Oh Captain, My Captain: Should Gerrard Stay or Should He Go?
It’s always been a personal belief of mine that no player is bigger than Liverpool Football Club. This motto has served me well when I thought I’d have died of a broken heart when players have exited the club, but Liverpool Football Club and I have always bounced back and gone from strength to strength. Then came the rumours that Steven Gerrard might leave his beloved Liverpool if he wasn’t offered a contract extension that met his demands.
Unthinkable right? The …
Where is the Diamond? | Why are Liverpool Using the 4231?
In mineralogy, diamond is a metastable allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face centred cubic crystal structure called the diamond lattice. Now in simpler terms, a diamond would be a pretty damn good formation for LFC in this moment in time.
Whereas the 4231 on the other hand..
Adaptation
In the season of 13/14, whilst trying to squeeze two of the most prolific goal-scorers into one starting XI, the diamond formation seemed …
The Case for the Liverpool Defence Part 2: ‘Midfield and Beyond’
In Part I, I looked at the individual members of the back ‘5’ (including the GK), and the most likely rotational or still to return individuals, each with their own pluses and minuses. In Part II, I want to look at the midfield options and striker responsibilities relative to defence, the overall strategy and tactics employed (the two are not the same) and how the gears of overall defence do – and often don’t – mesh.
Liverpool essentially have six …
Does Rodgers Know Liverpool's Best Eleven?
Three games in six days represents a tough week for any team, even Liverpool. A midweek date with Ancelotti's "Galacticos Mark II" was never going to be plain sailing, and the distraction (albeit a welcome one) of playing the planet's biggest club, made team selection for Saturday's league match (against Hull) all the more difficult for Brendan Rodgers.
Managing team selection, rotating the team, bringing players in and out of the side at the optimum time to maximise their talents, …
Liverpool's Catch-22 Season
One of the Webster definition’s for Catch-22 goes like this ‘a difficult situation for which there is no easy or possible solution’. Does it sound vague? Let’s just make that simple by invoking Liverpool FC 2014/15. After all, the team this season is riddled with Catch-22 situations.
Let’s start with the building block of the team.
Defence
When Simon Mignolet was bought, he was coming off a pretty decent season with Sunderland and had built up a reputation as a …
Liverpool FC's Need For Speed
After the past few weeks... well, for the majority of this season so far, actually, Liverpool's performances from the 13/14 season seem like a lifetime ago. The qualities going forward that overwhelmed every defence they came up against have dramatically fallen.
The defence has obviously been the talking point over the past few weeks. With mistakes getting more and more basic, you struggle to see where it's going to change. Buying big in the Summer to rectify our hamartia last …
Defending Mario Balotelli
Apparently the time it takes for a player to be completely written off is getting smaller. Balotelli has made just eight appearances for Liverpool since his summer time switch from AC Milan and already the lively Italian is a flop, a failure, garbage to be jettisoned as quickly as possible. We’ve been here before haven’t we? Peter Crouch, Lucas Leiva, Jordan Henderson, Joe Allen, and now it’s Balotelli’s turn. All those players were written off after slow starts to their …
Progressing at Pace : Sterling must be Praised and Protected
Raheem Sterling’s rise to prominence over the past 12 months will likely see the young talent sign a lucrative new contract at LFC in the coming weeks, however, the pace of the forward’s progression has also seen him burdened with great responsibility at the age of just 19.
Having suffered a disjointed start to the 13/14 season under Brendan Rodgers where Sterling failed to truly establish himself in the brief substitute appearances he was afforded, many fans (wrongly) began to …
Stock-Taking: Liverpool's Welcome Break
Seven games into the season and we've arrived at the second international break already. Ordinarily, I have no time for these most unwelcome of interuptions to weekend life. Like most Reds, and fans of other clubs I'm sure, the highlight of my weekend is watching club football. It's what we look forward to, what we think, talk and in some cases write about all week, and the difference between a win or a loss has the power, should one allow …
A Pause For Thought | What Liverpool FC and the Supporters Need To Do
Unwelcome though international breaks usually are for many Liverpool supporters, this time may be different. While it may be argued that the momentum of a much welcome win against West Brom may be lost as a result of the break, this will be more than offset by the benefits of recuperation time and hopefully a return to fitness of, in particular, Daniel Sturridge and Joe Allen, together with Emre Can and Mamadou Sakho.
Another benefit is that this hiatus allows …