john craig wrote:You're assessment of how the top 3 teams play is all wrong. Arsenal are the only team in the prem that plays really fluent football, passing from back to front. They hardly ever play long balls. In addition, the fact that they usually only add 1 or 2 players each year and most of the team have played together for ages helps the fluidity of their play. They are the benchmark for us imo.
Chelsea defend well as a team and have the best defence, that is their main strength. Attacking-wise they rely on long balls to Drogba and the individual flair of Duff, Robben and Lampard. They are not a fluent team to watch.
Man U don't play many long balls, but their play was not that fluent last year either. They keep the ball better than us but their passing is not at the level of Arsenal. Again they rely more on individuals now than they did in the late 90's when they cut through teams with their passing every week.
We weren't a fluent passing team under Houllier because of his counter-attack tactics, and we aren't that fluent yet under Rafa because we have a lot of new players coming in from other leagues and Rafa himself is adjusting tactically to the premiership, but we will improve this season.
i think your the only one john to mention the magic word - houllier.
for over 30 years liverpool was a team renowned for its passing style of play and even when we went through relative baron spells like when roy evans was in charge we still played some lovely stuff. in fact one of the charges levelled at roy was that we were too `nice` and passed the ball for the sake of it.
when gerrard houllier began to play it longer the players he brought in were bought to suit this gameplan, and training was shaped around this philosophy. he was there five years dont forget. whenever we went a goal down under houllier you could see the players didnt believe they could turn the game around. it takes years to get players who lack confidence in possession able enough to play a fluid game. one of benitez`s minor miracles last season was that he got us playing decent football so quickly, we might not be where we were in a pure footballing sense but we`re certainly on the way.
and it was a freak season last year and Rafa knows more about the ashes and ice skating than football and We are never gonna be good enuf!