My worry is that Rodgers dream team, even if realized, will never match the points we got last year by focusing on goals over 'possesion' or 'control'. Rodgers philosophy is based on the idea that if you control posession you will win 60% of the time (or some close number) and therefore if you are winning the posession every game you'll probably win the league, or be close.
However I think the last few games have illustrated just how useless mere posession is. We had almost 80% against West Brom and we needed a goal line clearance to keep it 0-0 at the end. Today we had the ball all game but we couldn't even make a 89 year old keeper break a sweat.
We have been undone time after time, by managers as limited as Sherwood, Lambert, Fat Sam and Bruce, not because of any incredible tactics on their part, but by the most rudimentary of tactics because we are so slow and predictable at both ends of the field.
If we start next season with a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 with split CDs a controller and one striker, with emphasis on slow short passing from keeper to CD to FB back to CD to deepest midfielder - pressure applied, back to CD etc etc then I don't see how Rodgers survives another year.
It's much more than that. Statistically, if you dominate the ball against the opposing team you will win the game 79% of the time. This is much, much higher than 60%. Breaking away from the model, if you're only expected to win 60% of the time, in favour of a shorter-term model, is excusable, though ultimately ill advised. Breaking away from a model which historically and statistically gives you a 79% chance to win games is less so and less justifiable.
Your point about the last few games - I believe they are outliers to be honest. This doesn't show how "useless" mere possession is, because if we have a higher possession percentage than the opposing team every league game for 10 years running (380 games) playing the same way, the result will be that we win 79% of them or close to thereabouts. The same logic applies as in, for example, poker variance, where if you make the correct mathematical decisions 100% of the time over 8 online tables for 3 months, for example, you'll end up winning even though short term you may lose some hands that you would have won if you had played based on "gut" feel.
I accept that it's different as football has so many more variables (injuries, morale, loss of form, players needing to be coached, players being asked to play a different way than earlier in the season) than poker, but Brendan's statistical approach to the possession game is imo indeed sound. And if he wants to go back to a formation and an ideal that he believes in then all power to him - I just hope that he doesn't rip it up mid season because of "pressure to get results" and sticks with his preferred style of play throughout next season (38 games is a small sample size but hey we can't ask for the world) and take it from there.
Per aspera ad astra.
