AFTER the Manchester United game Neil Atkinson, Sean Rogers and Paul Cope sit down and drag through the ashes of Liverpool’s disappointing defeat.
There’s talk of identity and more on the Tuesday Review.
THE TUESDAY REVIEW: IDENTITY
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It was crap, it’s been crap for a while. I made the point about 2013/14 being an outlier in a post a day or two ago. Reading between the lines, Carra was making the same point ‘he’s obsessed with 4-3-3…it didn’t weeerk, it was only when he played two up front that we improved’…
I’m more and more inclined to to believe that he’s very good at working with and improving players, particularly young attacking players, but a bit crap at setting up a team. He did really well to compromise in 13/14, getting the best out of a couple of stellar attacking talents, but I don’t think it was the way he wanted to play. I’ve said this before, but my heart sank when I saw the lineup against Southampton last season: it was as though 13/14 had never happened.
You may think the supporters get what they deserve, but its up to the manager. If he thinks we’re best playing attacking football, then he’ll ignore the supporters and the media: any confident manager would do so. You can’t blame the supporters for the manager’s transfer policy, coaching or decision making. He’s paid a lot of money to do a job and if he had any sense he wouldn’t read the media. Besides, he’s had enough time and money to set up a balanced side. It’s not rocket science, indeed, its pretty basic stuff for most managers.
I can’t understand where Neil gets Rodgers as an attacking manager from. Rodgers has never managed a side that attacks and scores, other than the bonkers 13/14 side – which was more about the players and him letting them to what they do best. His entire career demonstrates he cannot get sides to score, and his defence is always leaky.
Seeing as we still look utterly lost on the park, do not bother closing down and harassing the opposition into mistakes, it’s clear he has no future here. Even Fat Sam would have us shutting up shop after a couple of weeks. But I doubt the owners care too much. TV review makes the books look great, and with the dire English results in Europe, the top 4 target will soon be down to top 3, which we’ll never make under the current structure.
There are many myths about Rodgers, his attacking style is just one. His 3rd placed Championship Swansea team had 69 for 42 against in 2011. It managed 44 for 51 against in 2012 when it finished 11th in the Premier League. This is what got him the Liverpool job!
I don’t think anyone ever had the slightest doubt as to whether Rafa Benitez fretted about, or heeded, the opinions expressed by fans or the media. And we all know why: because he considers himself, and rightly so, an expert in his field, unlike the vast majority of the fans and those in the media.
To the extent (and I don’t know if it’s true) that Rodgers is concerned about fan reaction, tailoring his approach to what the fan reaction might be, etc, he is not fit for the job of managing Liverpool Football Club.
Many of us have been arguing, with evidence, that Brendan Rodgers’ “philosophy” and “style” and “preferred system” had practically nothing to do with how we played in the second half of the 2013/14 season, our most successful recent spell in the League. We said that last season, we said it again at the beginning of this season. It’s nice that thoughtful people, and the folks on The Tuesday Review certainly are thoughtful, sober, analytical, knowledgeable people (with Sean leading the way, no disrespect to Paul and Neil), are beginning to see the plausibility (perhaps even the truth) of that argument.
I enjoyed this episode of The Tuesday Review very, very much.
N.B. This is _despite_ the fact that there were a couple of negative assessments or comments about Lucas. :-)
On Tuesday night I mustered up the strength/courage to rewatch what I though whilst the initial viewing resembled keystone kop slapstick football, however to my surprise the Liverpool performance really wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it appeared to be on Saturday. Watching it scathingly in a post mortemesque investigative manner, in my minds eye I blanked out the West Ham one off debacle and treated this game as a part 2 continuation of the laudable Arsenal performance and to my surprise the fist 45 we did ok without little trouble or concern being caused by the opposition. Being hyper critical we maybe could have been on the front foot more as the TAW team said and deny their CMs any space/possession but we backed off instead of pushing up our back line and practically setting out stall to somewhere near the halfway line and with an opposition which contained no recognised striker, and with our back line now packed with genuine pace maybe we should have gambled and left space in behind for the defenders and mignolet to sweep up. As surely the unequivocal truth is for this is a team which can not defend on the back foot backing off inside our own box. That certainly doesn’t help the GK and a prime example of this backing off to the enth degree was the 1st goal free kick if you notice the straight defensive line was 4 yards from the goal line when in order to give the keep any chance of defending his box from the potential incoming free kick if the back line was at least level with the six yard line then it is also more than possible that Blind doesn’t have a free shot at goal, or Mignolet gets a reasonable opportunity to save the shot.
YNWA Keep Calm And Focused. Btw what’s happened to Steve Perers when we need him most, sorry, I should say when Brendan needs him most.
After 18 months of Rodgers, Peters preferred to quit and work with the Owl in the Ingurland set up.
Actually, I think he had a serious family illness to deal with, and they live in the south.
Great show. A couple of things I noticed about our left-side, which is a complete mess in possession.
