Liverpool's values exposed in culture clash

Soon after seeing his Premiership-leading Liverpool cut to pieces by Valencia for a second time in six weeks, Gérard Houllier issued an order. "Think," he told potential critics, "where we where two years ago – and where we are today." The compassionate response from anyone who had just watched a football version of the Spanish Inquisition had to be: "Only if you insist."

There is no doubt about the progress of Liverpool in many vital aspects of the game. Houllier has developed a genuine work ethic. He has shaped a team of resolve and character. But where are they today in relation to the best of the European game as represented by the twice Champions' League finalists Valencia?

The truth is as brutal as some of the passages of interrogation conducted by the likes of Pablo Aimar and Ruben Baraja at Anfield on Wednesday night. They are as far away as ever. Away from what, precisely? From a way of thinking and playing which can only be fostered by consistently applied standards of technical ability and deeply cultivated flair; the kind of standards that are workaday in La Liga and which, in the much self-trumpeted Premiership, dwindle alarmingly outside of the élite of Arsenal and Manchester United on their good days.

What happened at Anfield this week was not so much a football match as a cultural collision, and unfortunately the city which spawned the Beatles was buried to a clatter of castanets. There were times when the passing facility, and the speed of execution, of Valencia was breath-taking and when you saw the exquisite touches of Aimar – and the sinuous running and powerful shooting of his second half replacement Miguel Angulo – it was impossible not to make a harsh comparison with the quality of most the opposition faced by Liverpool on their way to a four-point lead in the Premiership.

Liverpool's problem is two-fold. Too often they are obliged to measure themselves against lower-echelon Premiership teams for whom the quality displayed by Valencia might have been fantasy. This obviously works against the development and refining of the team's touch, but it is also compounded by Liverpool's failure to create a creative culture of their own. Off the ball they are paragons of virtue. On it, they are like the England team whose coach, Sven Goran Eriksson, sat in the Anfield stand no doubt bleakly revisiting the worst moments of the recent matches with Slovakia and Macedonia.

Neither Slovakia nor Macedonia had players remotely of the class of Aimar, Baraja, Kily Gonzalez and the wonderfully composed defender Amedeo Carboni. But they did have something England and Liverpool lacked – and Valencia showed it at one of its most refined and exciting levels. They had a degree of coherence. They came to the ball rather than ran away from it. They worked closely together, made deft little triangles, as they moved the ball smoothly up field in a rhythm which sometimes reduced Liverpool to something uncomfortably close to wide-eyed terror.

Ironically, the perpetrator of this mayhem, the Valencia coach, Rafael Benitez, has long been an admirer of certain aspects of the English game. The quality of its passing, though, we can assume is not one of them. On Wednesday night, Benitez said: "In general, I would have to say that English football is still more direct."

That is a mean euphemism indeed. Liverpool were as direct as a battering ram, and about as subtle at times, but because of those qualities which have taken them past Arsenal and United, at least for the moment, they did become seriously competitive in the second half. It is also true that both Michael Owen and Steve Gerrard had chances to score, but then, in the end, even Houllier admitted that Valencia were the better side. They were better in several vital ways, but most clearly their superiority lay in their use of the ball and their movement towards it and on it.

The vital difference was in the play of the opposing midfielders. Baraja and Kily Gonzalez were never far from each other, and Aimar was always there to bring a cutting edge to their swift interplay. By comparison Gerrard, Dietmar Hamann and Danny Murphy looked in dire need of a personal introduction.

Murphy was betrayed by a touch which made the completion of the simplest pass a small miracle, Gerrard looked out of sorts and position and, while Hamann displayed all his usual energy and commitment, he too spent most of his time dreaming up individual initiatives.

Valencia's coach said we could read too much into one game – and perhaps a set of results which saw a weakened but still seriously representative Manchester United embarrassed by Maccabi Haifa and the Arsenal defence overrun by Borussia Dortmund. It was, however, impossible not to see in Liverpool's defeat a serious reproach to the values of the Premiership – the league of big money and a dismayingly small base of true accomplishment.

Liverpool, as Houllier says, have covered a lot of ground in two years but, against Valencia, it looked once more as if their journey had scarcely begun. The Anfield manager was a little wistful when he said: "I liked the game – and I liked the tempo."

What wasn't there to like? It had a marvellous rhythm, flashes of creation and moments of genuine beauty. Houllier no doubt would have liked it even more if his team had been able to join in.