I've said this time and time again, but the English football media are as blind to the failings of English football as the manager (Hodgson) and the FA.
What has this got to do with Liverpool being written off for the forthcoming season? Well, every single pundit is obsessed with INDIVIDUALS rather than THE TEAM. Just like with England, the media and the manager thinks that packing a squad full of the best individuals works, but very rarely is it a team. The obsession with individualism has creeped over into assessments for Liverpool's season, and mainly because without Suarez, we are doomed.
Well, the last time I looked, we did alright without Suarez when he was banned. What's more, pundits harp on about other teams who lost their star player such as Man Utd with Ronaldo and Tottenham with Bale. Yes, but those teams didn't score as many goals in their respective campaigns prior to the star man leaving, which means that their star player was more relied upon and as common sense tells us, that makes them more valuable to the team. While Suarez scored many goals, he wasn't greater than the sum of all parts - because it wasn't just Suarez who scored 101 goals. Meanwhile, the majority of goals for Man Utd and Tottenham in their aformentioned seasons did come from their star player.
Also, to emphasise how Liverpool is a TEAM, our bare-boned squad often experienced injuries/bans to all our star players at times last season. Rodgers accomodated the team accordingly, adjusted it here and there, and hey presto, looking at results on paper you wouldn't have the foggiest idea that we were often beset by injuries to our very best players. Many teams have the advantage of swapping like for like in an injury crisis - we had to improvise, and the successfulness of such improvisation shows how Rodgers has worked his men on the training field to WORK AS A TEAM. If we relied on individuals - like the press seem to think - then the absence of such an individual would have hampered us. It didn't though.
On the other hand, teams can benefit from their star man leaving - don't always believe the folly in the media when they say teams NEVER improve after selling their best man. Arsenal in 2007 were in a similar situation when their star player Thierry Henry left for Barcelona. Henry's final season with The Gunners saw them score 63 goals and gain 68 points - Henry of course was their top scorer. The next season saw Arsenal mount a title challenge (until what now seems like a mandatory spring breakdown) and many of the young guns taking more responsibility, with Arsenal finishing 3rd after being pipped above, scoring nearly 20 more goals while in addition to 83 points - a massive leap from the previous year. This is important to take heed because many players had to step up and take on scoring responsibilties without Henry. What's more, they did it successfully.
Now comparing this, the Borussia Dortmund match last week showed that the players who played behind Suarez were taking much more responsibility in getting forward. Henderson and Coutinho penetrated the Dortmund defence expertly,with both assisting in well worked team goals and both scoring. The space usually reserved for Suarez will hopefully be exploited with our midfielders getting forward more and allowing to be more expressive - and if similarly successful as Arsenal, can provide a step up from last seaon. The old argument about not having Champions League football will rear its head inevitably, but pundits still fail to recognise we did it without any strength in depth at all. Now we have depth, and in addition to this, we have a young team, and many of our players are a year older, a year wiser and a year stronger. This is still a young team, and they haven't filled their potential by any means - another aspect conveniently forgotten by the Man Utd sycophants at BBC Sport (Guy Mowbray, Conor McNamara are two of the most biased United supporting lead commentators for example).
Getting back to the focus on individualism, it's this type of myopia within the English press that restrains any original and insightful analysis and, what's more, keeps English football in a state of stagnation.
Brendan Rodgers is well above the idea that individuals do not make up a team. Much will depend on how the new lads settle in rather than the loss of Suarez, and if the new lads settle in well, we will be stronger than last season.
