Rickie Lambert expected a Liverpool squad containing eight new players and one Luis Suárez-shaped hole to click into place post-Christmas. He knows Brendan Rodgers’ team no longer have such luxury, and that a bleak winter will blow through Anfield unless they deliver against Ludogorets Razgrad. Pressure is on in Sofia and the margin for error is diminishing by the game.
“It is massive to stay in the Champions League, it’s huge,” says Lambert, likely to lead the line at the Vasil Levski Stadium in the absence of the injured Mario Balotelli and Daniel Sturridge. “We have waited so long to get in the Champions League and we have got a chance, as bad as the league position is now, to turn it around.”
Liverpool must win in the Bulgarian capital to have a realistic chance of remaining at European football’s top table until the new year, though defeat would not necessarily spell the end depending on the scoreline against Ludogorets and Basel’s result against Real Madrid. Only six teams in the history of the Champions League have qualified for the knockout stage having taken three points from their opening four games but, right now, mathematics do not preoccupy Liverpool. Rediscovering confidence and a way to win following four consecutive defeats is the priority with Rodgers conceding at Crystal Palace on Sunday that he is not immune to the sack.
Lambert says: “We believe we can do it and, if we can go through to the next round, who knows what can happen? I have seen what this club can do in the Champions League before, even when they are not doing so well in the league.”
Thoughts of Istanbul stir any Liverpool supporter, Lambert included, but even in that trying debut Premier League season for Rafael Benítez his team were adept at fighting their way out of a corner long before they arrived at the Ataturk Stadium. This Liverpool team, to borrow from Jamie Carragher’s stinging analysis on Sky of Sunday’s 3-1 defeat at Selhurst Park, have been weak, bullied and lacking leaders all season.
“Injuries have hit us but we have still got excellent players,” responds Lambert. “I have always said that it would take time for the players to gel and that you will see the best of us after Christmas but I know it has to be sooner when we click now and there is more pressure on us.
“I came here expecting to challenge for the Premier League and though a lot of things have gone against us it is very important we stick together and believe in our philosophy. It is horrible, really horrible to see Liverpool in this position. It is hurting everyone at the club.
“What Brendan said on Sunday shows the kind of manager he is and full credit to him for saying that. But it was quite obvious that it wasn’t the manager’s fault. The fault was with the people on the pitch. There was nothing wrong tactically, it was simply that we lost the battle. Not one of us was good enough on the pitch and we need to be a lot, lot better.”
It typified a frustrating start to the 32-year-old’s Liverpool career that his debut goal for his boyhood club was rendered an afterthought by the miserable performance that followed. Without so much as a leading question, Lambert admits he joined Liverpool from Southampton in the summer in the wrong frame of mind, doubted himself during a sustained spell on the bench and only recently come to terms with the pressures of Anfield.
Playing second fiddle to a struggling Balotelli cannot have helped, though asked if he has been given a fair chance by Rodgers so far, Lambert replied: “I want to play every game. When I came here I probably let myself think I wasn’t going to start every game, which I shouldn’t have done. I should have been thinking that I want to be the first-choice striker, whether I was up against the best strikers in the world or not. Maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I came here.”
The mental adjustment, a lack of playing time and Liverpool current’s predicament, however, have not caused the England international to regret returning to the club that released him as a teenager. “I have never regretted it,” Lambert insists. “I knew it was going to be a long season and so I had to bide my time. I also knew that the gaffer does appreciate me.
“I think the whole thing about this being my club, it being the club I supported all my life has worked against me in that it has put more pressure on me and I struggled at first to handle that. By that I mean I put too much pressure on my own shoulders.
“It was hard getting used to a club like Liverpool, the size of it, the pressure, but I have not regretted coming here for a second. It was difficult at first but I feel I am in a better place now.”
