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Eighteen months and I’m yet to figure out the enigma that is Brendan Rodgers who at times has made us dream the way Shankly did but then has bought us crashing down to mother earth like Hodgson did.
When Daniel Agger conceded a soft penalty against Stoke at home in the first match of the season, it seemed that this season was surely going to be like the others, but Simon Mignolet had other plans.
What followed was something we hadn’t observed since Istanbul maybe, Mignolet made a string of fabulous saves to deny boyhood Everton fan Jonathan Walters the last laugh, Anfield erupted and I still remember throwing my German shepherd two feet in the air out of shear excitement. What followed was our best ever start to a premier league campaign which was made sweater by beating rivals United at home early on.
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This(and I still hold my breath while saying this) seemed like this was going to be our season. Suarez came back and made a mockery of every defence every time he pulled on the legendary number 7 jersey for the Reds, his numbers made club legend Robbie Fowler admit that he was making “God” look ordinary.
The performance against Tottenham was everything Rodgers has ever wanted his team to be and to do, even his self-proclaimed ‘Welsh-Xavi’ showed glimpses of Xavi briefly during the match. We were crowned Christmas champions and as a result held the bragging rights to gloat whatever we wanted to on twitter(atleast for a short while that is) but somewhere somehow things seemed wrong.
The machine was still not properly oiled to function smoothly throughout the season, one often got the feeling that Suarez was rescuing us out of far more precarious situations than he should be made to do.
As the past month has shown Arsenal, City and Chelsea have firmly distanced themselves from Liverpool and suddenly Liverpool seem to be in another orbit as compared to these teams, a position which was made clear by the hugely disappointing draw against Aston Villa this past weak. As well as Brendan has modeled his oratory skills on the model perfected by Jose Mourinho, he is far from coming anywhere near his ‘managerial skills’.
The ever-present problem of procuring a suitable replacement to Lucas Leiva in the defensive midfield area is one which, well let’s admit it, has been the chief destroyer of Liverpool’s chances, season after season ever since Javier Mascherano left. For all his brilliant reading of the game and acute understanding regarding the intricacies of the game, it baffles me as to how Rodgers has still not managed to even entertain this thought.
Ever since his first cruciate injury against Chelsea in 2011, Lucas has not been the same, he is a need now as opposed to an absolute necessity a couple of seasons ago. With only a week left in this window, I doubt the current predicament that the club finds itself in at the moment will improve till the summer, atleast.
The defence, he is still working on that formula, one day Kolo is revered like Hyypia, the next day Sakho is compared to a tank and on the third, we argue that Agger possesses the best passing range and the brains, ever to grace a defender, yet the results remain the same and Mr. ‘I-will-tear-your-shirt-today’ Skrtel gets away and gets credited as being the best in the league by the North Irishman.
We cannot handle physical teams, like we could not handle them four years ago. Players like Lukaku and Benteke have an absolute field day whenever they are against us. Watching them play, I feel the same helplessness and frustration creep into me as I did when as a child my dog used to chew away my Lego house as if it was a bone he was born to chew.
Good defences are judged by clean-sheets, something we have just stopped producing. Somehow, I feel we really are missing the experience of Carragher at the back, maybe he can still get his boots on and push us during the latter part of the season? Remember the re-entry of Scholes into United a season and a half ago?
The ‘I will try Steven Gerrard in every position possible’ experiment seems a never ending affair. I mean he is no Andrea Pirlo or Andres Iniesta, he is a box to box midfielder who runs up and down the field, tackles when it’s needed and scores when it’s absolutely needed!
He has played that way and will and can only play that way. Somehow Brendan’s desire to conserve Gerrard like a ‘perfume’ by offering him more variety in the midfield roles seems to have affected both the team and Gerrard’s own form on more than one occasion this season.
His eye for a player is also questionable, barring Sturridge and Coutinho( who like any other average Samba was bound to do well) his transfers have yet to reap benefits. Also his more often than not proclaimed ‘full support’ of the owners seems far off the mark, players we were heavily linked with have left us conspicuously at the last moment – Gylfi Sigurdsson, Clint Dempsey and more recently Mohammed Salah.
What’s more is that the likes of Allen, Aspas, Borini, Moses and Cissokho are ones who’ll leave and nobody would miss their evening tea in remorse. Maybe we do need a football director who handles our discussions with prospective players better because the owners have made the cash available and are not to be blamed any which way possible.
Whatever happens to these notes?
Finally, the tactics, I mean I simply don’t understand the deal here, when a three man defence is working fine, we revert to the ‘We’ll be England’s Barcelona’ dream and go back to 4-3-3. We then try a 3-5-2 formation so that Sturridge is not neglected down the wing but then the next week the manager feels the play is not as ‘connected’ with this as it should be and we start conceding goals with a new formation, what’s worse is that it is deemed acceptable because you need time to ‘adjust’. All in all we manage to always play Coutinho out of position and Gerrard, well not like Gerrard should be made to.
The partnership of ‘SAS’ and more importantly the form of the mercurial Uruguayan(or as BR prefers to call him ‘Louie’) have been the saving grace and the one single force that has kept us near-about the champions league qualification places.
The re-emergence of once Fulham bound Henderson(yes, Rodgers badly wanted that to happen) has also been commendable along with the continued development of Raheem Sterling( who luckily did not produce another kid this year).
My German shepherd has just entered the room with his ‘Liverpool FC’ tag dangling from his collar and while me and him still have faith in our manager and in this team who however inconsistent has left us speechless and bedazzled with some of their performances(Tottenham win had us both jumping on the couch).
Rodgers needs to still work on his basics if he wants the team to get better at theirs. Time, these days, is not a luxury the managers can count on in the highly competitive premier league but ever since his arrival BR has been afforded that in ample and as the season draws to an end in the coming months, another season devoid of those magical Anfield European nights would only provide strength to the murmurs about his inability to manage a top(or rather once top) English club.
