Dalglish put out the team most people would have gone for and if he had started with 2 up front and we had lost everyone would have said that going 4-4-2 in this day and age is madness. As for those 2 teams suggested, both would have needed Gerrard to play as a holding midfielder and we all know that wouldn't work and the 2nd formation is fantasy football. Its tactical ineptness at any level,
Time and again Dalglish has stuck with 4-5-1 and this year it has been largely unsuccessful outside the win against Norwich. the difference between the Norwich game and the FA Cup final was that Gerrard reverted to playing DM against a highly unadventurous Chelsea side low on gas after all their games. The result? I think Suarez touched the ball fewer than 5 times in the first half. A formation is just that - a formation. How you use those players is called tactics.
I can understand the desire to keep the same team that beat Norwich because we dominated the game, but the decision to pull Gerrard back was stupidity. How many games have we won using 4-5-1 when he played but did not do so as a number 10? Not very many, bordering on zero, in fact. So once again we pick poor tactics for a critical game, and ended up losing, disallowed goal or not.
I'm really getting tired of saying it: Andy Carroll has been our best player since the turn of the year, bar none. The Carroll I saw for half an hour in the final was the Carroll I saw playing for Newcastle, and in half an hour did more than any other player in our starting XI did for the entire match. I was also notable that the disallowed goal would have been a Suarez assist - they CAN play together.
So why bench Carroll and instead play 4-3-2-1? It's like we're just not learning where our strengths are. Gerrard is an attacking midfielder - play him there or don't play him at all. Carroll and Suarez must both start. Is that really too hard to understand?
The other thing I can't figure is why Enrique and Downing (when played on the left) have no problems getting forward, but Bellamy and Johnson cannot or do not. So when Downing plays on the right we get no end product from either flank, because Enrique can't cross, and Downing can't get forward. Another simple lesson through observation that we simply ignore.
There are more such things, but it's increasingly clear that the brains trust is understocked.
