summed up Liverpool's afternoon:

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Mario Balotelli's game by numbers vs. West Brom: 0 goals 0 assists 0 shots on target 0 key passes 71% pass accuracy pic.twitter.com/oXJOXjAK9v

— Squawka Football (@Squawka) April 25, 2015"

Withdrawing Balotelli for Fabio Borini with 15 minutes to go hardly left us on the edge of our seats anticipating the breakthrough.

The most dangerous Liverpool ever looked was when, inevitably, Coutinho was involved or Sterling or Ibe were able to run at defenders. Ibe came closest to a goal, hitting the woodwork in the second half.

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#WBA 0-0 #LFC Reds huffed, puffed and huffed some more to no avail at The Hawthorns http://t.co/AwDSo0PiuF pic.twitter.com/B0z80pJpa0

— Stats Zone (@StatsZone) April 25, 2015"

Prior to this game, Rodgers had told reporters of Liverpool's need to sign a forward this summer who can be relied upon to play every week, per the Guardian's Andy Hunter:

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We haven’t scored enough goals this year. If the sequence goes on we are on course to be around 60 goals down on last year. That’s a huge amount.

[...]

So in the summer we have to try and find goals again. We looked last summer and certainly will again this summer. If we do that we have an opportunity again for next season to be like our second year.

"

Liverpool's top goalscorer in the Premier League this season is Sterling with just seven to his name. That in itself outlines Liverpool's huge issues. It's quite probable that this Liverpool team will set a new record, with the fewest goals scored by a Liverpool top goalscorer in the Premier League currently being Milan Baros' nine in 2004-05. At least the Reds won the Champions League that year to make up for it.

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The last time Liverpool's top scorer finished with fewer than 10 league goals was 2004-05 (Baros, 9). The time before that was never.

— oh you beauty (@natefc) April 24, 2015"

This season, Liverpool not only won't win the Champions League, they also won't qualify for next season's either. Their slim hopes of a top-four finish evaporated like their goalscoring form of last season.

The failure to sign an adequate replacement for Luis Suarez, the decision to gamble on Balotelli and the naivety to rely upon injury-prone Daniel Sturridge are just three of the major reasons that Liverpool have ended up in this situation.

Questions will be asked, and you begin to think the owners will want good answers, or somebody will be held accountable.