Meritocracy - ‘Government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability’.
A selection process has been mis-sold to us. Since the arrival of FSG and Brendan Rodgers, the man they plucked from a pool of talent to paint their vision and direct this football club forward in imaginative and sustainable ways, we have been told of the intrinsic worth of a meritocracy. From bottom to top we have been led to believe that this is the philosophy that will remain a constant throughout the club on all levels at every floor. From a 17 year old Raheem Sterling gaining his full first team debut after numerous emphatic displays at younger age levels, to the £200,000pw contract afforded for Luis Suarez, one of the ingenious talents in the world and of this generation leading from the front with tenacity, flair and ruthlessness. Brendan himself was offered a new and improved contract towards the end of a scintillating title charge last season, and justifiably so.
Of course this makes sense. It’s also noteworthy that our manager has previously been lauded for his efforts and ability to get the best out of younger players. The way he speaks, the confidence he cradles these players in has thus far, been exemplary to any youth coach and manager in the game. We have seen Sterling, Henderson, Coutinho and Sturridge all show a steep development curve during his tenure on the way to exploiting their full potential which is still to come. Luis Suarez as well, although older and more experienced upon his arrival at the club, grew into the talent I previously cited from an inconsistent often enigmatic player. It’s a little odd that I am bringing the lack of meritocracy up as a flaw given the previous examples, but here we are in December and I haven’t seen an ounce of meritocracy this season. Instead the buzz word is who Brendan ‘trusts’.
Trust – ‘Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something’.
Naturally, I’m not here to insult any body’s intelligence by pointing out the definition of trust and meritocracy, I’m more poised to question the balance at work between these two forces. Given trust is something earned over a period of time and meritocracy based more relevantly on recent events. Meritocracy has to be adhered to for trust to evolve. One cannot truly exist without the other. Like for time to exist there must be space, and vice versa.
There is merit in selecting players based on how much you trust them to perform. Jordan Henderson is an apt example of a player that Brendan trusts. Jordan is a very canny player in my opinion and has shown his adaptability playing in a variety of positions and roles with alternating instructions and performed each admirably. Rodgers knows that although Henderson is best in a midfield three, he can play him on the left of a 442 and tell him to protect the full back because the opposition are particularly effective down that side. The same way he can ask him to go and be Stevie’s legs in a midfield duo, or play as a number #10 and get into the box and run beyond the forward with regularity. Stevie had a similar if superior skill-set and that’s why so many managers trusted and wanted him in their teams.
I have no issue with Brendan trusting certain players in the way he trusts Henderson, or Allen for that matter. They are often trusted in one of two ways; to go out and perform a less familiar role with aptitude, or as in Joe’s situation, a specific job to be done at a very high standard. In Allen’s case it is ability to keep the ball under pressure, make himself available and make life difficult for the opposition with his ball winning skills. I wouldn’t, for instance trust Allen to come on and offer a threat from the right of midfield, whereas with Henderson’s top speed and crossing ability, I’d consider him and option. He may not be a top choice like Sterling for this role, but if he was asked to get beyond the full back and provide quality he would do it. Joe by a similar token, you would expect to go out keep the ball at a high level of ability.
It’s also of note, that these are young players with scope for improvement. The more trust Brendan places in them, the better it will be for their confidence, experience and overall capabilities. To trust is to nurture talent. Sakho is an example of a player Brendan should show a similar sort of trust in. The boy is a leader, he has ability and the problems surrounding him have in the main been exactly that, surrounding him, not because of him. This is where my gripe starts to flare. I appreciate that Sakho is an example that could be arguable due to injuries, but most would say that he has been dropped somewhat unnecessarily at times. Usually, it’s coincided with the return of Daniel Agger, and more recently Martin Skrtel.
So here’s the anomaly. In the January or Brendan’s first season, Martin Skrtel was dropped for the aging Jamie Carragher. Skrtel had found adapting to the higher line Brendan was trying to employ and develop problematic. The veteran came in and as a result we dropped the backline, purchase a player to play between the lines in Phil and a striker to run beyond them in Sturridge. Our form took a considerable upturn, our play became more dynamic and we were more organised, if considerably deeper in defence as Brendan tweaked his system to compensate for the inclusion of Carra and with the arrival of a more direct threat in Sturridge, slotting our new little playmaker in between the lines.
