NEIL ATKINSON is joined by Sean Rogers and Ian Salmon to analyse what Liverpool got wrong against Aston Villa and how Tim Sherwood’s men managed to exploit Liverpool’s weaknesses all over the pitch on this week’s ‘Tuesday Review’.
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This was an amazing dissection of Rodgers, and from a podcast that has been quite pro the guy. The flaws and ineptitude detailed make me very worried for our club if he’s still in charge next season.
Wasn’t the decision to play Lovren, upon serious consideration, his ultimate error?
Great podcast and one a good few have been asking for. Again, very measured and detailed. A very good listen which raises the questions that some have been asking for a while.
Again TAW delivers
Outstanding pod that gets better and better, since the Swansea game we have been in trouble and I felt Sunday was the culmination of a manager that has been under pressure all season because he hasn’t been able to find a way to score goals and he messed with a defense that was not sorted until Christmas and it is a long time to be under pressure and since Swansea he you feel that he has run out of solutions
I am not a stats man but I would like to know how many games have been won with Lovren and Gerrard in the team against those lost. When Lovren was bought he was seen as the answer to the defense but I always thought the problems with the defense last year were overplayed and if you play Gerrard as a DM what you lost in his defensive work you gained with his long passing and set piece goals.
Bringing in Lovren at the start of the season and getting rid of Agger is something you only do if you are keeping Suarez, trying to replace those goals is a lot to do in one summer.
The introduction of Lovren wrecked the defense in the first half of the season and IMO was a major cause of Mignolet’s breakdown. Had the season started at Xmas we would be fine having had a good run and could have absorbed defeats against United and Arsenal, all season Rodgers has been fighting fires in defense midfield and upfront and since Swansea stopped us playing, copied by United and Arsenal it seems that all the plans have been used and there are no more solutions other than Gerrard or Balotelli doing something and it felt like this has been transmitted to the players before the game
One of the best shows and I’ve been listening since the early days. Quality discussion and analysis. Found myself thinking: “I’m learning stuff here” !
Keep up the great work guys.
I appreciate the contributions on the program and it’s always interesting (to me at least) to hear other obsessed football fans talk about footy, and I also understand that, as fans of LFC, we’re emotionally involved in a way that makes us want to analyze the arse out of our games in particular. However, I do think it’s possible to be too close something, too involved, meaning when things do go wrong the desperation to understand why means we start seeing things that aren’t there.
As someone else pointed out a couple of days ago, other than Gerrard for Lallana the semi-final line-up is the team that beat City, and this is City before their recent implosion. Whatever anyone thinks about Gerrard, Lallana has not been so brilliant this season that the mere replacement of him by Gerrard in our front three should produce performances that are so spectacularly different as those against City and Villa, especially when you consider that the latter are inferior in most positions across the park. The point I’m making is that this talk of personnel, formation and system ignores the fact that all the alternative approaches suggested on the pod have been tried this season, and failed. They’ve also been tried and succeeded. Any one of us can take another’s suggested line-up and formation and point to game X where it didn’t work and cite examples where our preferred approach did. It’s just that the other person can then do the same to you. Whether it’s 4-3-3, 4-3-2-1, 3-4-3 or whatever, there are games where it has worked and games where it hasn’t. This is just the season we’ve had. Partly down to injuries to crucial players, partly due to first season syndrome with the many new faces coming in.
So I don’t have a problem with anyone putting their idea out there and trying to back it. That’s exactly what’s needed in order for enterprises like TAW to be successful. But when people start talking about the near-as-dammit City line-up and formation for Villa as being a “massive error” because it was a change from the team that beat a Newcastle side that is mentally on the beach, I think you’ve got a clear case of events framing the narrative.
Likewise, I don’t know how Neil believes that selection of this formation either inhibits the players or gives the message that we expected to be on the back-foot. Why should it do that, given the City result?
As I say, no-one is immune from this. The team and formation I’d have selected for Villa has failed as well as succeeded this season. But I certainly didn’t sit there at 5-to-3 on Sunday thinking “what has the manager done here? This stands no chance of working”, and despite what some are saying now, I doubt anyone else did, either.
Yes – pretty much this.
