Ahead of the visit to Steve Bruce’s Hull City Neil was joined in the CityTalk studios by John Gibbons, Steve Graves and Alison McGovern, with Jonathan Wilson on the phone to discuss his new book, The Anatomy of Liverpool.
This week’s music is from The Levons (@TheLevons) and The Old Silent (@theoldsilent).
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Having thought about the weekend car crash, I wonder if Rodgers did get his tactics right but we couldn’t execute them.
Hull packing the midfield and only venturing into our half [to score (!)] meant we had to go over the top or down the wings.
Chelsea did this against Southampton in the second half when up against the Pressing Pochettino’s ™, using Ba as the target man and sending Terry up as often as possible who is great with his head in the box. They ended up with 3 goals with no response. They didn’t try to be Arsenal.
Well, there was plenty of hoofing but we’re not setup for that game and never hit the target, whatever that was, or win a second ball. In addition the full backs didn’t work with the wingers and Moses just seemed really bad while Sterling’s efforts were noble but in vain and betrayed a lack of playing time.
However bad we were at it, we need to adopt this for compact or quality midfields. It’s ye olde English game and Bruce is very adept at setting up to stop teams playing. The new Stoke perhaps.
That means using Sakho and sending him up into the box the way Terry did for Chelsea.
Also, we need to support the wingers more so when the ball goes out wide, there are outlets for whoever has the ball and we’re not relying on one person to do it all. Move up in packs.
The events at the training ground on Friday didn’t help for sure so that likely left us unsettled and less prepared with square pegs in round holes but we didn’t adapt well at all to a more long pass / ball game which we need to do.
Finally for depth, the Aspas, Allen, Borini signings are really hurting us now with them offering so little. It echoes the lack of depth up top and the absolute failure of Rodgers to create a strong midfield. Add the failure to make our defence resemble anything like Steve Clarke’s efforts and there are big concerns about management, whatever progress he wants to point to.
The signs are there that this is to become another building season rather than a challenging one, which will require a further 2 windows to improve the squad – during which time we WILL lose Suarez. December will be colder than normal.
In fact, go one step further against organised compact Hull like teams, put Sakho up alongside Luis as a target man.
He’ll win every single header for sure, and lets admit we didn’t do well playing on the ground through this side and we always struggle against organised or skilled midfields.
Sakho, our new Andy Carroll. Or shall we wait until he comes down off his high with france??