Liverpoolfc: What happened to our season?
Posted by Akzoony in Liverpool | 30 November 2006
That’s it. I officially concede the title.
Now I have been holding off on saying this for as long as I possibly could (not least of all because of the waves it is likely to cause through the footballing world; I can see tomorrow mornings headlines now…) but after yet another evening of being unable to find a goal I feel that the league is now all over for another year.
So what went wrong? What happened to our hopes and dreams of beating United and pushing Chelsea all the way?
I think Morrientes hit the nail on the head last week when he spoke about the pressure that every Liverpool player is put under week in week out. It is not hoped that they should win the league, it is expected. Moreover it can not just be a one off, but it is expected that we will then go on and echo the most glorious years of our history.
As I’ve said before; this year we have finally put together a cracking squad of talented young players and -unlike similar situations in the past- I don’t feel that the players we have brought in are at all sub-standard. They just seem to be having a hard time settling in.
In some cases I believe that this has been caused by the transition to English football, and in others it seems to be the daunting effect of moving to a club with our size and history. But the biggest issue for me has to be the change that is being engineered throughout the whole team by Rafa.
Last year -arguably our most successful season for years- Rafa had a squad of players that had largely been together for a long time and that relationships were fully formed between the different element of this team. Using his well known skills as a micro-manager he made this team work in the best way they could and time and again they accomplished great things.
This year Rafa finally has the squad that he can call his own, and as such his hands are no longer tied when setting out his ideas and strategies. This means that the potential of this side is much greater than that which we had last year, but everyone is having to re-learn their roles and develop newly emerging relationships. A new shape is slowly emerging with two wide men across the middle and with two up front. Pace is being injected for the first time and learning how to use this seems to be a major issue at the moment.
We are regularly hearing at the moment how Gerrard is being asked learn to time his runs better, and this again is a symptom of the current problems. Last year -more often than not- our captain was asked to do most of the creative work from the middle, as well as the work of both strikers in order to achieve anything. This year once everything is working as it should, we should start getting much more drive and ‘options’ from the wings, allowing Steven to be given more space and be even more deadly. Similarly when played on the right Gerrard should be able to continue to have the success of last year, but this should be further enhanced by the new double threat of Kuyt and Gonzales.
A further issue that is holding back team performance is the current from of Xabi Alonso. I’ve not seen him have a really good game all season (barring Villa at home). Gonzales and Pennant are desperate to settle and impress and the one thing that could really help them right now would be Xabi at the top of his game. He’s always been able to make players look good by spotting runs almost before they happen and sending 40 year inch-perfect passes and a couple of these could really give the young lads some much needed confidence.
In Rafas first year in charge it took until at least February for the players to start to understand his way of thinking, and for new ideas to bed in (such as Zonal-Marking). Although we had our greatest success in recent times that year and won the champions league, consistent league performance proved evasive. The lessons learned however lead to the team looking much stronger last year and resulted in a much more consistent performance throughout the year.
I suspect the same is going to happen again this year. It is all to easy to put the blame at the feet of individual players (the booing of Pennant last night was a disgrace) but the simple truth is that we are –yet again- still a team in development. The elements to start a challenge for the top honours are now there, they just need to be time to develop.
Bring on 2007/08!
YNWA
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.reallifenews.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/698
