KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum What would you change if you were LFC manager_

Fully agree and could have written that almost word for word myself Thundyr, and have written bits of it on other threads. I would add one thing to your post though, (at the risk of repeating myself too often) and that is that we need to push up more when we have the ball, we are not supporting our strikers, as a result they are harried and hustled into snatching their shots. If we get more players in and around the box and the goals will come.

Thanks, Annefield.

I agree about pushing up when we have the ball. I often find myself wondering just where everyone is when we break. Carroll is no race hound, to be sure, but the same cannot be said for the rest of our front line. Last season when we thrashed Birmingham (I think anyway, or maybe it was the Man City game at Anfield) we had 8 players in the opposing half when each goal was scored. 8! These days we sometimes struggle to have 3. If we're going to use Carroll as a target man then he needs people running up in support, and by that I mean "not just Suarez". A lot is made of the "failing Carroll-Suarez partnership" and not enough about the failed partnership between that pair and the other 9 players on the pitch.

For LFC it's clear that Suarez is our playmaker, the one who will be entrusted with beating everyone, creating all the play, and scoring the crunch goals as well, the new Steven Gerrard. He doesn't play that role for his national side, however, where he's more a poacher with a turn of pace who can beat a man. I dare say playing for Uruguay is far less demanding of him, and therefore he's able to score more freely. The problem with having Suarez as the playmaker is that it undermines the role "target man" Carroll has to play. The playmaker still needs to be a midfielder, in my opinion, and while they've not disgraced themselves, none of Adam, Downing and Henderson have become that player, and Lucas, Kuyt, and Spearing never will.

My point there is that everyone in the Liverpool team seems to hang back expecting something miraculous from Suarez, rather than helping the miraculous happen, where it's just the opposite for Uruguay. We could learn something from that.

Look how good Downing was on the left for England - hope KK was watching.

I'd rather see us playing 3-5-2 frankly, especially at Anfield. With Kelly/Coates-Carra-Agger as the back 3, Johnson could exploit his attacking bent, and Carroll and Suarez would surely have a better supply line.

What I don't understand, Annefield, is how the media keeps bringing up our "pass and move" style, when in fact our play is very much more like "hit and hope". To me pass-and-move implies several players working together to advance the ball toward the goal, yet very little of our play actually does that. Pass-and-move isn't working because we neither pass nor move. We have a lot of long, diagonal balls to Suarez, a lot of hoofing to Carroll, and not a little of Carroll receiving the ball on the halfway line in order to "hold up play" because no one is near him and only Saurez is in an attacking position. I've also never been convinced by Downing on the right - he and Enrique link up well on the left, so why does he start on the opposite side so often?

Perhaps you're correct in the assessment that we are lying deeper because Skrtel is hopeless and Lucas can't hold back any attack for a whole game by himself. We don't have a "double pivot" in central midfield - we have two DMs! Dalglish has done a lot of stuff, but we've basically ended up back with Rafa's "defensive" 4-2-3-1 of a few seasons ago, except that the largely immobile Carroll is in the hole and we're not using that terrible zonal marking system that allowed us to keep a clean sheet every other game or so for 6 seasons...

If Dalglish is trying to have us play using Fergie's "bands of 2" system, then he needs to remember that the Man U system relied on at least one excellent midfielder and one extraordinary winger, and LFC doesn't have any players that fit either description on the healthy list. Cos if he's not, then we're just trying to emulate Allardyce or Pulis, just with shorter, more expensive players. Why would we do that? I'd rather see us playing 3-5-2 frankly, especially at Anfield. With Kelly/Coates-Carra-Agger as the back 3, Johnson could exploit his attacking bent, and Carroll and Suarez would surely have a better supply line.

I would drop Downing & give Bellamy more game time on the left, I would also give Maxi some games, he finished last season on a high, scores in pre-season but is the forgotten man at the moment.