Topic: RAWK Round Table: Liverpool 4-3 Swansea City

[DeLeiva]

Overall it was only Sterling, the youngest, having the game to be expected, who put the necessary shift in and forced himself into the game in attack and defending.

Cannot agree with you there.

He looked lost in defence at times when we were attacking the Annie Rd end 1st half.

Nathan Dyer got in behind him and exploited the space really well between Raheem and Johnson.
Shelvey's goal came from Dyer being given far too much space and Raheem allowing him to cut inside.

It was the reason why he was subbed in the second half IMO.

[steveeastend]

Cannot agree with you there.

He looked lost in defence at times when we were attacking the Annie Rd end 1st half.

Nathan Dyer got in behind him and exploited the space really well between Raheem and Johnson.
Shelvey's goal came from Dyer being given far too much space and Raheem allowing him to cut inside.

It was the reason why he was subbed in the second half IMO.

But he was there. Where were the other ones?

I agree that he didn't have the best of his game but this is the same sort of situation our defending line has to suffer from a lot of times. The ones who put in the shift look stupid at the end cause others refuse to do the job. To me, he was subbed for other reasons..

[Chip Evans]

Carrying on from the tin cup reference are we taking excessive risks or are we just shit at the back? Though we play an aggressive midfield that occasionally gets exposed I'm inclined to think we're just shit at the back.

I get what you mean but nerves are a weird thing too in sport, and I'm pretty sure when you consider nerves in the context of momentum you need to be more controlling. Nerves, as I see it, mean momentum and psychic energy within a game play a huge part and can swing wildly.  And those nerves come from everyone in the ground not just the team.  You can't stop nerves, as they come from the excitement of where we are at, you just have to deal with them more maturely.

We were 2 up after 20 minutes - there was nothing to be lost there by sticking the ball up your jumper for 10 minutes and not giving them a sniff.  But in some of our recent games - I'm discounting the Fulham game because we were always chasing that one - the momentum has been with us and we've just smelled blood, gone for the kill and murdered teams. I thought our game management at 2:0 was poor on Sunday above all else. There was enough from Swansea in that opening 20 minutes of the game that it wasn't over and the fact that we seemed pretty nervous defensively from the outset.  Once they got back to 2:1 I never once doubted they could score again - or indeed that we would definitely score again. Probably egged on from recent games we lost our heads and our shape and just kept going at them without taking the timeout and sucking the life out of them for a while and settling everyone down.

So again, after the second goal we should really have just regained our shape and kept the ball for a while.  Then gone at them again.  Because we didn't take the sting out, and because we were a little bit nervous, we lost momentum for a little bit and let them back into it. Yeah, it was the same all-too-familiar individual errors that led to the goals but I think the momentum swung their way and led to the goals.

We didn't have that control until Joe Allen came on, from there it never looked like we'd be beat.

The away derby is the closest game I can think of where this has bitten us in the arse, I'm sure there'll be others.  The counter to that is that we got the away goal against WBA and sat in and then a stupid error cost us. Swings and roundabouts.

That was my reasoning for wanting to be more controlling in the upcoming away games.  It's not fear or cowardice, or a want for lower scoring games, I firmly believe if we'd gotten to half time at 2:0 on Sunday we'd have scored a couple more and gotten to 4 anyway - but minus the drama.

So to answer your question, I don't really think we are a taking excessive risks we're just excessively exuberant at times. But that's the joy of this team, and this season, so I don't want to look like I'm overly maligning them.  But conversely I don't think that exuberance when you're 2:0 up, and your defence who haven't played together much recently looks nervous as fuck, does anybody at the back any favours either.  It breeds nerves and counter momentum.  (But the tally of unforced errors is becoming insane too though, isn't it?)

It feels so spoiled to be nit-picking against a young team that has served up so much this season - but how we handle nerves and in game momentum shifts are probably going to be our demons (as Neil Atkinson would call them) over the run in.  We really do have a chance.  You certainly wouldn't bet against us winning all our games based on attacking teams - sheer firepower got us out of jail on Sunday - but I think it is nouse that is called for when you are carrying a defence that has shown capacity for such nervousness and is so unsettled.   

