Sakho and Lucas Showcase Squad Depth

Nine wins in a row is an incredible run. Undefeated in the Premier League in 2014 is even more impressive. The consistency the team has shown during this stretch, dealing with injuries, form blips, bad refereeing decisions and utilising a range of different formation has been wonderful to admire. Not least because it has all come while still maintaining an attacking, forward thinking, beautiful on the eye form of football.

A team cannot go on a run of form like this without utilising their broader squad. The size of the Liverpool squad has come under criticism, and understandably so, many times this season. Even more so when the club failed to add any players in January. We do not have the depth that Chelsea and Man City have, squads that have been built by spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a regular basis, often to overpay for the best players just to keep them on the bench. Chelsea did this with Willian, although he has begun to play in the second half of the season, and Salah, who’s only just started getting games under Mourinho. Both players that Liverpool tried to sign.

However, the importance of the ‘size’ of the squad becomes less important the fewer games there are to play. With Liverpool not in Europe and knocked out of both cup competitions fairly early, Brendan Rodgers has been able to start what he feels is his strongest side each week, giving plenty of time to recuperate during the intervening week. Less games should also mean fewer injuries, but Liverpool have had to deal with their fair share, and this apparently thin squad has come out the other side top of the table!

At some point all of our defenders, bar Skrtel, have been injured. Enrique has been out all season. Cissokho got injured in his first game. Johnson and Flanagan have both had lengthy lay offs. Agger has been injured and unavailable on a number of occasions. Toure and Sakho have also been injured. Martin Kelly took a much longer time than expected to recover from knee surgery. And yet Liverpool coped.

Further forward we’ve lost Gerrard, Sturridge, Coutinho, Lucas and Allen at different stages of the season. The first two during the critical Christmas period when they missed the maximum possible games. Even Sterling was being treated carefully at the beginning of the season having suffered hamstring problems and a number of niggles as his body adjusted to the the intensity of all the games he’d been playing the year before.

Liverpool have easily had as many injuries as Arsenal or Manchester United, two teams that the media feel have suffered from missing players more than most. And we’ve arguably had more injuries than Chelsea and City. We even didn’t have the best player in the Premier League available for our first 6 games.

And yet we’re top of the table.

In recent weeks the team has certainly benefited from a certain consistency of selection, in addition to the consistency of philosophy that Rodgers has preached since his arrival. Unless injuries have forced his hand Brendan has generally gone with a very similar team. The only changes being when he rotates picking two out of Coutinho, Sterling and Allen to start and whether he plays a 4-3-3 or a 4-4-2 diamond.

This policy has been remarkably successful. In games where the 4-3-3 hasn’t seemed to work from kick-off, Brendan has been quick to change to a diamond and things have worked out. The reverse tactical change has also been employed. There have been small tweaks, e.g. swapping Sterling and Suarez to different flanks, or asking his deeper players to play the ball early and long to the strikers against Southampton to bypass their pressing style, but generally we’ve been consistent in tactics and selection during recent weeks.

That consistency was shook for the first time in a few weeks as coming into a very tough away game against Allardyce’s “19th Century” footballers, we lost Daniel Agger to a knee injury and Joe Allen wasn’t deemed fit to start. In came Mamadou Sakho for Dagger, and with Allen part fit Rodgers decided to start with the diminutive Sterling and Coutinho in a very attacking 4-3-3 line up.

The move only part worked. Sakho, who had played a key role for the team earlier in the season, but hadn’t managed to regain his spot after returning from injury, was excellent alongside Martin Skrtel as the two fought for every ball that could be contested, but also occasionally dropped off when they realised an attempted tackle might lead to a freekick in a dangerous position. In fact the whole team’s focus on staying on their feet and trying to limit the number of freekicks was a clear tactic for which Rodgers again should be praised.

High praise also for Sakho’s passing, he looked calm and assured and continually passed the ball forward accurately and intelligently with a 95.8% passing accuracy. He made 8 clearances and two key tackles in dangerous situations. Despite all the high balls and elbows, the Hammers only had one shot on target all game!

Prior to the game I said I hoped that Sakho would actually start, as Agger has often had difficultly against powerful forwards and is not great at defending corners. Hopefully Daniel will be fit to face Manchester City, though on the basis of Sakho’s performance he may find it difficult to win his place back.

The 4-3-3 system however didn’t work as well. The power and pace of Demel and Diame was causing us difficulties in the middle of the park. While West Ham were incredibly lucky to have the referee bizarrely overturn his linesman’s decision after Andy Carroll first punched Mignolet in the head, followed by elbowing Mignolet’s arm to force him to release the ball and then body slamming him leading to the Hammer’s goal, it could be argued that West Ham had their fair share of the first half and deserved to go into the break even.

However the second half was all one way until the final few minutes of the game. Rodgers again made a bold substitution at half time. Needing a goal, he instead took off the usually brilliant Coutinho, who while not playing badly had struggled to find the timing on his passes and looked a little off the pace on a day that Brazil’s assistant coach, and former World Cup winning manager Carlos Alberto Parreira, was in attendance.

The little magician would be gutted he failed to perform on such an important day for his World Cup chances, but in truth having not been in any of the recent squads, unfortunately being injured the last time Brazil played friendlies, it was always going to be a long shot being called up to the hugely competitive Seleção. However Coutinho’s disappointment was Lucas’ gain.

Over the last few years where Liverpool have been consistently struggling, Lucas has been playing consistently well. His breakout year, the one in which he began to change the opinion of all the doubters, was the year that Alonso left and LFC failed to get into the Champions League. Since then he’s been one of our best players, frequently excelling in the big games and maintaining consistency in the supposedly ‘smaller’ games when other team mates let their standards slip.

Having returned from his cruciate injury to fight his way back into the Brazil squad, he got injured just before the last set of Brazil friendlies. And as I wrote in an earlier article, he had to watch as Fernandinho took his place, played well and scored. Since returning to fitness he’s played only small parts, although he impressed in a 20 minute run out against Tottenham.

Lucas came on at Upton Park as the team changed to a diamond formation and immediately we gained control of the midfield. He interchanged cleverly with Gerrard and Henderson, building from the back and with Sterling also adding numbers to the midfield, allowed the two full backs to play much higher in the second half. The freedom and fluidity returned to our midfield and Lucas not only had a couple of shots blocked as he got forward, but also made the key pass bisecting the organised Hammers defence which led to the penalty award when Flanagan was fouled. Lucas had 61 touches in his 45 minutes, which was more than 50% higher than Coutinho in the first half.

There’s no doubting that next season we will need to reinforce certain positions as we try to compete on four fronts. It will be difficult for Gerrard to play every game, and tiredness later in the season will be a bigger issue than this season, where the whole squad still looks fresh. However right now we only have 5 massive games to go, each one a Cup Final, so the wider squad is unlikely to be needed, and even if it is, we know we can certainly rely on Sakho and Lucas to impress.

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