THERE has been a recent shift in the style of football played in the Premier League over the last 5 years. The stoic defensive, counter-attacking style so successful under Mourinho’s Chelsea and copied throughout the league has been replaced with flowing aggressive football with most observers pointing to Barcelona as the instigators.
Martinez has helped Wigan to avoid the drop with his passing and attacking football albeit somewhat late in the year and West Brom returned to the Premier League playing slick football.
Harry Redknapp galvanized Tottenham with fast moving football and Man City captured their first title by loosening the shackles slightly and being more aggressive away from home.
There’s no doubt that the sea change has helped clubs to perform better and made the league more exciting. The prospect of newly promoted sides and less financially strong sides cowering around their goal and praying for a draw against the big boys has been and gone. Now, sides are always looking to take 3 points in every game and the league is better for it.
Indeed, Liverpool plucked the man charged with being the club’s savior particularly because of his football philosophy and the need and desire to be more aggressive by the club’s board.
It’s not hard to see why either, last season Liverpool mustered only 47 goals while conceding 40, whereas the plucky Swans managed 44 and 51 scored and conceded respectively for a team expected to slide back down into the Championship. In fact, the overall feeling amongst most fans was that we needed more goals in the team and a stronger front line.
Rodgers was identified as the man to extract goals from underperforming sources (that’s you Mr Downing!) last season and to re-invent the Liverpool front line to be a slick goal scoring machine, constantly piercing opposition with precision and invention.
Yet the £35 million question is where are the goals going to come from?
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The answer is clearly not Andy Carroll, at least for Brendan Rodgers at any rate. He doesn’t believe that Carroll can play a part in his new look Liverpool side and having the big man hanging around is no good as it deprives the manager of funds to invest. Unfortunately, the bidding war for Carroll never materialized and now he may have to stay.
Rodgers is not so blind as to allow Carroll to leave on loan and be left without the resources to buy a striker that he wants and feels will fit the mold for Liverpool. It’s better to have a misfit with talent on the bench than nothing. But the biggest problem is that Luis Suarez, despite his incredible talent, does not seem quite capable of scoring enough on his own to fire LFC to glory.
So can attacking football alone bring the goals for Liverpool? Well evidence might suggest not. Last season lots of chances were created in most games and the football was attacking too but the goal return did not materialise.
While Liverpool had one of the best defensive records in the Premier League last season, the biggest problem was a lack of goal scoring and this runs across the whole team. The midfield does not provide enough goals and the Rodgers revolution will need quality attacking players if the system is to succeed.
For my money, I’d have big Andy as the front man with Suarez and Borini alongside but if the Geordie giant doesn’t figure, then we need someone else to help make the front 3 a more potent goal scoring weapon. Without that we may head for a similar season to last time out.
It would seem to me that if you want to play energetic, constant attacking football then the key is to have high quality attacking player. Unfortunately, not enough in that department has changed at this stage.
While it may sound boring, Liverpool’s current ensemble would probably be more successful with counter-attacking football with the defence seeming to be LFC’s strongest asset. But if we want to embrace the attacking philosophy and have the team eventually become carved in Rodgers’ image then we may have to wait while the right personnel can be brought in and the ideas fully integrated.
And while the wait might be painful in the short-term, the wait may well be worth it.
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