The front three, or perhaps four are indeed a worry. I'll come back to that though.
I think this game showed what a delicate balance this sort of system is. Playing such a high line is a tightwire act, if you get it wrong, you are entirely exposed. I've been in on a few analysis of this sort of thing but I can't remember where, and I apologise if I'm lifting other Rawkites ideas on this (I'm a bit jetlagged and can't keep what I've heard where or thought of myself straight at the moment). Anyway, it requires two (at least) very important things. Firstly you must respect possession to a very high degree, and we, particularly one Steven Gerrard, did not do this (Suarez wasn't great either). We were regularly left exposed by his trying ill-advised, over-ambitious passes that were intercepted because, secondly, if you lose the ball, particularly in that fashion, you must be very good at pressing as a team and putting the opposition's players under intense pressure such that even if they are eventually able to settle in possession, they either have to go backwards or they have to take a long time gaining control. Gerrard, with his flouncing off in primadonna fashion when he'd had a pass intercepted or one hadn't reached him, was also poor in this respect, though it wasn't just him, I suspect this is one of those very tricky and finely balanced teamwide things that will take some time to get right. Anyway, if you get both of these things wrong, and their midfielders are able to gain the ball suddenly with time to look up and pick their pass, your two centre backs are left entirely exposed—Skertl, slipping under pressure—Agger having to come so far across and back to cover that he fouls that man most in need of a stunt double, Long, and Carra (and I'm not defending him here, I think he's had it, about which I am very sad) versus Lukaku, which was just miserable. Hmmm... mebbe some of this comes from TAW, because I do now remember them saying that we're going to get tonked a few times while we figure this all out. Anyway, against a strong team with strong defensive midfielders (and theirs were excellent today) and a bit of pace up front, if you get these things wrong, you're really asking for trouble.
The corner business is something that I think must be considered separately from the vaunted Rogers system—at least I don't remember hearing anything about how he approaches them that was unusual (at all actually). I don't agree with this notion that Gera's goal was unstoppable. Of course it was once he hit it, and at the time I wrote it off as a "you can't legislate for that" sort of goal, but the same thing happened in the second half. Same corner, same looping header out to the same position to a lonely Albion player, who, fortunately, this time wasn't Gera, and I realised that here seems to be a fundamental flaw in the way we are defending them. Twice we won the ball in the air well against a tall team, but twice allowed it to fall just beyond the edge of our area toward the back post to an opposition player in acres of space with all the time in the world to strike it (for Gera's goal, Johnson went at him full tilt and got nowhere near a block). Zonal or man to man, this was a disaster.
As regards the forwards, I have to say that I was very disappointed in Downing. I've tried hard not to write him off, and hope he is able to step forward this year, but that was a shockingly weak display. By which I don't mean just bad, I really mean weak, as in without spine or muscles... a right wing jellyfish... without even a sting... sorry, gone off the rails there. But against a strong defence, all our lovely movement against Gomel, all of our sensible passing as against them and first half Leverkusen, disappeared, and we seemed to be playing with only two men moving together, and they were frequently marked out of it or, rather, easily covered. It wasn't bad in the first half, but it wasn't great either, and perhaps it only really works if all four are engaged. I also wonder if Stevie got his positioning quite right, though I can't put my finger on it.
Finally, a word about the ref. He was utterly consistent. I'm not at all sure that we'd have won had he not given them absolutely everything and nothing against, because we were looking much like last year, reasonably good without the ability to score, but he was absolutely abysmal. Borini decked (and no, he didn't stand his ground he moved against the flight of the ball and set his shoulder, which you're not actually allowed to do)... Olson tackling Suarez, etc, etc. I can't be bothered listing them again. I suspect we just have to come to terms with the fact that apart from the occasional cockup in our favour born of the utter ineptitude of the refs, the general game narrative that Premier League officials like to have in their minds before matches start tends not to run in our favour, and we simply will have to cope with it. And no, I'm reasonably positive things don't equal out across a season.