Needless to say it worked. It was the first real sign of Brendan’s tactical flexibility in adapting the system to suit the better players he available to play it. After 6 months of tight, possession based football where we often left ourselves exposed in behind with the high line, we evolved into playing deeper, more on the counter attack and usually at a canter. It begged the question at the time as to whether Brendan had totally abandoned his death by football philosophy in favour of a more dynamic, tempo based game where we would react and swerve a punch and use the momentum and gaps created to counter punch. It has, generally speaking, been a more effective tactic in the premier league than anything else, but that’s a different kettle of crabs.
The point I’ve failed to make is, that Carragher came into the side because Rodgers trusted him to be vocal, command the backline with a degree of confidence and competency and that was something he didn’t really have anywhere else in the squad. He didn’t trust Skrtel to play his system (even though he was better suited to it than Carragher), he didn’t trust him to show leadership. He then changed the system and the personnel to make the best of what he had. When you consider the emphasis he drenched in his pressers regarding his system upon arrival at the club, it was refreshing to see that he had adaptability and was prepared to make difficult calls on players for the betterment of the squad and the club.
Fast forward to today, and Martin Skrtel is now the entrusted member of the back line. When fit, he plays. When other players have been out injured they have had to work to get back into the squad. Skrtel did it last season. Now this implies that Skrtel has come on leaps and bounds since then, hence he is now number one centre back, but that in itself is misleading without context. We still leak goals, we have spent a little under £40m in the last two summers to try and stop leaking goals, yet Martin Skrtel still plays whilst one of the players bought in is dropped despite proving pretty effective in his first season whilst still learning the league and language? This is where the hypocrisy lies. How can Brendan justify Skrtel’s selection when he spent all that money to improve that spot? Why does he not show some trust in Lovren and Sakho to develop as a pair? Surely you spend £20m and £16m respectively on centre halves to play together, especially as you are selling your longest term number one centre half due to body is unfortunately breaking down.
Skrtel is just the longest term and oddest example given the events that proceeded, and that’s why I use him first as an example of seemingly misplaced trust. Look further though and we see that Brendan trusts Gerrard, Johnson, and Balotelli. Despite poor performances from those players regularly thus far this season, and the fact that when others have been given a chance in their position they have then been dropped despite playing better, there’s too many players Brendan trusts who just are not performing. I wonder where this trust is coming from. Are they all doing marvellous things on the training pitch? Even if they are they can’t replicate it on match day, it’s all based on reputation.
My concerns are not only for the results and the players who have recently performed better than their senior peers, namely in the shape of Manquillo, Sakho, Lucas and Borini, but in Brendan’s rationale behind his team selections. It appears almost as though he is now focused on players he trusts have great ability, rather than being practical in the system. He’s had time to and money to build his squad in his own image yet we are disjointed and dysfunctional. We have half a defence that likes to back off and play aggressively in small spaces on the right (Johnson and Skrtel), and progressive defenders who want to step out and compress the space ahead of them on the left side (Lovren and Moreno). We were initially told that we wanted to be progressive in defence and step out quickly, but we play two players who are adverse to this on one side and as a result is we are massively lop-sided. There’s Sakho and Manquillo available who want to step out, their inclusion would allow our backline to play as a unified straight line. They however are not trusted, and don’t walk straight back into the side like Skrtel and Johnson do.
To add to this the Gerrard conundrum. I have spoken at length about Gerrard in the only player thread on the board, so I will keep this brief as I don’t think it’s his own fault. The problem being a player who needs time and space on the ball isn’t getting it. Nobody will step out with the ball in the backline as Sakho and Agger might, and it makes it easy for an attacking opposition player to just sit on Gerrard as there’s no threat of the midfield being bypassed from a defender stepping out with the ball. You combine this, with a lack of anyone stretching the game at the top end of the pitch and the space Gerrard can play in is miniscule. Space that is essential to a player of his age to get his head up and ping passes. We need a player with more quickness or mobility and we have a player sitting on the bench (if he’s lucky) who is a specialist in this role with his anticipation and can break games up without the use of excessive physicality. It seems you can’t dislodge Gerrard though, despite him being unfeasible in the system we play with the players available, because Brendan trusts him.
