Back to the drawing board

THE game against West Ham on Sunday took a familiar path to many matches at Anfield in recent years, with the Reds dominating possession for large swathes of the game but ultimately coming up short in the end.

It would be difficult to be too harsh on the team this time, as we genuinely did look like the only team looking to win, with West Ham content to occasionally break forward via the bullish persistence of Mohamed Diame.

After the additions of Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho in January added a new dimension and cutting edge to Liverpool’s attack, it was hugely disappointing to slip back into the ‘plenty of shots but nothing to show for it’ routine of last season and the first few months of this season. Which is why I was even more frustrated by our inability to either break with any haste, or take advantage of numerous set-pieces. Both have become real issues for me in the past 18 months.

Our inability to regularly take advantage from set-pieces is something which as irked me greatly over the past few seasons. It’s almost as if it’s an area that gets little attention in training and when we win a corner or a free-kick in a dangerous position, there is such a lack of anticipation that we often just play it short and continue play.

In his article ‘Set-Pieces Setbacks’ Paul Tomkins identifies Liverpool’s preference for the short corner as a good thing. It is something that teams which dominate games tend to favour as it allows them to keep the pressure on in the opposition half.

And while it is totally understandable that Rodgers would favour this, it’s worrying all the same. A brief period from the end of January to a few weeks ago, when Liverpool had a bit of a goal-spurt, Liverpool tend to dominate games without taking a great deal of advantage of the possession and chances, so what is the point in keeping the pressure on when it inevitably leads to more missed opportunities and squandered possession?

Even when we do take a ‘proper’ corner or free-kick, Gerrard tends to be the taker which is something which will always baffle me. For one, the man is many things and his attributes are almost numerous but Gerrard has never been very good at whipping in corners. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of stick for this but he just isn’t.
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But that isn’t the worst of it – why is a man who is one of our tallest, most physically imposing – not to mention a great header of the ball – taking our corners? It’s as confusing as Didier Drogba taking Chelsea’s for much of his tenure there.

Liverpool need to get back to how things were under Houllier and much of Benitez’s time, when we were actually dangerous from dead-balls. Admittedly, we’re not blessed with a player like Hyypia or Torres who gives us an edge in the box in those situations but we have many physically imposing players such as Agger, Skrtel, Gerrard and Henderson and really do need to make them count more.

My second issue which resurfaced against West Ham at the weekend is our total lack of speed or pace when breaking on the counter. The result of this was generally that the opposition players had more than enough time to get back behind the ball.

On West Ham’s rare forays forward the two centre backs and Lucas, more often than not, managed to break up the attack fairly quickly, but the speed of the counter-attack was almost always pedestrian.

Liverpool are not naturally a defensive side, so counter-attacking isn’t really a large part of their style. We tend to dominate most sides so the need to break from defence is not one which we come across very often but when the opportunity is presented, you need to make it count. With full-backs like Enrique and Johnson, and quick, tricky forward players such as Suarez, Coutinho and Sturridge, we really should be more dangerous when these situations occur.

The concern with this issue for me is that we’ve become a lot like Arsenal have been for years – no plan B. The plan A is nice and works a lot of the time but when it doesn’t we just keep on hitting our heads against a brick wall. Or, in West Ham’s case on Sunday afternoon, a wall made out of 10 outfield players.

Our style of play though will dictate how we break forward, and given that our build-up play tends to be slow and considered, it makes sense that our counter-attacks would be too but it’s an area that needs to be worked on if Liverpool are to take full advantage of any opportunity to punish the opposition; we can’t let them off the hook so easily when they make mistakes because, as we saw in Lucas’s last-gasp clearance in the dying moments of the game, they will only come back and punish yours.
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