KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum I'm furious, the balance is pathetic

On the 1st of June 2012 Brendan Rodgers was signed as the new Liverpool manager, following the departure of the Kop hero, Kenny Dalglish. At the time, everyone had their opinion. Some being for the appointment, others not so much. Regardless, Brendan was in charge of Liverpool FC.
One of his first movements as the manager was to determine what to do with the English striker Andy Carroll, whom was purchased by Dalglish for 35 million pounds in the same January window that Fernando Torres left for Chelsea.
Immediately, Rodgers came into the club and decided that Andy Carroll was not the right type of striker for Liverpool and he later brought in Daniel Sturridge, a very quick striker, to partner Luis Suarez.
This partnership brought extremely impressive results, including seeing Liverpool finish 2nd in the league for the first time since the 2008/09 season under Rafael Benitez. Daniel and Luis clicked almost instantly and one or both were scoring and winning games for Liverpool almost every week. Raheem Sterling, Phillipe Countinho, Jordan Henderson and Steven Gerrard all got a lot of joy working with Luis and Daniel as they would happily chase onto balls in behind and work extremely hard to win 50-50 balls that Andy Carroll may not have been able to.
As the 2013/14 season came to a close the rumours started floating around that then top goal scorer and PFA player of the year was being looked at by Real Madrid and Barcelona (arguably the two biggest clubs in the world) and they were looking to sign him before the 2014/15 season got underway. Eventually, Luis ended up going to Barcelona and Liverpool lost part of a strike partnership that proved to be so effective for them. They needed to replace him with another striker. They needed now to find someone else to get in behind and chase those 50-50 balls to get the best out of our most creative players.
Rodgers turned to Ricky Lambert, a boyhood Liverpool fan who had recently been playing very well for Southampton, but Ricky was not a quick player, he was not going to be able to win those nothing balls and he was not going to be able to break lines and get in behind. Ricky was much like Andy Carroll, lethal in the air but not really suited to Liverpool's strengths so surely this wasn't the Suarez replacement, surely this was a squad player. As it turned out, Lambert was brought in to be a squad player as Liverpool signed another striker in that window in Mario Balotelli, but again Balotelli wasn't suited to Liverpool's strengths and had never played the way that would improve Liverpool immediately and this showed quickly. Both Lambert and Balotelli proved to be poor appointments and were quickly shipped out at seasons end.
On comes the 2015/16 season and the transfer window is open again. Surely now Liverpool will get the striker that suits their game and will improve them, especially since Daniel is having a horrid time with injuries. Raheem has left and a lot of pressure is being put on Coutinho, surely Liverpool will sign a player to get the best out of him?
Along comes Christian Benteke, the 6'4 Belgian striker from Aston Villa. Is Benteke quick? No. Is he able to break lines and get in behind? No. Is he going to chase down every loose ball and work hard for the club? No. Why did Rodgers buy him if Andy Carroll wasn't right for the club?

Today's performance from Benteke was absolutely tragic. One on one and he turns into the defender. He didn't use his body when on the ball and continuously lost possession and West Ham's 2nd goal came from him not coming to the ball from a simple pass. Absolutely pathetic performance by many of our players but Christian Benteke was the worst by far. If Rodgers wanted Benteke then he should have built a team to get the best of his game. I really feel for Klopp.

I'm interested in that too, why buy a player who will take years to adapt your style of football to, and even when he has and you've changed the system, and you've built the team around him, you aren't going to be close to winning the CL in 3 years?

I still will shout from the rooftops he can be used alongside Sturridge in a 442 diamond though.

For me it feels like Benteke got demoralized when the 1st goal went in.

I think rodgers bought him as a quick fix to try and get liverpool scoring after failing to get the numbers in the previous season. He also bought him because he was afraid of losing, and admired benteke's ability for what is considered a harder job scoring for a low level team, than a top team (which IMO is the other way around, but I do still respect the over-rated quality of some players who can do that). Like many of the ex-pros, such as Henry, they believed attacking players behind Benteke would be a very profitable, as it was partially for villa with delph. But it's a total mis-read, it's not easy.

It was a gamble to start a more attacking Ibe over lallana, but Ibe's passing pleased me today, the way he gets the ball infield opens a lot of options, moreno had a lot of joy from the space on the overlap he was getting.

West ham are one of the best sides in the league at dealing with crosses, and with more numbers back due to the fact they were leading, it was always going to be an almost impossible ask to get benteke be the receiver of a decent ball in.

Torres,

Concern I have with Benteke is that he appears one of those strikers who has a very poor conversion rate. He's a bit Walcott for me. Yesterday V The Hammers his first touch was shocking.

Say we manage to get Sturridge back for a run of games and we play him as you say with Benteke (which looks the best option) even if Sturridge pulls players away (similar to roles when he played with Suarez) will Benteke manage to convert the chances we get in games when you may only get a couple and they need sticking away?

For me Balotelli in that situation is that clinical finisher, Beneteke I just don't think has it but hopefully I'm wrong.

Your thoughts?

I saw Benteke as lazy as Balotelli yesterday, he didn't look fit or was tired, I don't know. The whole team did look jaded. Why were were the first team to play by the way, we were the last to play in the previous round. How do they decide to set those games?

I actually thought the Balotelli and Sturridge partnership could have worked.
As for Benteke, Carroll actually looked the better player yesterday.

Remember what Bob Paisley, then in charge of our legendary boot room, once said of football? "It's a simple game... don't need to complicate it too much with tactics and all that."

Nowadays the industry is of course more competitive, solely due to the increased money available, but all this talk of inverted Christmas tree formations, diamonds, 4-3-2-1 does sound ridiculous if one takes a step back for a minute. For pitys sake we are talking about a maximum of eleven men running around a pitch of no more than 130 yards long and 100 yards wide.

You could generate a million permutations of tactics with a Sinclair Spectrum +2 back in the day but all of them are instantly redundant once bestowed upon a bunch of gutless, passionless players. And we have lots of those, probably more than any other club in the world.

Good question and one I asked myself too?

The last round it was the other way around. We had nearly 4 days to prepare, wheras for instance Arsenal had less than 48 hours.

The whole Christmas period is stupid in PL. All other leagues have a break when we up the tempo, and at the same time bring Capital One Cup semis plus FA Cup into the scheme. Brainless from the FA really!

Agree. I know I'm in a minority but I hat Christmas football. It's time there was a break for me but it'll never happen as its a massive money spinner.

Exactly. And that also means England will find it hard to get any results in the Euros and/or World Cup too.

Players deadly beat by a mad season with not one but two domestic cups plus no break in the middle.

Sure the players can deal with it, but not compared to other countries!