Top of the league but could've been by 2 more pts.
Questions:
Did Brendan make too many changes for a trip to a fast passing team?
I don't think so. I think he made as few changes as he could get away with, given Toure returning from injury, Agger apparently injured, and Johnson's injury too. Moses was the more "gratuitous" change, but that ended up being justified with the goal.
Will Moses deliver us to the promised land?
Not sure he'll "deliver", but with that kind of pace, he can at least do some reconnaissance missions!
How did that defence look?
"Disjointed" I think will be the most common description of it. Sakho was playing one way, Skrtel was playing another, Wisdom was being his usual naïve self, and Enrique was running to the beat of his own eyebrows. They weren't helped by an immobile midfield though. That's where the real problems were created.
Why did Routledge get the better of us on the left so often?
Because Wisdom is not a top quality defender (yet), and makes too many basic mistakes that his athleticism usually allows him to make up for. Unfortunately, Routledge is also athletic, but also very good on the ball. Henderson helped out, but Gerrard's lack of positioning and, quite frankly, defensive effort at times, meant that Henderson had to cover two areas of the field, plus play in his own spot. So Routledge had the run of that wing for large parts of the game. I daresay that if Ilori had played, that situation might have been more in our favour, having, as he does, an abundance of pace. But 'twas not to be.
Was this the first time we could've used Luis' guile?
We could have used it in the United game too. Not his guile, but his willingness to run at players. Moses gave us that too. He and Moses would have kept Swansea honest at the back - but as it was, with Sturridge dropping deep for the ball and not being at 100%, their two central defenders didn't have a lot to worry about.
The Game - The game itself was a tale of 4 mistakes. The two Shelvey mistakes for our goals are well known, of course. They showed exactly why Shelvey won't be a top four player - his concentration goes AWOL at times, and he tries things that are not even remotely on (like the attempt to play a spinning, swerving driven ball low and hard to Dyer that he had no right to play, leading to Moses' goal). That's not a slight on the lad overall, because he did score a good (although fortunate) goal, and played a great header for the assist for Michu. But that inconsistency in his game won't change for a long time, if ever. However, his goal was very interesting because it demonstrated some clear breakdowns in our defensive units that were utterly avoidable.
Why goals are scored (and how Liverpool could have done better) - There are 6 reasons why goals are scored. They encompass almost all possibilities, and the first three reasons are related to the run of play and defensive structure:
- No pressure on the ball
- No cover behind the ball
- Failure to track runs from midfield
- Restarts
- Unforced errors
- Own Goals/Deflections
The first goal showed up the first two points, and point five as well. Let's start with the miskick that Shelvey makes in the initial shot from Henderson's poor headed clearance:
If you look at it in real time, Gerrard turns his back on the ball anticipating the volley. Shelvey mishits it, but collects the rebound. Gerrard doesn't react to the missed kick, and instead lets Shelvey dribble past him -
Sakho anticipates this, and steps to the ball as he should. But the initial pressure that should have happened - from Gerrard after the miskick - was absent, and it creates a domino effect of bad defending options that create the goal.
As Sakho is stepping up to pressure Shelvey, Skrtel doesn't follow, and leaves a gap behind Sakho that allows Shelvey to dribble forward (although Sakho made the schoolboy error of lunging too soon):
Note too that Gerrard and Lucas are still pretty close together, and neither have really engaged in an active recovery run. Enique, too is redundant out wide, with no player to mark and by not coming in more central to defend:
Because Shelvey got away from Sakho so fast, Skrtel only has one place to go, and that's to get on the path of the ball and prevent the shot, which he does quite well. However, upon getting there, he commits a schoolboy error of his own:
He goes to ground far too early, and Shelvey is able to turn him and now faces the goal, with Mignolet coming off his line to cut the angle. However, Sakho is getting into a good recovery position, so it's debatable whether Mignolet should have stepped out, or stayed put on the line. It could go either way depending on the coach/keeper. However, what could have happened - and it's something every player learns at youth level at some point - is that Wisdom could have continued to track back and got on the line as soon as Mignolet stepped to the ball. Gary Neville was quite good at doing that for United, and it's such a basic thing that you wonder why players forget to do it. It might not have prevented the goal, but it could have given Shelvey pause for thought for a second, which would have allowed Sakho to make a tackle and clear the ball out for a corner:
This is a minor issue, though. The key points are that because our central midfielders neglected to pressure Shelvey in the first place, a domino effect of bad defensive choices occurs, including a lack of cover, and a lack of patience in defending at the ball.
And so to the second goal, which showed the 3rd reason for goals being scored - failure to track runs - with great clarity. We start with Shelvey on the ball, and eight Liverpool players between him and the goal:
Again, no pressure on the ball means that Shelvey can pick his pass to the checking Bony, who is tracked by Sakho:
When Sakho pushes up to get tight on Bony, though, he creates space in behind him. Meanwhile, Shelvey begins his run forward:
Britton receives the ball from Bony and plays a great chip into the space vacated by Sakho, into which Shelvey is running. At this point, too, Michu is about to begin his support run:
He times this run perfectly, but it is helped by the fact that Wisdom although tracking the run is following him on the outside, where he is redundant as a defender. In this instance, he breaks the first rules of marking mark goalside and ballside. He does neither, and Michu has an unimpeded run onto Shelveys header, giving him enough time and space to place his shot in the bottom corner. As the goal is scored, though, we see very clearly again why the goal was scored as the ball hits the back of the net, all four of Liverpools midfielders are very much behind the play, in a line, and are not affecting the opposition attack in any way, shape or form. Their failure to pressure the ball in the first place, and then to track Shelveys run in the second place, is the real reason why the goal was scored:
It could be argued that when Sakho gets tight on Bonys checking run, the rest of the back four should have pushed up with him, and may have created an offside situation that halted Michus run, and might have given Mignolet time to get out and collect the ball after Shelveys header. But the main culprits are the central midfield, who once again exposed their defence by failing to do the basic things that prevent goals in the first place. Liverpools two goals showed how unforced errors play a big part in the concession of goals Shelvey was at fault in both instances. But his own goal, and his part in Michus, also show that when one team fails to do the basics, they open themselves up to all sorts of problems, and although the result itself is quite good (and I was surprised - and clearly incorrect in my assumption that Laudrup wouldnt have them go for it with Valencia coming up at how much Swansea fought for much of the game), it could have been a lot better for Liverpool if the midfield had done the fundamentals of defending at the right moments. If this isnt corrected, we might still end up being a team that concedes 2 goals if it concedes 1 and that would put any chance of a top four finish in jeopardy.