That was probably why the Tin Cup reference.  I don't think a midfield of Henderson - Gerard - Allen away from home when chasing a championship necessarily does us any harm.  It feels like a consistent 7.5/10 combative midfield which will be enough for those three games and allow Gerrard to be a bit more creative rather than fire fighting. These 3 games will define where we end up I'm convinced of that. They are all winnable and will set us up perfectly for April. (I also think if Luis starts scoring again we will win the league)

I think Phil has been a bit "peaks and troughs" of late and maybe looks a little bit tired. Plus Raheem will be detailed on the right against Shaw, him being taken off on Sunday when he looked a bit leggy gaurantees that. So Phil maybe loses out for me and he isn't a bad weapon to have off the bench.  I'm convinced we can win this title, we only need to be a teeny tiny bit more pragmatic at certain points.

@mikenielson - I love that movie too.  It's terrible but nicely off-beat.                   

[dumaten]

Allen was the perfect combination of energy, guality and intelligence. Often you'll see subs play like they're pacing themselves for the 90 minutes, or run around too much without purpose. Allen used his fresh legs against tired midfielders, pressing constantly but in the right places and in tune with his team mates, and carrying the ball all over the pitch, making Swansea work even harder to get the ball back.

If he can stay fully fit, this combination will be very useful to us over the coming weeks.

And Villa, and Hull, Newcastle away, Southampton home....

I don't see that many similarities. The problem against Southampton and Hull was our attacking play, both those teams managed to stifle the game through either being highly organised in their own half or pressing us higher and blocking our passes forward. Against Villa we were wide open both through the middle and out wide, and they were able to get in behind us and create a series of genuine chances in open play while we could barely string a coherent attack together.

The closest comparison is probably Newcastle, who did a similar thing to what Swansea did - flood the area in front of our defence so they were able to play past our pressing, at the expense of having any real width or incisiveness and so more reliant on pot shots from outside the box.

I think when we look at the game we have to consider the space both teams left between their "front five" and their "back five". Both teams had the same intention when not in possession - press the ball high up with the forwards and the two advanced midfielders, but not compress the space behind, so if either team was able to play through the press, there was then huge space to play in with just the one deep midfielder having a huge space to cover. Look at Henderson's first goal, once the ball gets to Suarez it's just Britton and the back four in front of him, when the ball is switched to Sturridge Britton is again the first midfielder to arrive as cover - when Henderson scores de Guzman is still ahead of the ball and Shelvey is way upfield. Shelvey's goal was similar, although Henderson was at least behind the ball by that point (question about our organisation there later).

So while Swansea's tactics were successful in putting our defence under pressure, and were probably a part of their first two goals (Shelvey being so high up the pitch for the first goal and earlier shots; and the pressing resulting in skrtel losing control of the ball), at the same time they allowed our attacking players a lot of space to work in when we could successfully get the ball to them.

I have a question about the decision making of our (and their) defence, about how Skrtel and Williams would drop 3 yards deeper into the box than the rest of the defence to the point they were almost on top of the goalkeeper. See Shelvey's goal and Henderson's second. If a opponent has the ball on the edge of the box there are three options - shoot straight away, try to make space to get a better shot or play a team mate in. So I get why a player would not rush out of the line to close the player down as he might get beaten or allow space to play a throughball. But backing off deeper behind the rest of the defence - you're less likely to block a shot (can cover less of the goal) and other players can now run in behind the rest of the defence without being offside.

For example for Shelvey's goal Routledge's run draws Flanagan infield, so our defensive line gets a bit disorganised. Skrtel directs Henderson to right back, Flanagan to centre back while Skrtel himself drops 3 yards deeper than everyone. What's the rationale here? Wouldn't it make more sense for Skrtel to hold the line in the centre back position, allowing Flanagan to close the ball down?

Both Skrtel and Williams were doing this during the game so there must be some reason for it, but I don't see what it offers.

[steveeastend]

I don't see that many similarities.

I see your point, I was refering to the mentality of the players in terms of giving 100% in this game only here though..

