Liverpool FC Forum

[SouthCoastShankly]

The signings of Carroll, Henderson, Downing and Adam were all to develop a team where we excel in delivery. Whether the delivery is dead ball or open play, crossing creates goals. That is a fact (as Rafa would put it).

Even prior to the dismal performance against Spurs we have not yet hit the tempo and speed of passing to consistently get into the final third and deliver crosses from open play. No one with half a mind can blame a striker whose primary assets are scoring from crosses when there has been a pathetic amount of crosses. From what I have seen so far our problems lie in the following areas affecting our ability to get into good crossing positions and deliver good crosses -

1. Deep defence. With our ageing, comparatively slow defence we naturally drop deep to prevent strikers breaking an offside trap. This creates so many problems mainly affecting the centre midfield. In previous seasons when we had the likes of Owen and Torres, a deep defence worked as we could effectively play the counter attack and exploit our pace up front, this is not feasible now. Suarez is quick but not a sprinter, and with Carroll the play will naturally slow down on the break if he is involved (we had similar issues with Crouch).

2. CM when we play 4-4-2. When we play 4-4-2 we cannot play both Lucas and Adam, it is either or I'm afriad. Charlie Adam is a cracking player and great value for £7m but he is not mobile enough to create his own space. Playing a deep backline only invites pressure and squeezes space in the midfield. Alonso had the talent of always finding space (Gerrard can do this also), I have not seen this from Adam yet. Lucas breaks up play well but playing with Adam is not effective if we you play two strikers -

                 Lucas      Adam
                           |
Downing                |                Henderson
                           |                                 
                           |
                Suarez      Carroll

Lucas and Adam with a two man strike force only creates space for the opposing teams midfield. It is ineffective, there is not natural link from midfield to strikers, no central creativity. 

4-5-1 however is a different story.

               Lucas      Adam
                           
Downing          Gerrard       Henderson
                           
                     Suarez 

Lucas and Adam now look like a strong pairing. You have defensive duties handled by Lucas, distribution handled by Adam and creativity handled by Gerrard. It works as seen a few years ago with the Mascherano, Alonso and Gerrard midfield that was so effective.

If Kenny is to persist with 4-4-2, he has to drop either Adam or Lucas and play a two man midfield with Gerrard. It's a tough one to call out of Lucas and Adam, on one hand you have a defensively sound Lucas but with limited distribution skills and the other hand a brilliant distributer of the ball with less defensive skills.

[Octsky]

it's ok to say you think dalglish got the tactics wrong but any moron abusing him personally has no understanding of our club and its history or football in general for that matter. win the next three games and the same people will probably be singing his praises again.

Agreed.

Having said that .

Thought his post match interview lacked some class.

When asked if a player would feature in the next game he responded with

( sic) "I don't know I'm not a clairvoyant"

No Kenny, we don't expect you to be Mystic Meg but you are our manager, would have thought you'd have known who was in the running and personally I hoped for more than a lame response to a reasonable question.

why will he wants to disclose the next starting lineup when most manager's SOP is to reveal the lineup few hrs before kickoff ?

this is to keep the players on the toes.

at least he did not blame the defeat by spurs on red cards and the ref, a gentleman's behaviour.

[Thommo's perm]

it's ok to say you think dalglish got the tactics wrong but any moron abusing him personally has no understanding of our club and its history or football in general for that matter. win the next three games and the same people will probably be singing his praises again.

Agreed.

Having said that .

Thought his post match interview lacked some class.

When asked if a player would feature in the next game he responded with

( sic) "I don't know I'm not a clairvoyant"

No Kenny, we don't expect you to be Mystic Meg but you are our manager, would have thought you'd have known who was in the running and personally I hoped for more than a lame response to a reasonable question.

why will he wants to disclose the next starting lineup when most manager's SOP is to reveal the lineup few hrs before kickoff ?

this is to keep the players on the toes.

at least he did not blame the defeat by spurs on red cards and the ref, a gentleman's behaviour.

No. But he wanted to
He deflected it by saying spurs played great

[jacdaniel]

No. But he wanted to
He deflected it by saying spurs played great

Kenny is a great man manager.  He's not really the type to ever blame his players in public.   

Im pretty confident that he knows we were muck but that will be addressed behind closed doors.

[sgs]

The signings of Carroll, Henderson, Downing and Adam were all to develop a team where we excel in delivery. Whether the delivery is dead ball or open play, crossing creates goals. That is a fact (as Rafa would put it).

