Pretty late this time, had a busy week, but this game was just too good for not coming on here and writing something positive....
I liked especially how we varied the pace of the game, especially right before half time, where we slowed down the pace and gave ourselves a rest with the ball. Very impressive to watch how we matured in this respect and it's something we will desperately have to be able to do, even when being under way more pressure and I hope Rodgers will practise this with the players in terms of our upcoming CL/PL fixtures for next season.
A lot of stuff played was very "brasilian" like, especially with Allen out and our attacking force of Suarez, Coutinho, Sterling and Sturridge in our 4-3-3 which is my favourite line up as it makes us play exactly the way I always hoped to see as which is very much about "playing" football first and foremost.There has been a lot of talk about Rodgers giving the players the confidence to play the ball but to me there is way more to it.... To me, Rodgers reminded our players to be football players first and foremost, that it's about playing football which makes things so easy as long as it's done by every players as most of the problems within a first eleven is coming from not being able to trust your team mates not wasting possession or giving away the ball way too easily. In this respect, there is still a lot of work to do but overall it's pretty impressive and astonishing to watch how good professional players CAN be with the ball as long as a manager only let them to. Pretty much all of our squad players got the skills which has been coached out of them gradually from an early stage on in european football, some earlier and some later on and Rodgers obviously tries everything to make them forget about all those fearful thinking with has been established in european football tactics..In this respect, I totally agree with Yorky that Coutinho has to thank Rodgers for letting him play the way he is capable of, but frankly, all of them should. And I am pretty sure they are, thankful, just as I am as a fan for bringing back football..
The finishing of Henderson seems to be more a problem for the player than for the team although I am kind of buffled how he hasn't worked this out for him in the last couple of months as I would think there is enough quality within the club, Dalglish, Fowler, Barnes or whoever, to help out the guy with a couple of hours of indeep coaching here as it's really no rocket science. For ALL our players not being on the same level as Romario or the original Ronaldo in terms of natural finishing, there are some basic rules to follow here, just as with taking penalities and I do hope someone already told Henderson what to do best here. Get/Bend over the ball and take an instep kick, NEVER with the inside or outside, in either one of the corners or hit it hard right under the bar. Concentrate just on that, 90% success rate, guarateed
One last thing on Tottenham though... If a team isn't even able to give some decent PL game time to one of our injured players, Lucas, then you know there is something wrong, one of the worst performance of a team coming to Anfield for a pretty long time, I am pretty sure of that. No game plan, no guts, no spirit, nothing. You could almost sense how the Tottenham players not wanting to perform, not wanting to go out and play and there is, again, a pretty obvious rift between the manager and the players going on... No suprise to me though as this guy seems to be totally clueless what to do here, McAteer pointing out that with AVB still being in charge it wouldn't have been such an easy game.. overall embarrassing performance, sorry Tottenham.