[fowlermagic]

There is a very whimsical approach to our game right now as you know we are going to leak goals as in the past two months we have leaked 3 to Swansea, 2 to Arsenal (FA Cup), 2 to Fulham & Villa, 3 to Stoke. With that sieve like defense it means we have to put more and more goals into the sieve to keep the points coming in. Its fine and dandy to say 2 of the goals against Swansea were unusual (deflections, wonder goals etc) and cannot be planned for but we all know the strain on the backline leads to mistakes, space and nervous moments that contribute to opponents chances. For every wonder goal scored there is several missed chances that the opponent could have scored in. Its going to happen where our title chances will have to rely on us keeping a clean sheet and right now there is no way we will do that I fear.

On the other hand Brendan has created a team that is scoring for fun and at a rate that has surpassed even City who only 3 or 4 games ago were getting heralded as the greatest attacking side ever seen in the Sky era. That achievement is something that needs to applauded as I have seen managers spend years and tonnes of cash to not even come close. While there is no easy job in top management most look to solidified their team first and build on attack later as it is easier to achieve clean sheets versus a world class strike force. We have seen legendary central defense partnerships like Sami & Henchoz/Carragher purchased for the same price as one leg of Suarez so to have a potential 50 league goal partnership in house right now is magical. You may never see it again its so good. So while 4-3 results may lead to edgy moments and mutterings of how can you throw away 2 goal leads in 5 minutes, the joy of seeing us fight for the top right now is brilliant. There is 25 year olds out there that have never seen this so I hope they are enjoying every second of this season, the bad with the good.

[Red number seven]

This is what I want to explore. PM incoming...

PM? PM? WTF. Explore it on here Roy for God's sake! I for one am very interested in expanding on the Ferguson/ Rodgers comparison. Tactically some of the similarities are very obvious, but there are differences too. I'd love to read a good analysis of it from the likes of you and POP.

[stevied]

Fantastic OP and Fillers also absolutely brilliant , this is an exciting period for our club , if you cant get excited with this then you should find something else to do, and just think Suarez hast scored in 5 albeit he has contributed massively in all those games, just wait til he gets his scoring boots on again, cant wait for the games to arrive, dream boys , dream

[Not A Scouser]

I remember an interview with Rodgers early on where he talked about possession with his Swansea team.  One of his points was talking about how possession is usually thought about in an attacking sense, but that with that Swansea side in the Championship they gave up the second fewest goals in their last year there. They did that by controlling the ball.  There were also eight teams that scored as many or higher.  They were essentially a defensive team but not how most English people think of defensive teams.

In his year at Swansea in the premier league they were again a bottom half team (15th) in scoring goals and a top half (9th) team defensively. Again they were mostly known for huge possession stats.

A back four of Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Enrique has been a very solid defence (that same year only two teams gave up fewer goals) in the past, under a series of different managers.

To tie all of that into this game it seems that this helter-skelter, counter-attacking, super-attacking style shown in the game is neither a system in which the back four have played in, let alone be successful, or one that Rodgers has coached before.  This is entirely new for both manager and players.

What good defence consists of is not making mistakes.  You can have a central defender who "plays great" but makes one big mistake a game means he is a bad defender.  We know that the talent level is there to play well defensively, so either the problem is random variation, or it is the system.  Discomfort with a system leads to mistakes and we are making lots of mistakes defensively.

It seems clear that Rodgers has put together a system that has unfamiliar elements in it even to himself, that suits his attacking players down to the ground, but one that doesn't suit his defenders.  This seems to be a clear decision to prioritise attacking over defending (and in the league, when you generally have more talent than the opposition, the more attacking you are the more success you will have).

Rodgers seems to have the opinion that our defensive frailties are down to individual mistakes rather than a systemic problem.  I wonder if games like this are an inevitable result of our style,  a clash between our defensive players and style, simply a lack of ability in our defenders, or that Rodgers hasn't yet (or can't) devise a system that can attack like this and defend better than we are doing.

While the Swansea goals have been put down to things you can't legislate against, it seems to me that someone marking Shelvey would probably have stopped that goal, Skrtel not grabbing a defender (which he managed for the previous two games) for the penalty would have stopped that, and someone marking Bony and heading the ball would have stopped that goal. I expect players to make some mistakes, but I think there were multiple mistakes made, and that these (same) mistakes keep happening over and over again.

Football is entertainment, and I find insane attacking 4-3 scores more fun than solid 1-0 grinding games.  I am certain the run in is going to be entertaining.