Even prior to the dismal performance against Spurs we have not yet hit the tempo and speed of passing to consistently get into the final third and deliver crosses from open play. No one with half a mind can blame a striker whose primary assets are scoring from crosses when there has been a pathetic amount of crosses. From what I have seen so far our problems lie in the following areas affecting our ability to get into good crossing positions and deliver good crosses -

1. Deep defence. With our ageing, comparatively slow defence we naturally drop deep to prevent strikers breaking an offside trap. This creates so many problems mainly affecting the centre midfield. In previous seasons when we had the likes of Owen and Torres, a deep defence worked as we could effectively play the counter attack and exploit our pace up front, this is not feasible now. Suarez is quick but not a sprinter, and with Carroll the play will naturally slow down on the break if he is involved (we had similar issues with Crouch).

2. CM when we play 4-4-2. When we play 4-4-2 we cannot play both Lucas and Adam, it is either or I'm afriad. Charlie Adam is a cracking player and great value for £7m but he is not mobile enough to create his own space. Playing a deep backline only invites pressure and squeezes space in the midfield. Alonso had the talent of always finding space (Gerrard can do this also), I have not seen this from Adam yet. Lucas breaks up play well but playing with Adam is not effective if we you play two strikers -

                 Lucas      Adam
                           |
Downing                |                Henderson
                           |                                 
                           |
                Suarez      Carroll

Lucas and Adam with a two man strike force only creates space for the opposing teams midfield. It is ineffective, there is not natural link from midfield to strikers, no central creativity. 

4-5-1 however is a different story.

               Lucas      Adam
                           
Downing          Gerrard       Henderson
                           
                     Suarez 

Lucas and Adam now look like a strong pairing. You have defensive duties handled by Lucas, distribution handled by Adam and creativity handled by Gerrard. It works as seen a few years ago with the Mascherano, Alonso and Gerrard midfield that was so effective.

If Kenny is to persist with 4-4-2, he has to drop either Adam or Lucas and play a two man midfield with Gerrard. It's a tough one to call out of Lucas and Adam, on one hand you have a defensively sound Lucas but with limited distribution skills and the other hand a brilliant distributer of the ball with less defensive skills.

Agree with your points. But it would not be so bad if we had a sytematic way of high pressing by our front trio...

Our major problem atm is our poor performance in the non-possession phase...

[alwayslfc]

Forum members can be split in their opinion of KD. Some criticize him for wrong seletions, inconsistent team performance, wrong signings and for others he's like a cult leader where they agree with anything he says and does and blame on the players for poor results. I'd prefer to go in between. First, he's human and he does make mistakes in selections, tactics and signings (we've signed too many midfielders and neglected the central defence and right wing position and wasted 35 million in January). But his track record as a manager has proven him to be capable of winning the PL. He is the right man to be in charge of Liverpool at the moment and I'll only reserve my full judgement towards the end of this campaign though the current progress is not satisfactory considering we've spent more than 100 million spent. Newcastle, Everton didn't spent that amount of money and yet NU are above us and Everton are not that far behind us. Let's hope it's only early days.

[ethanr]

4-4-2 will never be the way to way to go with the personnel we have, especially away from home against decent sides like spurs. we don't have the mobility in that area to get a hold on games. i adam is going to keep hi splace it's got to be in a three so that his strengths can be utilised and his weaknesses are marginalised. as for henderson, i couldn't work out for the life of me where he was playing yesterday. same for downing who has spent most of his liverpool career so far drifting almost in a free role rather than giving us balance. we have to go 4-3-3 from now on.

oh and the defence is still far too deep, which consequently pulls the midfield deeper and leaves the forwards isolated. it's no wonder suarez is getting frustrated when he's got nobody up with him or making any runs off the ball.

Very muchly agree with this.

Not only does Suarez get isolated, but look when we have Carroll in, especially as a lone striker... Most isolated player I've ever seen.  That's why he struggles, he can't be a lone player being isolated and a deep-lying midfield. 

One thing I noticed about Downing is that when we are forced back, he often tries to stay near the top of the box so that if we do counter, he can get up the pitch as quick as possible and help out the strikers.  Really good on the counter.  When he hit the crossbar against (Sunderland or Bolton?) it was from a counter just like that.  Waited near the top of the box and countered, got the ball early and dribbled all the way up to the box and was unlucky not to score.

[Thommo's perm]

Forum members can be split in their opinion of KD. Some criticize him for wrong seletions, inconsistent team performance, wrong signings and for others he's like a cult leader where they agree with anything he says and does and blame on the players for poor results. I'd prefer to go in between. First, he's human and he does make mistakes in selections, tactics and signings (we've signed too many midfielders and neglected the central defence and right wing position and wasted 35 million in January). But his track record as a manager has proven him to be capable of winning the PL. He is the right man to be in charge of Liverpool at the moment and I'll only reserve my full judgement towards the end of this campaign though the current progress is not satisfactory considering we've spent more than 100 million spent. Newcastle, Everton didn't spent that amount of money and yet NU are above us and Everton are not that far behind us. Let's hope it's only early days.

