Haha what? They were one of the best teams at passing in the league, while Liverpool were one of the worst.
Really? In which facet? Pass completion, total passes, possession? Within a few % of each other. Liverpool were nowhere near the worst.
GIMH has my idea. Scoring goals is a huge facet of the game, but it tends to be more for the creation of chances which are difficult than finishing them. The creation of chances is more a team affair and as a team we are fine - we create a lot of chances. It is in the final third where a few players have been letting us down a lot. Liverpool had the worst goals to chance ratio in the league IIRC. That's just disgraceful, and if it was just a fraction better would have gotten us a far better result. As I said before, I just don't think that is going to be the case two years in a row. 30+ posts in the league alone, that's just unbelievable.
- Injuries aren't the be all and end all, but they can have an impact. The point is that who knows? If Van Persie gets injured, sold and not replaced, do you think Arsenal fans will be thinking of the same success just because they got by without some important players last year? There is a huge element of revisionism in your post. Half way through the season the Arsenal fans themselves weren't confident about their place in the top 4, that they finished so well was surprising. Yet with your goggles they should have never had the temerity to expect it. Yet they did it. So now this season you are going to expect it, simply because they did it? Unfortunately, especially in football these days, people have a hard time of thinking outside the CM or Fifa (computer game) box. If this happened last year, it is gonna happen next year. If you take X out they're going to be 4.5 % worse, etc. Your pigeonholing of teams makes sense only if you look purely at results and even then in short term and hindsight.
- Luck evens itself out. No, it doesn't. It usually may, but there will always be outliers of seasons. Last year Liverpool were unbelievably unlucky for a good portion of the season. As I argued before, football in many ways is a game of momentum. Players with confidence do different things. Even in a game situation, a sloppy goal, a comeback double-strike, etc, have great affects on games. Seasons share this trait.
- Looking at players: Barca is a far better team than Chelsea; Dortmund should have no business beating Bayern to the league; Liverpool should never go from runner-up to 6th in the space of a season; Newcastle shouldn't have had a chance of top 4; Harry never should have turned around Tottenham, etc. Football just doesn't work that way a lot of the time.
- Whether new players settle in well, whether the older players play as good as last year, whether injured players come back the same, etc, is just conjecture. We'll see when we see.
- Liverpool is a strange case, which is why your clearcut arguments miss the mark. Liverpool suffered injuries to important players, lost a very important player, and all of the off-field stuff culminated on draining the players in Rafa's last season. When Hodgson took over, he was simply the wrong coach trying to change too much. When Kenny took over half way the team ended up having the 2nd-3rd best record in the league for the rest of the season. This season, as has been discussed ad nauseam, Liverpool have wasted far too many chances. More than a lot of the worst teams in the major leagues in Europe. This year we played much better than we did last year if you look at performances, but last year the results were better. But taking chances is something that can be fixed in the span of a season. The defence is still amongst the best - despite numerous injuries to key players - and the creation of chances is amongst the best in Europe. We don't need wholesale changes to get into the top 4, we just need to take our chances. That's how - if - we do it.
Anyway, this is all a waste of time to argue. We will see next year.
