Players Need To Relieve Managerial Pressures

I guess old habits really do die hard. Against West Brom, I was hoping to watch a Brendan Rodgers Liverpool dominate and possibly take 3 points at the Hawthorns.

For the most part the former remained true but after Daniel Agger’s dismissal, the latter seemed to wander far from my thoughts.

The scenario had become all too familiar: bags of possession, fluid passing and movement, the unmistakeable profligacy in front of goal, no sign of “Lady Luck” anywhere and the figure of Brendan Rodgers (like Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish before him) on the sideline carved in a mixture of confusion and disbelief. We were back at square one, but how?

After a promising pre-season whose highlights were probably our most recent conquests over Gomel and Bayern Leverkusen, I don’t believe a single Red exists who didn’t have high hopes going into last Saturday’s game. I doubt if even a single West Brom fan expected what ensued, more so after the first 40 minutes.

No doubt Brendan will have to bear the responsibility for the loss, but after watching his predecessors suffer quite similarly in the past, I feel that more of the accusing fingers should be directed at the one thing that hasn’t changed exponentially during the reign of three highly-rated managers – the team. It’s one thing for a manager to use the wrong tactics or approach a game (or season) erroneously and quite another for three to, consecutively.

Granted, it isn’t easy to readjust mentality and improve chemistry overnight, but individuality, desire and work rate are things that should be inherent in any club team player hoping to win any kind of silverware. 100% isn’t enough anymore, the players should have realized that by now. Rodgers obviously wants more passing and possession but that should not stop players from making mazy runs and switching positions every now and again; that’s what creates the penetration we need.

Sticking exactly to the gaffer’s instructions to me is 100% at best, and that doesn’t guarantee much these days. Barcelona have always been true to tiki-taka but against Chelsea in 2009 it took a shot from the edge of the box (their only shot on goal) to win them the game. Our players seem to lack the initiative and hunger, or is their confidence just so bruised that they can’t pick themselves up from a goal down albeit with ten men? Barcelona did it with ten men in 2009.
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I have talked about the need for individual brilliance before and I whole-heartedly believe that if even 3 players per game resigned themselves to not accept defeat no matter what, then the “curse of the smaller teams” that seems to plague us still will be lifted. Our football is just too “safe”. It doesn’t always have to be our best players either, I think we’ve come to expect too much from Suarez and Stevie G and I think it’s a bit unfair to expect magical performances from them every game.

A performance like Andy Carroll’s off the bench in the FA Cup Final last season by just three of our players every match-day would surely suffice. Carroll nearly single-handedly brought us level in that game and I have no doubt that we would have been in pole position to win it if the second goal had stood. The charisma and belief he showed is exactly what’s been missing, what’s still missing. We can sign as many managers as we want and try as many variations of style as there are stars in the universe, but until players really start pulling that extra weight, nothing is really going to change.

Rodgers did say it wasn’t going to be easy, maybe because he has identified this lack of character and the dwindling levels of confidence (who’s to say King Kenny hadn’t too). His approach to the team and players should be as much psychological as it is tactical because in the end he will be judged on results which more often than not are a reflection of the performance of the players.

A manager is only as good as his strongest eleven and for all the stats and the style that he is looking to impose we must understand that it will be impossible for Rodgers to come good for us if the players themselves are unable to.
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