Will Dan just have to bide his time?

IT’S not something many of us could’ve expected at the start of the season but, as on Saturday afternoon, Dan Agger may well have to be content with a place on the bench, unless the international break brings some injury woes.

Admittedly, he was probably not fully-fit on Saturday, hence his place on the bench, but then, as many an old-schooler will tell you: if he’s fit enough to be on the bench, he’s fit enough to play.

In the past few games Brendan Rodgers has opted to go with my preferred 3-5-2 formation and gone for 3 centre-backs, giving Martin Skrtel, Kolo Toure and Mamadou Sakho an extended run together as the chosen 3 at the back.

While it hasn’t been perfect, we’ve looked more solid and comfortable using this selection in defence as we have all season and, against Crystal Palace and the latter stages of the game at Sunderland, the Reds have looked more assured than we’ve seen in a while.

I’m yet to be completely convinced that Sakho is a worth the huge fee he commanded but I’ve seen a lot more from him in the past couple of games and can hope that that continues.

In Martin Skrtel, many fans believed we had a figure that after a poor first half of last season (although, how anybody can have a poor season when he didn’t play for half of it, I don’t know!) was only there to be sold for a decent fee, but has once again returned to the side and showed what he is made of. In many ways, you could even say that Skrtel is the fulcrum of our improved defence and has made himself – currently – un-droppable
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And, of course, Kolo Toure is already a fan favourite and for good reason. I spoke highly of him in pre-season but wasn’t sure how many games we’d get out of him this year. After a few months though, I don’t care how long he can last, just as long as he remains in the side for as long as his legs can handle it!

Between the three of them things have tightened up and, even in Lucas’s absence against Palace, the Reds looked mostly in control until the customary second-half short-term memory loss set in and everybody looked like they’d forgotten what a football was.

With more games and more time on the training ground together, these three look like a great partnership, with strength, height, speed and great defensive experience, not to mention incredible athleticism.

At present, Dan may find it hard to get back into the side and in all honesty, I don’t believe he should automatically be given his place back. Too often we’ve seen long-serving players ‘winning’ their places back in recent years almost by default and it has disrupted a good run on form.

If these three are looking good and continue to look good then nothing needs to chance. If form drops and mistakes occur, then Agger comes back in and we see how things go but there is no need to fix something that is looking increasingly less broken.

And besides, in bringing in Sakho and Ilori in the summer, wasn’t the whole point to create competition for places and, in doing so, bringing better performances out of the whole squad?

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