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20 teams in 20 days – Liverpool

By on August 4, 2014

Manager: Brendan Rodgerss
Stadium: Anfield
Nickname: The Reds
Finish Last Season: 2nd

Few players in the world can nearly singlehandedly guide a team to success. Gareth Bale did this at Tottenham Hotspur before moving to Real Madrid in the summer of 2013. In the season following Bale’s departure, the club dropped out of the top five for the first time in five years. This summer, Luis Suarez was picked off from Liverpool by Madrid. Last season he scored thirty-one goals in just thirty-seven appearances for Madrid. With Suarez, Liverpool rose from eighth to second in the league. They are now facing the challenge of keeping to where all their work with Suarez brought them.

Up front, the club have the likes of Daniel Sturridge, Suarez’s lethal and creative partner up front for the second half of last season, while Philippe Coutinho is rumored to have signed a new deal at Anfield. Meanwhile, Raheem Sterling is also coming of age – this coming season could well be his big breakthrough year. So it is not like Liverpool are devoid of talent without Suarez, but the question is whether that talent can survive one its own. And certainly, Liverpool have been upgrading to try and replace the shoes Suarez left. Adam Lallana joined the club from Southampton, as did the No9 Rickie Lambert. For just over £11 million The Reds signed Belgian starlet Divock Origi, and brought in another star of the next generation, Lazar Markovic from Benfica.

All of these signings have been made to upgrade their wing and center-forward positions, but it still seems as if Suarez has left a gaping hole up front. After all, Suarez scored more than a quarter of the club’s league goals last season. Lambert, already in his thirties, hardly seems to the Uruguayan’s quality, and while Origi proved he will be a star in the coming years with his performance at World Cup 2014, but also that he still needs to be developed further and refined before he reaches the very top of football. The club have already spent upwards of £80 million this summer but they are lacking that one big star, like Bale at Tottenham or how Suarez was.

At least, in the area that needed improving last season has gotten it. At the back the club let in a horrendous tally of goals, with an attitude of “we can score more goals than you can”. Now, as Dejan Lovren joined from Southampton, that might just change, at very least in the slightest. They might be slightly weaker up front but are stronger at the back coming into 2014/2015.

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.