Liverpool FC Forum

[jacdaniel]

I've been reading on various forums and in the media for years that certain players need to work on aspects of their game.  The most recent one that springs to mind is that Moreno would be a good player if he could improve the defensive side of his game.  Its true that he would be better if he could defend but he will never be able to.  Its just not one of his attributes and it can't be coached into him at his age.  He could possibly improve a little bit but he'll never be good at defending.  A player develops a set of attributes based on how they were coached from the time they were a kid and they rarely change much once they reach about 19 or 20 years old.  Lets look at some examples: 

Mignolet:  His distribution is poor and people hoped he would work on it.  I believe he tried his best to do so but its just unnatural for him.  He will never be good at distributing the ball out from the back.  He wasn't when we first signed him and he's not much better now if at all. 

Skrtel:  He always played best when he was allowed to sit really deep.  Ask him to play a high defensive line and he looks uncomfortable and turns into an error prone nightmare.  Thats how it was in 2006 and that remains the case in 2016. 

Gerrard:  A fantastic footballer of course but he always lacked the discipline to play in centre midfield.  Rafa could see that and moved him into other positions were he could cause havoc on the field and not have to worry about the basics such as positioning, short passes, pressing, tracking back.  Its no surprise that his most successful years was when he played behind the striker or on the right.  Again, its something that never changed much throughout his career.

My point is, a player will always be more or less the same as they are when they are 19.  Coaching, Training, Confidence and experience will certainly improve them a lot but they will have already be a certain type of player as a youngster and the type of player they are won't change too much throughout their careers. 

You can see this as well with the English national team.  There has been complaints for years that they should focus more on keeping the ball.  England will never be able to play a possession game like Spain unless they start coaching and encouraging the really young kids to play that way. 

Its something that we should keep in mind when discussing players at the club and even the youngsters.

[damjan193]

I'd like to write a good reply to this but there's nothing more I can say than "I couldn't agree more".