Erm
Weve only played six games, so we dont have to hope its early days

[Kopite-Jud]

looks like its Suarez who will be losing his place when Gerrards fit

on a serious note it irritated me slightly when KK subbed Suarez for Gerrard against Brighton and Wolves.

Im dying to see them play regular football together!

Other than that let the good times roll baby!

[Ola Mr Benitez]

Did he take Suarez off because he would deffo be playing next week, where Carroll might not. Or box Suarez had played nearly every game on top of playing in the copa America this summer? Just a thought like

[Kenny Kan]

I'm pretty sure Kenny will play a strong-ish side against Stoke tonight. We don't have Europe, so we can and should try and win this cup, same with the FA too.

I didn't get to see the Norwich game - thank feck! The Man United game felt like a loss to me, I think if I'd have watched the Norwich game it would have felt worse than a mere loss - more like teeth extraction.

I said after the draw with Man United we needed to win our next three games, Norwich, West Brom and someone else (can't remember) to stay on course nicely for fourth.

I don't know what it is with us, we've been like this for years, in my opinion we not much better than Everton (the game raising c*nts that they are when they play us), we raise our games 'usually' against the bigger sides and become complacent against the smaller sides and struggle to beat them. But with a team overhaul this mentality if you like shouldn't still exist even if it does. What I noticed from the United match was we basically weren't clinical enough in front of goal - sounds like this happened against Norwich too. I wouldn't say Bellamy is 'the' most clinical of strikers about but he's probably our most likeliest of strikers right now to who's more clinical.

Kenny should play Bellamy more I think, even try a partnership with him and Carroll at some point to with Suarez dropping deeper.

Maybe the diamond midfield could enable this:

                                Bellamy        Carroll

                                         Suarez

                 Downing                                   Gerrard

                                          Lucas

        Enrique         Agger/Skert        Carra         Johno

                                          Pepe



Kenny needs to find a formula and sooner rather than later, we need to be picking up three points against the likes of Norwich.

[stmichael]

The worrying thing for me is we've stopped pressing the ball like we were doing in the second half of last season. We're generally doing fine in possession and creating chances. The first half against Norwich I thought we played some sublime stuff and should have been out of sight. However we then seem to drop off and surrender the initiative. We're not a side capable of taking the sting out of games and controlling them like we did under Rafa.

We really need to go 4-3-3. For me it's a no brainer with the personnel we have. West Brom is a massive game this weekend but I've got a horrible feeling of deja vu. If we aren't more clinical then we'll be disappointed again.

[haps]

I really like the look of that team and formation, Kenny Kan.  We have spent 35m on Carroll so let's play him.  Give him a consistent run in the side building an understanding with Bellamy, Gerard and Suarez and let the doubters and mud-slingers just get off the boy's back for a while.  I think it will pay off massively for us but we have to be patient.  Unfortunately that's where the problem always lies these days.  Very few fans are patient anymore.  We can't just push a button and instant success.  Even City, with unlimited resources and financial appeal to players had to slot things together over the past three years and now look at them (I worry about the City, Chelsea games coming on top of each other in the next few weeks - why we need to be beating the Norwich's and WBA's of this world).

With us, it's going to take 2-3 years of squad building with a reasonably settled side.  I do think Kenny is the man to lead us because of his man-management skills and I am delighted that Steve Clarke is head coach.  But we need to invest some time and patience into the players we have bought.  For me, Adam is a sub, as is Henderson right now.  We need another top striker.  i am really hoping we can find one in January but not sure who we can attract.  Wishing we had signed Aguero last summer frequently crosses my mind but that ship has sailed and frankly, we wouldn't have got him, I don't think.  The Scum's dominance is set to end; Ferguson won't be around much longer when he realises that he'll never get that CL trophy again with Barca on the block.  Spurs will implode when Redknapp fecks off to the England job next year.  Chelsea will still be there with AVB looking a sure bet and then there's us ... the team with momentum, a solid financial structure, a bright future to go with the history and appeal that will always be associated with LFC.  I don't know where I'm going with this.  God, it's a ramble.  I'm going to stop now.

[Fowler_E7]

Reina

                         Johnson              Carragher              Agger/Coates            Enrique



                                                  Gerrard                                          Lucas


                  Bellamy/Rodriguez                                   Suarez                               Downing

                                                                             Carroll

[Fowler_E7]

only reason Caroll's in there is becasue he cost 35mil so we have to give a chance to come good or what was the pont of signing him, though he dosnt deserve to be in the starting 11 what so ever. If we actually had some proper width and put some crosses into the box from the likes of Downing, Enrique and Johnson he might score some goals.