Re: Liverpool Thread
I disagree, Liverpool sit in 12th place a million miles away from where they should be.
if rodgers and liverpool are doing well, West Brom and West Ham managers should be winning Manager of the Decade awards!!
Tippy tappy taka tip toe football is ok if you have the players. Liverpool dont and Rodgers doesnt have any other way of playing.. football is about goals and Liverpool dont score them.
its not just about having a striker - because Liverpool only play with 1 striker in the system anyway so it wont make too much difference in they bring in another
the build up play is slow and laboured and there isnt enough energy in midfield.
henderson is awful player, gerrard past his best, Sahin finding English football difficult and Allen a very overrated but very tidy player.
Liverpool defence looks good though Rodgers is fixing that.
We're not even half way into the season ffs (and Liverpool are in 11th, not 12th)
Should we beat Tottenham tonight (as difficult as that may be) then we're right back in the fight for European places.
Rodgers has come into a club that had just been dragged through its worst period in decades (Thanks Hicks and Gillett) at a time when the new owners had tried to appease the fans by bringing in Dalglish and giving him a load of money to spend (yes including loads that was brought in from selling players) and it didn't work out. So first Rodgers had to steady the ship, clear out some of the mistakes and get an idea of what sort of squad he was left with afterwards.
He has brought in some good players like Allen for instance who looked comfortable straight away but has looked tired of late, as well as Assaidi who looks threatening every time he plays but hasn't been seen much yet, and i'm stil confident Sahin will be a quality player given the right players around him. The most important thing Rodgers had over Dalglish though was that he hadn't already been involved in the club before taking over as manager.
Dalglish would already have had a good relationship with some of the players and will have had ideas already of the team he'd play. Rodgers started with a completely clean slate and gave everyone a chance. It's great to see Stirling, Shelvey and Suso get a chance as well as Brad Jones getting a run in the team. He's also seen what fans saw in reserve/youth games; Wisdom is better than Robinson and can be better than Kelly.
At the minute he hasn't got all the personnel he'd like yet to fit his system perfectly but he isn't as far off as some think. He has been trying to implement a whole new (and yet somehow intrinsically LFC) system which is wholly different to the previous one, now when you look at our fixtures list you can see how things haven't always gone to plan, take our first 5 games; West Brom (away), Man City (home), Arsenal (h), Sunderland (a), Man Utd (h). That's a run of games you wouldn't particularly want at any stage of the season, but to start on that with a new manager, new philosophy, new formation etc. You can surely see why we struggled for a while.
Can anyone seriously tell me they think Rodgers should have abandoned his philosophy and delayed introducing this style until after those games? Or until he's signed more players? How does that make any sense?
This is his preferred first team at the minute
....................Reina
Wisdom......Skrtel......Agger......Johnson
..............Allen.........Gerrard
......................Suso
Stirling.................................Enrique
.................Suarez
Enrique has been a revelation on the wing of late and Johnson looks comfortable at left back. Stirling looks tired and in need of a rest, Suso is interchangable with Shelvey, Gerrard, Henderson and Cole if necessary.
I think maybe 3 or 4 signings could turn this side into a team fighting nearer the top. We need to help Suarez more, so we need another striker simply because if he gets injured we're fucked. But we can play with two up top as he has done recently when switching to 3-5-2 with wingbacks, that is just as effective as the 4-3-3. While Stirling looks an amazing prospect, he's not the finished article yet and he does look really tired at the minute, we need another right/left winger and to get Assaidi fit and fighting for a place. We also need left/right back cover, Downing is not good enough at left back or left wing.
So to sum up, i'm so far happy with Rodgers and his team, i'm confident we'll climb the table sooner or later and i'm patient enough to realise it can't be done overnight.
