The games against Everton and Arsenal have been massively encouraging for me, purely in terms of what Rodgers has done. The results have obviously been great, the performances also but I've been really happy to see what Rodgers has done in both of those games and tactically, the adjustments he has made shows that he is the manager we need to go forward.
When I've posted this season I've been spoken a lot about control in midfield. Having a system of controlling games, whether that's through control of space or ball, is something that I'm really passionate about and in my opinion I don't think you can achieve much, certainly consistently, without a strong, balanced way of taking the initiative. That doesn't mean through ball possession necessarily at all - in my view control of space, particularly in the Premier League which is much more open and where teams concentrate less on closing off space, is a simpler and more effective way of controlling a match.
My main doubt with Rodgers for the best part of a year has been how he organises the team to control midfield. For a while I worried that he was effectively ignoring midfield and allowing, if not encouraging, open games. When teams sat back very deep against us, not challenging in midfield and tried to contain our attack in the final third, it suited us. When teams looked to take the initiative or competed well in midfield, either with good movement and tempo on the ball and/or aggressive pressing in the middle third, we struggled. Our defence isn't one that particularly pushes up to condense space between the lines, nor do they really have the pace ideal to play a high line - their reflex reaction is to drop deep. Our forwards tended to stay high off the ball, often very obviously by instruction, instead of dropping to play compact with the rest of the defensive block. Our midfield personnel was never really ideal to control the large spaces that appeared and in some games our lack of coordination as a team defensively made us very open in midfield and between the lines. Rodgers initial failures to react to this slightly worried me.
Then the Tottenham game happened. We switched to a 4-3-3, we were compact, we looked like a collective group defensively, we pressed together much better and because of that, controlled the midfield, and we counter attacked really well. It suited us to put more concentration on controlling time and space in midfield because we had the pace and ability on the counter attack to really hurt Tottenham and that's what we did. It was the best game I'd seen under Rodgers until the weekend.
The Everton game was a similar thing for me. Maybe it was the early goal but it was like Rodgers was completely understanding the weaknesses and strengths of his squad and not only that, but applying solutions to this. When he first came in as manager for us, it was all about his possession football - we were going to control games through dominating the ball. When Coutinho and Sturridge were bought and after the defence had looked very open at points in the opening months of last season, Rodgers seemingly compromised it, or rather adjusted it to the squad he had available (he hasn't got enough credit for this).
In the Everton game, Rodgers played just as suited the team. Toure and Skrtel don't suit a high line - their pace is limited, they don't particularly move up to compress space and in possession, the triangle of Mignolet and them (as I think YorkyKopite pointed out on the last Round Table thread) is relatively poor in terms of ball retention under pressure. So we played a mid to low block, fairly disciplined although not perfect, trying to shut off the middle through showing the ball wide, staying compact and working hard in the areas in front of Gerrard. And then, with the spaces that opened up, that we were forcing Everton to open up through showing them wide, we could counter attack lethally behind their high line. It was an approach that suited our qualities throughout the team completely
Saturday was an even bigger step up. Again maybe it was the early goal but it was immediately obvious we were playing a mid to low block, allowing them possession to come out and open up bigger spaces for us to attack into. Arsenal's transition defence is mediocre; they press high sometimes but not in a completely organised way. Cazorla is often inside and leaves them imbalanced when they lose possession, and without an organised aggressive press when they lose the ball their left side becomes very vulnerable (Rodgers clearly targeted this). Arteta had very big spaces to cover and we had very big spaces to attack into. Their high line just made it an even bigger mess. I'm not sure I've ever seen a first 20 minutes like that in any football match before.
The point is though that Rodgers has found a way to control midfield that doesn't sacrifice our strengths but in fact extends them. Henderson and Coutinho were very good. They worked really hard defensively, shutting off space and closing down at the right times. I saw someone on Twitter make a really good point that having Coutinho in midfield in the area we were winning the ball made it easier for us to counter quickly - we didn't win the ball and then have to find a certain player to play the ball forward or to orchestrate the attack. When he won the ball, he was good enough to find the pass immediately to catch Arsenal when they were unbalanced. This is an example of how the way Rodgers seems to be choosing suits our players. When faced against a low block, Coutinho has a tendency to force the play and not be patient enough. When we are counter attacking into big spaces, he comes into his own. I must admit I was worried about our ability to control midfield before the game and thought Allen should've started ahead of Coutinho but I was completely wrong. After we got the early goal and it was clear we could just play for counter attack, he was the perfect player to have in midfield.
It was just so satisfying to watch how tactically fitted in Rodgers was to our players. He didn't get us to try and hold and dominate possession on Saturday. We pressed and shut off space so well in front of Gerrard which meant Arsenal, instead of concentrating on attacking our weak points with forward runs against Toure and Skrtel, just dropped deeper into midfield, making it more comfortable for us to control the game defensively with our pressing in that area. It was perfect in many ways.
Rodgers also got it right in playing Sterling on the left. Arsenal tend to attack much more on the right - Sagna gets forward a lot, Ozil likes to move towards that side. We effectively shut off that area of the pitch and made it harder for Arsenal to build play through the lines. It meant Suarez could get 1v1 with Monreal or behind him, Sturridge could use his pace and movement behind Koscielny and Sterling could then creep inside unnoticed behind Sagna.
I'm hopefully doing a piece for Anfield Index at some point this week on this subject, elaborating a bit more on what Rodgers has been doing tactically and the changes he's made to give us a system of control. I'm enormously impressed by what he's doing at the moment.