1) Without proper overlapping full-backs, 4-3-3 often becomes 4-5-1, because the wide forwards can’t tuck in and offer support to the centre-forward (and create a 3-4-3, with Lucas dropping in between the centre-backs). Moreno might not be as good a defender as Gomez, but he can play this position properly, and would have allowed Ings to be further forward and more central. He would also retain possession better with Can and Lucas.
2) Emre Can can’t turn quickly enough yet, and doesn’t have good tactical movement, so he can’t recycle possession properly with Gomez and Lucas. This means we can’t smoothly move up the pitch in possession.
3) Lovren’s passing isn’t great at the moment (and isn’t as good as Sakho’s at the best of times), so makes this problem worse.
Getting Moreno back in for Gomez (in a way that doesn’t wreck his confidence), replacing Can with Henderson, Lallana, Allen or Countinho and swapping Lovren for Sakho would completely transform our threat in possession.
The panel was an absolute joke regarding Can. He was one of the only players trying to do something. You guys just have biased opinions. Where is the slating of the shit manager the majority of the fan base has wanted gone for some time; milner was certainly far worse than Can, his lack of technical ability is there for all to see; and where is the criticism of the abomination that is skrtel who is shocking defender and has been the only constant in what has been a poor defence for years.
The manager was discussed in depth on Monday’s show.
Hi Neil. This is largely addressed at you but as you know this I’ll keep it general.
One of the lads made the point of Rodgers having to fit the players he had into the team in 13/14 or possibly from January 13 after Sturridge and Coutinho signed. I absolutely see this as the basis for Rodgers attacking style. My take on it is he stumbled upon it because he had to accommodate the players. Harsh but it’s how I feel. I feel there’s more to it though.
As all the people who comment on here mostly write the same thing time after time I’m sure some will know my obsession is the Suarez /Sturridge argument and, for the record, Joe Allen improves us significantly in 3 out of 5 games.
I can still remember exactly where I was the day (I was driving past the Bache station) when Neil came on Radio 5 Live and said Sturridge was what made us tick in our good season (or words to that affect). My blood boiled to the extent I had to pull over and recover my composure.
As it was mentioned on this I feel justified in commenting on it yet again. I feel the answer lies in the following. In the 12/13 season Suarez scored 30 goals. It’s a phenomenal amount. Just to break those down, in the 27 games before Sturridge joined Suarez got 18 goals. I don’t like posting links to external sites on here and try to avoid it but I’m gonna post a link to those goals. What’s interesting is the number of goals Suarez makes himself out of nothing. It’s nearly all of them. When Sturridge joined he scored 11 from 17 till the end of the season and Suarez 12 from 18. Again, this can be verified quite easily but Suarez played a big hand in a lot of Sturridges goals but Suarez’s goals were still of his own making, free kicks that didn’t involve Sturridge or mad runs. You can say Sturridge makes the space but look carefully and it wasn’t the case. They’re goals 18 to 31 on the link – they’re numbered. My conclusion there is Suarez was maturing into the player that is now one of the best in the world and having another great player with him just elevated us.
So, into the big one, 13/14. Neil says about the games Suarez was missing. Another of my mantras here but I’m not gonna change the narrative after the event. We beat Stoke, Villa and Utd. We did really well as did Sturridge. We were all relieved though to get the points in those games. In each game the second halves we withstood were nail biting. We won though so pointless argument from me to an extent. What’s definite is we were poor against Swansea in the 2-2 and worse in the Anfield defeat to Southampton. Then Suarez returned.
This was a man who wanted to repay the fans for all the bullshit he’d caused in various incidents. He was staying. He scored 19 in 13 games prior to Christmas. An incredible achievement. It was him that put us top at Christmas. Don’t forget Sturridge was out from the end of November till January. In the period up until Christmas when Sturridge was out Suarez scored 10.
When Sturridge returned he scored 13 and in the same period Suarez scored 11. In that season Suarez got 13 assists and Sturridge 7. In fairness, it wasn’t about 1 or 2 men after Christmas. Sterling having 2 brilliant players alongside him suddenly flourished and Gerrard, Henderson and Coutinho had a field day behind them as they’re all obviously really good. It all came together. I’m not giving anyone extra praise in that period. It was all 6 of them. The catalyst overall though was Suarez in the run up to that period. Forget the goals. It was what he installed into the players around him. The desire to win. Losing isn’t an option. We haven’t seen that since he left and one could argue when Sturridge returned last season he showed the exact opposite.
Suarez then onto lead Barca to the treble. Rodgers hasn’t looked so good since and we have had small spells of that same team except without Suarez. Ok, it’s only fair to add Sturridge wasn’t fully fit. I’m absolutely not having it that Sturridge was even equally responsible for that season let alone more so. Suarez is a freak. He planted the seeds of what was to come in that previous season. You can seem in the first 18 goals of the video before Sturridge came. Think back to the goals and the desire. If we needed a goal he just picked the ball up and decided it was going in the net and it did. I think from my point at least, I’ve finally got this off my chest now and can let it go easier, haha. Each to their own views. It’s all interpretation.
https://vimeo.com/65284395