Do Liverpool need less ‘impact’, more ‘control’?

WHEN Brendan Rodgers got the job as manager of Liverpool Football Club he came with promises of a certain type of football. A style based on certain principles: aggressive pressure without the ball, and patience and intelligence with the ball.

The media obviously managed to make it sound like he was reinventing football with the whole ‘Swansealona’ and tiki-taka, and since labels can be hard to shake it’s something that keeps looming over him as he continues building and shaping the squad.

As last season progressed we saw the evolution of team looking to find its identity. Rodgers’ initial plan of turning Liverpool FC into a more controlled possession team has to be described as a moderate success – at best. There were promising performances, but the feeling throughout the first few months was that this would indeed become a long term project. Too many obvious ingredients seemed to be missing for the stylistic transition to be completely smooth.

When a new manager comes in to a club there will always be bumps in the road, unless the club is a well-oiled machine with a clear playing style. Many had expectations of LFC becoming an improved version of Swansea; after all we had better players, right? 1+1=…

Looking at it in retrospect there’s really no wonder the team struggled the first months. Rodgers has mentioned DNA a few times when talking about playing style, and I think this is why he eventually settled for a slightly (or vastly, depending on your definition) different approach in terms of the possession game. I think Liverpool were, and still are, a team with more impact players than control players; players who play more with their instincts than with their brains and are more suited to playing a direct, fast paced game than the possession game. More José Enriques than Glen Johnsons. Which is why I think they still look like a team that sometimes haven’t found their true identity under Brendan Rodgers.

Parallel to the question about identity and direction is the question about how to put together the best team, or rather how to maximise the potential of a squad that is still in its building phase and therefore isn’t yet balanced. We have witnessed the vulnerability of the squad since the injuries to Glen Johnson and Philippe Coutinho, where the absence of the former has forced a formational change because of a lack of cover.

It’s a bit of a guesswork at the moment in terms of how the squad will be built over the next couple of transfer windows, but for now many things point to the current 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 system being the system best suited to the squad. The types of central defenders the club has to choose from are pretty much ideal for a three at the back formation, and the amount of them also suggests that it could be something Rodgers plans to continue doing.

Upfront there has also been a lot of talk over the summer about how to shoehorn Coutinho, Suarez and Sturridge into the same team without having to put either Coutinho or Suarez out in a wide position and thus give them needless defensive responsibility. Having all three of them close together in more central areas and predominantly in the final third can only be a good thing.

Then there’s the midfield, which continues to be a bit of an issue from time to time even though it really shouldn’t be. Sure, the players we have there may not be as good as we like to think they are, but they should still be good enough to control games better than what they do. Both in terms of physicality and dictating a game I think there are elements lacking, and I think the position could be next in line for a similar revamp to the one we saw in central defence this summer.

Which is another reason why three at the back could be both a temporary and a permanent solution. It provides extra safety for our midfield and relieves some defensive responsibility, which both Lucas Leiva and Steven Gerrard could do with even though they have had a relatively solid start to the new season.

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