5 Key players for Liverpool in 2014/15
“A miss is as good as a mile”. This holds true for Liverpool’s 2013-14 campaign in the Premier League where the team had their destiny in their own hands, but saw it slip away as they narrowly missed out on winning their 19th league title.Luis Suarez, the chief architect of a largely successful last season for the club, has moved on to Barcelona, and the onus will be on other players to step up and continue the good work at the club.We look at five players whose performances will have a major role in the club’s fortunes in the upcoming season.
#5 Simon Mignolet
The tall Belgian goalkeeper joined Liverpool from Sunderland last summer, and made an instant impact as he saved a penalty in the closing stages of the team’s opening game of the 2013-14 season to ensure a 1-0 win against Stoke City.
Though Mignolet was ever-present in Liverpool’s campaign in which they finished a close second and made some solid saves, question marks were raised about his goalkeeping after conceding a series of goals off shots he should have stopped. Critics also pointed out to his poor ball distribution skills which often led to good opportunities for quick counter-attacks being wasted. His ball distribution success rate last season was just 58% and because this aspect of play is core to the playing style of Rodgers’s Liverpool, Mignolet will want to improve this statistic.
There have been some rumours recently that the Liverpool management isn’t fully convinced by Mignolet’s skills, but in the present circumstances, he is set to start the season as the team’s number one goalkeeper. He will look for a better return of clean sheets, after managing just 10 from the 38 matches last season.
One big factor in Mignolet’s favour is that the talented keeper is still only 26 years old, which is relatively a young age for a goalkeeper, and he will look to improve and develop his game further. Liverpool fans will hope for a solid season from the Belgian, as a reliable goalkeeper is often the foundation for a team’s success, and the onus will be on Mignolet to perform and deliver.