I don’t think the line up or formation should have been a great issue. We clearly saw some sort of collective loss of confidence on Sunday. We can debate what caused it, what part the manager, players, opposition, injuries, officials played in this, but we need to be aware of how events and hindsight shapes our opinion on what we saw.
I suspect we would have seen a different set up if Lucas had been fit. If Rodgers was preparing the team to play 433 with Lucas, perhaps he should have looked at a like for like replacement, but we can’t say with any confidence that it would have produced a better outcome.
None of this is to excuse an abject performance, or say we can’t debate what lead to it. (I enjoyed the pod). I just think we all need to keep in mind the essentially chaotic nature of football. Wings of a butterfly and all that.
Must be tough Brownie to hear a whole pod refute what you’ve been telling everyone on every thread. You have my sympathies
Haha, I think you have me confused with someone else if you think I’m the sort of person who finds it “tough” when people disagree with him. I’ve been helping to run a successful political blog for 12 years and the disagreements here are small beer in comparison, take it from me. A lack of accord on a blog isn’t something that keeps me awake at night. Piles, on the other hand…
Alternatively, listen to the Monday show where Gibbons and others take a different line that is rather closer to mine than it is Sean’s. Swings and roundabout, like.
If you were one of those sat there at kick-off on Sunday bemoaning the manager’s “massive error” in going 3-4-3 with virtually the side that beat City as we prepared to face the mighty Aston Villa, then kudos to you.
Happy THIS podcast has finally come, but as with the discussion on Gerrard & the fact he should no longer be in the first 11 in December, its come much later than it should have done. Its as if they hold off to the last plausible moment to say what people like me have been saying for months. These lads at TAW know football. I know they can see what 90% of us see (the other 10% simply don’t want to see it).
So its obviously for other reasons they are always late in addressing issues we as fans are talking about months before they do on the air. Im not sure what it is – some have said they don’t want to offend anyone at the club because they want more interviews/access for greater content (which if true would be disgusting & one of the major issues with journalism the world over) – but Ive always thought its possibly because they are in the city, meaning its more difficult to say “Steven Gerrard is not good enough anymore.”
Other pods like Anfield Index (Birmingham) and LFC Daytrippers (Dublin) never hold back. They don’t bite their lip. They say what needs to be said. They say what so many of us, at least a significant minority, now a majority of fans, are saying. It is incredibly disappointing TAW do but always too late.
Lads, take this as constructive criticism (something you are better at than others). Read comparisons between your pod and those others. It is not a coincidence many different people on twitter & LFC fan forums say the exact same thing Ive just said.
Rodgers did next to nothing different at the weekend that he hasn’t done before:
-Played Gerrard
-Never subbed Gerrard despite an awful performance that clearly compromises teammates
-Formation changes with no thought behind it – throwing shit at a wall hoping something will stick then wishing by virtue of us having vastly better footballers we’d pull through so he can give himself credit for winning the game from the sideline
-Cowardly taking off the 20 year old kid at half time, just incase his confidence wasnt 100% shot to pieces
-Not putting players in their correct positions
-Talking absolute shit at the post match presser. Describing Gerrard as excellent goes beyond insulting our intelligence.
Absolutely NONE of this is new. So why is it only NOW he’s getting slaughtered on here?
Answer that truthfully + do something about it in future = a better product that the one you’re selling
I am fairly certain Gerrard’s role in the the team has come up on TAW fairly often this season.
Currently can’t listen to the podcast as it hasn’t shown up in iTunes and my iPod refuses to stream it. I have enjoyed listening to at least 2mins of it though.
Excellent podcast!!
What Rodgers needs to do now is to stop starting Gerrard and Johnson, neither will be at the club in 2 months, and start playing Flanno/Manquillo right back and Can as holding midfield.
If you think about the potential spine of our team is actually quite good; Migs, Sakho, Skrtel, Hendo, Coutinho, Sturridge. It’s the other 5 players you need to get right. Fullbacks as fullbacks, Can/Lucas holding midfield, Sterling one wing, Markovic/Ibe the other.
Clearly we need to buy goals this summer but has to be players that suit our system and style of play. I’m not sure who we trust do that though.
Many thanks for this podcast, fascinating – I listened to it twice. Really good, cheers.
Many thanks for this, it’s a fascinating podcast. Listened to it twice, really good. Cheers.