18 Jun 2015 14:49:10
Fairly new to this site and want to pose some questions to fellow fans & Eds. What do you all put the good run we had last season down to, and why did it implode so spectacularly? For me, I think it shows Rogers does have capability as a manager tactically and that we can move forward and improve from where we finished last season (if he hasn't lost the dressing room.) Just focussing on tactics, I like the high tempo, high possession, pressing blueprint. Areas for improvement would be late game management, defensive organisation and lack of adaptability to a more conservative style when warranted. I know there are lots of haters out there, but I'm looking for objective comments.
18 Jun 2015 15:21:26
Andy
You can see that we have no organization, so when we play pressing football it's as if the players have just been told to go out and do what they want.
When we had that run people on here where pointing to the fact that we where scoring world class goals on order to win the games and said we couldn't score them every week.
Well guess what we couldn't score them every week then the results stopped coming.
Rodgers is clueless, he kept playing sterling upfront who couldn't score in a brothel, surely Lambert should've had a run instead.
Playing can at RB, the world could see he was useless yet Rodgers kept doing it.
With the signings coming in it shows the transfer committee and Rodgers are not learning by there mistakes.
18 Jun 2015 15:41:00
We started the season well which helped. When Suarez came back he was on fire straight away. We had the other best striker in the league. Suarez made everybody better around him. Having Suarez and Sturridge up top gave the whole team confidence.
The managers failings were still evident last year. Palace game, Chelsea game.
All my opinions.
18 Jun 2015 15:56:31
In reply,
Luis Suarez and sturridge clicked together scoring numerous goals!
We were still rubbish defensively, and to say we imploded spectacularly is an overstatement as we lost only once or twice in second half of season
18 Jun 2015 16:02:48
I agree Andy M but for me all the good points he focuses on does also come down to the formation we play, Many teams struggle when playing one up top and for me we were most frightening and better pressing when we played the diamond formation - 2 strikers is a must if we are going to succeed this year for me - If you look back to last season (Finishing 2nd) look at the games Suarez was out, Sturridge was far less affective on his own and we scraped through games Stoke, Villa Utd etc but when Suarez returned we looked frightening and that wasn't all down to the man himself because via versa happened when Sturridge was injured for a few weeks and Suarez had to play up top - Done a better job because of the player he is of course but having 2 strikers creates problems for defenders especially when you have Coutinho behind them its frightening - No reason why we can't adapt to that formation again this year if Lucas dropped have Milner and Henderson either side (Box to Box energy midfielders) and coutinho in front and the missing link is someone up top with DS when he's back - Many fans will disagree with this but look at the spurs game (3-0 win) that was the diamond and even Balotelli looked frightening with DS up top they couldn't handle us - Disappointed we didn't stick with this formation even if it meant ballet and Borini up top the season just gone or even sterling and balo
18 Jun 2015 16:09:01
I personally believe we went on a good run due to two main reasons. First by playing 3 at the back with wing backs we were able to overload the midfield when we had the ball and to a certain extent dominate other teams with possession. The other reason is that by playing a centre back either side of skrtel it meant that when we didn't have the ball and took up a back 5 we didn't have to rely on skrtels shocking positional sense. The good run came to an end simply because other teams eventually saw the weaknesses. Most key being our right side which was continuously exploited as Rodgers chose to play a winger/forward in the RWB role and a midfielder in the RCB role. There were other weaknesses but no point going into great detail as it can all be summed up by saying Rodgers refused to adapt and change tactics
18 Jun 2015 16:12:24
Luis Suarez wasn't even a Liverpool player last season, read the statement correctly. LAST season!!!!
Andy I went to the majority of them games LAST season, we didn't win from being tactically astute in all of them games, in many we were terrible just the opposition was worse. The 3 at the back worked well in about 3 games all season. Rodgers is a joke, the ultimate blagger. To me one of the worst tacticians in the league and should have never been brought in to the club. Brendan Rodgers is the sole reason that Liverpool will not progress, terrible terrible manager
18 Jun 2015 16:55:27
Few in the media gave us a chance of top 4 before a ball was kicked.
Check last season's pre-kick off predictions.
We lost Suarez & Sturridge and beyond their goals we lost pressing from the front and the threat they posed on the counter.
Balotelli was a disastrous signing and what happened was entirely predictable.We overpaid for Lovren big time. Lambert was ill-suited to our style (forget all that Plan B bull, just find players who can do Plan A better than the guy who's not implementing it right on the day)
BR reacted to a slow start by shielding younger new signings and opting for experience (probably the right thing to do). It didn't work though and rather than going for the youngsters he dithered.
By the time he switched our season was over. His tactical change was a master-stroke and amazingly our defence looked solid and we could have sneaked 4th.
A dreadful afternoon against Man Utd burst the balloon big-style and from that point on the players chucked it in (in my view). That was more worrying for me than some of BR's (many) shortcomings - how much bottle does this squad have?
Moral: you need plenty of goalscorers, avoid bad eggs, BR should follow his instincts rather than trying to be clever and there's nowt wrong with 3 at the back.
18 Jun 2015 18:24:38
Hahaha wish I'd read it properly, we didn't even go on that great of a run, we were still poor just po led up a few wins. A few wonder goals helped us on the way. We beat Southampton due to a screamer from coutinho (we never looked like scoring) beat city due to 2 screamers. Etc etc
18 Jun 2015 19:35:23
We had a very weak schedule and even inspite of those wins, we were still aweful and useless in defence. Those same probs were there in 2014 BUT we had a strike force that could outcore the other teams which is pretty much what we were doing until BR bottled it in a game vs Chelsea where they took advantage of what other teams didn`t do in our system as in, press SG hence the slip. We had been found out WAY before the Utd game yet he did nothing and kept doing the same thing till the end of the season until the the Stoke massacre. So how was he tactically capable when the same probs we
19 Jun 2015 07:39:21
What I put our unbeaten run down to is luck. While we were unbeaten the performances were not good at all, and we were very lucky that some of the results in the unbeaten run didn't go the other way and become losses.