The CouchExpert

 Mayank Gupta

Football Analyst – The Couch Expert

August 16 2011

Recent reviews and rants of the RED fans on public forum, media critics slandering Carroll and questions being raised on every newspaper in the British media should hardly worry RED fans. Agreed, we dropped two points, however, one must remember this team never played together as a unit. Thus, they could not play at each other’s pace and were unaware of each other’s movements.

On the contrary, the first 40 minutes of the game showed a true glimpse of the team the King has at his disposal. The movements were slick, the passing was good and the pace of the players was fast. It was only towards the last 5 minutes in the half when the pace dropped and sloppiness crept into the team which flowed through the team collectively resulting in bad passing.

In defense of the team’s second half performance, Enrique only completed his tranfer on Friday and played on Saturday. Can anyone imagine the stress of such a transfer and still his statistics of the game show that he won every challenge in the air and in tackles. It is only time when his understanding with Downing develops and they can be the best left flank players in the league as both have pace and youth on their side.

In regards to Downing, one must remember the number of positions he played. He was deployed all over the midfield by KD during the game and he was absolutely comfortable everywhere. His run for almost 2/3 lengths of the pitch was only deprived of its praise by the cross bar. Carroll and Suarez got more deliveries to them in one game than for many games combined together last season.

Carroll and Suarez seemed so natural playing off each other. Those deft touches by Suarez and running around in circles with Carroll laying the ball in his path is just the sign of an incipient partnership that could wreak havoc in the future once both are upto match fitness. Suarez was only back on Monday and Carroll still is lacking his pace. Carroll and Suarez are team players who like to play for each other. This is the ‘mantra’  always for a successful partnership of two forwards. Other teams have many world class forwards but do they have the attitude to see an assist against their name rather than a goal?

For the first quarter hour of the game everything was normal, Carroll no.9 and Suarez no. 10 but somehow, things changed so smoothly and Carroll was playing pretty deep to allow Suarez to surge forward and play no. 9 leaving the defenders surprised. Especially, Richardson who was marking Carroll so deep in their own half without the knowledge of Suarez lying behind him. It is these small movements and understanding between the two in their very first game which shows sign of a great season ahead. With balls being sprayed from the midfield like cannons, it is no time before both will be shooting goals for fun.

The conundrum of Liverpool midfield remains a puzzle but with fewer questions to be answered. As I posted in my previous post, Adam cannot be employed in a defensive midfield role as he is slow. This is evident with the no. of tackles he missed and was booked for one such tackle. This limited the already constrained advances of Lucas allowing the Sunderland midfiled to trap LFC in their own half by sitting right on the toes of Adam and Lucas. This cramped the passing and movement of the ball limiting the supply to the forwards in the second half. Lucas was restricted to float around and mark their playmaker by their DM cattermole who is a champion of such markings.

Added to this was the lacklustre performance of Henderson whose movement at the flank became restricted due to Flannagan’s inexperience. Henderson was cautious in going forward as Flannagan was leaving his marker alone time and again. It was a wise decision by Henderson but however, he could not avoid the doom even with such caution. This should not be such a worry once Glen Johnson is back who we will watch overlapping Henderson for fun and pleasure.

To summarize the performance, it was a game of two halves but not due to inadequacy in Liverpool squad and majorly due to lack of fitness. As the season progresses, training sessions will be more, passing will be crisp and fitness will be sublime to take us to where we are. With Stevie back in September, it would be nice to see him play in the midfield as he can muster the courage to go forward with one of those marauding runs and change the game in a whisker.

As a RED, we should be proud of the performance in the first game. We will dazzle and challenge even the best of the best in the future.