Tomkins: Reds on the rise

Circumstances clearly made the Reading match a bit harder than it otherwise might have proved. Producing your best football after the international break is never easy, particularly when it's your side that's had most of its players flying around the world and playing two games in a short space of time. In Spain they call the fallout from these games the 'FIFA virus'.

Liverpool, already without Lucas, lost Fabio Borini to a three-month foot break while on Italy duty, and that rarest of things - a Pepe Reina injury - occurred while he was warming up for Spain. To make matters worse, England's game was put back a day and ended up being played on a very boggy pitch, which won't have helped Steven Gerrard and Glen Johnson, although the latter was still probably Liverpool's man of the match against Reading.

Meanwhile, Luis Suarez had played away games in Argentina and Bolivia - the latter at altitude - during the previous week.

These aren't excuses; merely "levellers". Gerrard wasn't as dynamic, Suarez not as effective, and of course, Reina and Borini weren't even playing.

Add Liverpool's lack of a home victory this season - in part due to a quirk of playing such unusually tough fixtures - and it made for something of a must-win game.

As a promoted side, Reading are the type of team that should be beaten at Anfield, but it doesn't always work that way (see last season, and quite a few other campaigns). In the first half, Liverpool were confident and utterly dominant, but only had an excellent Raheem Sterling goal to show for it. After the break the visitors really made a match of it. Brad Jones had too many saves to make for comfort, but even though Reading had some chances, none was hit with much conviction.

It's a strange thing, and a lot of it depends on timing, but often scoring the first goal in a game can make a team more nervous, particularly if it's an edgy situation; suddenly, they have something that can be taken away from them, while the opposition have nothing to lose. It's often the second goal that kills the fear.

Obviously if there's no pressure or nervousness surrounding a game, then the first goal can open the floodgates, but this was a match that only became increasingly difficult for the Reds without the cushion of a two-goal advantage. The longer these type of pressure-alleviating games go on, the edgier it can get.

It wasn't exactly "winning ugly", because the first half was full of fine flowing football, and there were some bright attacking moments in the second 45, but the control of the game was never as total after the interval. No matter how it was achieved, a win and a second consecutive clean sheet cannot be sniffed at.

One thing I always believed as a football truth was momentum. And then a discussion on my site led to the dissemination of numerous studies (across various sports) that showed that winning streaks are actually little different to random sequences of events. If there is any evidence to support momentum as a fact of sport, it's slim at best.

It may be one of those counterintuitive things in life, and I still can't quite write off my instinctive response, but I'm now wary of using the M-word.

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Flick a coin 50 times and you may get heads 25 times (based on the law of averages). So you're winning 50 per cent of the time (and over the past 10 years, that's roughly Liverpool's win percentage). But within that you might get a run of six heads in a row. A coin has no memory, so it can't be down to momentum.

Do teams go on long unbeaten runs because they are unbeaten, or do they go on long unbeaten runs because they're very good sides?

If you win a game, it's down to what took place in that game - taking your chances, opposition making mistakes, referees not harming you with their decisions, etc - all of which could have been different on another day. But if you win a game after six consecutive victories, you could look at that seventh win and put it down to momentum.

Confidence is an important factor in football, but while it helps you play well, it doesn't always lead to results. And at what point does confidence, which helps, become overconfidence, which hinders?

For me, too much changes between games to affect the mindset and fitness of the players, to seamlessly maintain momentum. However, I'm pretty sure that momentum exists within any single game.

It's never more noticeable than just before half-time, when one team doesn't want the half to end. How often does that same team come out for the second half and get caught cold? It's as if momentum is a spell that gets broken when the players cool off for 15 minutes. There will probably never be a more perfect example of this than Istanbul.

But goals change the momentum of games, too. It's actually quite weird to see how quickly the collective psyche of two sets of 11 players can completely reverse.

Take the example of a team that's one-nil up and controlling the game - all the possession, all the shots, in the first 30 minutes. That dominant side wins a penalty, but the taker skies it. Somehow, despite having done nothing good in the game - conceding one goal and then conceding a penalty - the psychological advantage can switch to the losing side. They feel it might be their day after all.

On Saturday night I watched Barcelona's game at Deportivo La Coruna. It was one of those incredible matches where the two sides regularly swapped the initiative. One side had their tails up, and the other had its between its legs; then it switched.

Barca led 3-0 within 19 minutes, but suddenly, from nowhere, Deportivo started creating chances. Were the away team complacent? Before long it was 3-2. More crazy twists and turns ensued, and it eventually ended 5-4 to the league leaders, thanks to a 21st Lionel Messi career hat-trick.

You often see whole teams going into their shells at points during games, as they get pushed firmly onto the back-foot, and in contrast, whole teams suddenly playing with newfound belief. It might only last five minutes at times, but it's clearly visible.

That said, I'm sure that players believe in momentum, and that feeling good about yourself enables you to play better. Superstition has no logical role in life, but if believing in one helps you feel good, go for it.

So if Liverpool's players feel a bit better after beating Reading, then I'm all for that. It surely must be easier to play football when there's not the extra pressure that occurs when things aren't going your way.

But you can also improve without overt momentum: winning a couple of games, then losing, then winning a couple more, then losing again. Maintain that sequence through 38 games and you'll have lost a fairly hefty 12 times, and never gone more than two games unbeaten. But you'll also have won 26 matches, and racked up 78 points.

Having said all this, Liverpool have seven points from nine available and two consecutive clean sheets. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong, and momentum does exist after all.

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