The same goes for Mario. Again a player who would be a good plan C, say two strikers like Suarez and Sturridge were available, but the reason he would be the plan C is not only due to his inferior ability to these players but because he thrives in a different system as he’s a very different player. He isn’t going to stretch teams in behind, he isn’t going to create loads. What he will do is hold the ball, generate some space and fire. Instead of getting a back-up for Sturridge in the summer, we got an upgrade of Lambert, and with Sturridge out we are now void of ideas of how to get in behind. This means Gerrard has nobody to pass to, same for Coutinho, and we are pushed deeper and deeper as we have no outlet to exploit the space teams leave in behind. Lovren and Moreno are more comfortable with the ball than without it, but they get sucked deep by the right side. Gerrard goes wandering and doesn’t have the acceleration or mobility to force mistakes and gets bypassed. We are weak on the back foot, we are vulnerable when we have the ball. It’s all a bit of a mess and although the top names are playing, we don’t look like a unit whatsoever right now, and it’s hurting us.
Without meaning to specifically name players as I have, I just want to point out that the sample sizes for these players are huge compared to the ones who are not getting a game because they are getting so much game time meritocracy is barely given a chance to exist. We saw in Madrid some fringe players come in and perform admirable as a balanced unit with a specific set of instructions, only to go and rip it all up by picking players based on reputation and trust in the next game against Chelsea. Trust in players is outbalancing meritocracy at the moment, and that is neither good for morale and results on evidence so far.
The question begs as to where Rodgers’ trust in his system and football philosophy is hiding? Yes he trusts the senior players like Gerrard, Skrtel, Johnson, and Balotelli, but surely that’s too many wrong pieces to make the puzzle fit? As I say, Brendan has been given licence to go and recruit and mould a squad in tune to his vision, but we seem to be caught between two different ideologies all over the park. It’s disconcerting that Rodgers is placing more trust in several individual players than he is in his own football philosophy when he has been given the time and money to get those personnel. I expected we may take a backwards step during the initial six months of this season, but we have regressed quite significantly. We were laughing at mancs this time last year at how far they had fallen; we’ve fallen almost as far in terms of what is happening on the football pitch, however not a club as a whole, thankfully. But it is nonetheless very concerning that Brendan seems quite so far away from balance at the moment, despite the overhaul.
I take solace in that we have been here before. In all of Brendan’s three seasons we have begun poorly in contrast to how we have developed through the winter and thereon after. I would expect us to get much, much better in the coming months. The problem being akin to his first season however, that we may fall too far to make u the ground we need. I’m still fairly confident of a top four finish, but we must come back after the international break and look for a fresh start. The system should be king. Morale itself is low and that encapsulates our season so far, so it’s time to give some fresh minds a chance to prove themselves and get us playing as a cohesive unit where all the parts are functional if not sensational. Play players who will press from the front, play an energetic midfield with a defensively astute holding player sweeping in behind them and get our two big money centre halves acclimatised to each other stepping up quickly along with a defensively sound full back to balance the explosive Moreno on his opposite side. It might mean big earners on the bench, but if it starts to function as a unit who are all driven by the same instincts then we are more than halfway there.
I believe in Brendan this this will come. He is football man who will surely be aware of so many flaws in how we are performing and how he himself is performing. The pressure is starting to mount and for once an international break couldn't have come at a better time. Rodgers can spend some time away from the majority of the squad, look and watch at what has been occurring these last few weeks. He will have a plan in mind as to how to integrate the right players upon their return. I little analysis of where we are at the moment and I don’t doubt changes will occur. They simply have to if Brendan wants to prove he is a Liverpool manager to the world and his superiors. Big managers make big calls, and maybe it would be easier for a Rafa or Kenny to assert the authority on the squad right now, however they had to make their first big calls to get into the respected positions they have occupied to be more comfortable doing so.
It’s time for Rodgers to be brave and show faith in the balance between meritocracy, trust and his own footballing philosophies.
