there were some very encouraging 'patterns of play'
the playing style isn't far off for me - it's the cutting edge issue again, but without the same worry in the middle of the park. I think pretty soon we'll be moving towards watertight at the back again
These were my overriding feelings watching the game. It wasn’t a vintage performance by any means, but the fundamentals of how the team is trying to play were there all the same, they just weren’t executed consistently. I’m optimistic that the consistency will come in time (How long? Couldn’t tell you
)
For example, I loved some of the passing that I saw from Shelvey but he was unable to exert his influence on the game across the full 90 minutes. I thought Gerrard had a good game overall, he pressed well but he was sloppy in possession at times too. Downing actually played well at left-back, I thought, and he looked way more positive than he does when he plays in the midfield. He put in two or three excellent crosses in the first half where he got past past the full-back and made space for himself, something he didn’t do often enough last season, possibly because he was arriving from a deeper position. It’s early days and I still don’t like the idea of him learning the position on the fly against better teams than Hearts, but it suddenly doesn’t seem as crazy a notion as it did last week.
Obviously, Joe Allen was excellent again. That’s starting to go without saying.
Suárez did some good things, I thought (less than five minutes for the first nutmeg, created and took his goal beautifully), but it was a wildly inconsistent performance and I can understand people being frustrated. Between this and Sunday (where he also played a few wayward passes and seemed afflicted with Baros-syndrome at times i.e. unable to lift his head), it’s clear that he’s not running at optimum. Some aspects of his game (the 'warts' you could say) are always going to be there, but he's better than he's shown so far this season. If I can pick up on something No666 said:
Neither Henderson or Morgan are naturals for those positions and were never going to contribute goal-wise. In such a circumstance you can almost guarantee Suarez being that little bit too conscientious and 'over-thinking' his every attack. So the moment Sterling appeared with the weapon of pace to occupy the defenders, you could almost guarantee Suarez would score
Suarez’s all-round performances would clearly benefit from having more quality and offensive weaponry around him. It’s something that could probably be said of
all strikers, no matter how good they may be. With due respect to Adam Morgan and Jordan Henderson (the latter didn’t even appear to be playing in the front ‘3’ most of the time anyway) who worked hard but didn’t offer much in an attacking sense, Suarez shouldered pretty much
all of the attacking burden last night until Sterling came on. I’m really hoping that if we bring in another quality forward today, or he can get on the same wavelength as the likes of Borini and Sterling as the season progresses, then his consistency in terms of both passing and scoring will improve. The longer he works with Rodgers too, hopefully. And since goals often beget goals, he might be able to get on something of a roll when that happens.
It’s a good point about breaking down teams that come to Anfield and defend in numbers. Last night called to my mind the FA Cup game against Reading in 2010 – we just couldn’t get going to any great extent and we conceded a jammy late goal. Thankfully it didn’t cost us on this occasion. Our struggles last night may have been down to being without a few key first-teamers. Nobody's going to make the case that our squad is deep enough not to miss the quality of Agger and Johnson, who would have surely given us more impetus going forward. Borini, too, is obviously a better player than Morgan, Sterling clearly made an impact when he came on and we also have Sahin and Assaidi to come in.
Again, I have to say that I thought the fundamentals were good and I have a gut-feeling that we’re waiting for a dam to burst here and eventually we’ll apply enough pressure and one or two teams are going to be swept away when it breaks, especially if we bring in the right kind of quality today. When that will happen is anybody’s guess but the signs are still good for this team despite an average enough performance last night.
