YES. And knowing Lucas, HE at least did EXACTLY as he was instructed. He did not retreat, he did not put himself next to Stevie to make it a 2 DM setup, he did not switch with Gerrard to become the less adventurous DM, with Stevie where Lucas had been. The way I (probably erroneously) see it, the fact that there WAS communication (better, visible to all evidence that there was) and to LUCAS specifically, and what subsequently transpired, indicates that the communication was NOT to 'consolidate', etc.
You're assuming that the communication to Lucas was only about Lucas. It was just as likely (if not more so) that he used Lucas to communicate to the team. In which case, the same point still stands - you can only do and say so much from the sideline. In the end, the frenzy of the game makes players revert to type. The FA used to do a little experiment on the coaching courses way back when. They used to play a training game, but before the training game, they gave each player (and these were top professionals of the day) a fruit or vegetable to remember. Just one word - so one player might have to remember "apple", another might have to remember "carrot", etc. 20 minutes after the game started, all the players were called in, and asked to recite their fruit or vegetable they were given. There was a high failure rate. The point of the exercise was to show that the heat of battle makes players think only of what they've been trained to do, and to give extra information, even before a game, is to risk that information being discarded. The idea from the FA was that the majority of the work is done on the training ground, and players will play how they train under pressure. This is why Rafa rehearsed so many different ways of playing, and different formations - so that the players could slip easily from one mode into another. So no matter what Rodgers was trying to tell the players, they were always going to go into the all-out-attack mode that they've played and trained all season, once they were under psychological pressure.
I agree that this is the 'by the book' script, in light of what we all know about Rodgers 'general' script, or script of scripts. Whether it was actually the case in this case is not established. Anyway, your analysis puts my mind at ease that I am not entirely crazy when I think that Gerrard in DM/controller is not always and necessarily ideal.
It is established. Until the first goal, Gerrard played more in the back of the field:
When the first Palace goal was scored, he pushed forward more:
Once they got the second goal, he almost completely abandoned the position to push forward, and in doing so, Palace had freedom to run into areas in front of the back four - areas that, if covered, would not have necessitated Skrtel coming out to challenge the long ball that led to the third goal:
So as I said - he, among others, went off-script, and this allowed Palace in. It wasn't anything tactical, it was pure mentality and psychology. Hindsight being 20/20, the better decision might have been to take Gerrard off for Coutinho at 3-0 up, and put Lucas in his spot, and Aspas on for Sturridge to harass the Palace defenders up front. But hindsight is 20/20.
