As ever, the ground’s been covered one way or another with some fine posts. Just like to add a slightly different angle which has occurred to me during this inevitable initial grieving process so I may as well air it.
I doubt there’s a single Reds fan who prior to kick off didn’t harbour a reasonably strong notion we could go down to The Emirates, take them on head to head and bring home the three points after watching those four amazing goals and the two woodwork efforts against West Brom.
You could then, given that scenario, think it somewhat churlish to question why the management should have viewed the situation any differently.
However, the harsh fact is we’re fans and they’re management.
Hindsight now tells us as fans that Arsenal were not weakened one jot by their absentees. Wenger and the Arsenal management seem to have known this.
It also tells us that we were. Quite noticeably. And that it’s probably fair to say we need to be at our full strength technical best [by which I mean a team containing Agger, Coutinho, Johnson, Enrique and possibly Allen] to take on one of the top teams on their own midden in a head to head contest. Even then I’m not sure we’re strong enough – though perhaps, and hopefully, we are.
It is perfectly clear now is that our own absentees left us seriously weakened, most especially in arguably the two most vital wing back areas for the successful deployment of a 3-5-2 system against a top side. Whilst our performance was nowhere near as poor as some have said in their understandable frustration and we actually still could have snatched the goals to achieve a positive result, surely nobody would argue that we were anything other than second best and at times comprehensively outplayed especially in those midfield areas..
So should Rodgers, Pascoe and Marsh have been aware of all this without the hindsight we now all have? Should the absentees not have told our management that in order to stand the best chance of a positive result we needed to adopt a formation that could work best within the personnel limitations forced upon us to allow us to stifle/negate Arsenal’s midfield strengths rather than actually allow them to prosper with a player deficit in that area of the pitch? Should our most technically gifted and attack minded centre back not have been included to lend a more positive balance to the back line and possibly the area in front of the back line.
Are the management aware of all this now?
I’m unsure of the answer to the questions I’m posing. It’s far too early days to know. However, they are questions that are perfectly valid if you ask me.
Down the years, I’ve witnessed the various guises of Liverpool management adopt a ‘horses for courses’ approach to suit a particular match and more pertinently to suit the personnel we had available. Such a pragmatic approach was adopted to yield a positive result in a particular game. I’m not convinced this is the case now.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Brendan Rodgers. I’ve liked an awful lot of what I’ve seen and heard from him. I support him. I want him to succeed and I think in time he will. As I say it’s still early days. But the fact remains these are massive shoes he has to fill and I’d have been a whole lot more convinced had he shown he possesses a hell of a lot more insight into what was about to transpire on Saturday night than us lot. And I’m not sure what we saw unfold down at The Emirates tells us that he did.
Raise your game Brendan lad. It’s a must for a successful Liverpool manager.