Brendan Rodgers Expected Too Much of Dejan Lovren

Dejan Lovren is having a very difficult first season at Anfield, with many fans heavily criticizing his performances. But manager Brendan Rodgers has to take his share of the blame for the team’s poor defensive form.

When the Croatian signed for Liverpool this summer in a £20 million move from Southampton—the largest sum the Reds ever paid for a defender—Rodgers was very clear about his expectations from him.

“I think he’s a really commanding centre-half,” the gaffer told the official club website, via The Guardian. “I’ve said since we lost Jamie Carragher that we needed that leadership. He’s a player that gives us that.”

Only Lovren never was that kind of player. Rodgers misjudged him.

At Southampton, he was solid in the air, intelligent with his tackles and produced a lot of interceptions. He played the ball well from the back and brought it forward with confidence. He looked comfortable playing in a high line, the key feature of Mauricio Pochettino’s approach, and finished the season topping the Premier League in offsides won.

But now Lovren looks almost like a different player altogether.

Alex Livesey/Getty Images

His passing has been highly erratic, he gets beaten in the air far too often and, above all, his positioning leaves a lot to be desired. His key stats of 1.4 offsides won per game has now dropped to mere 0.2. However, it’s not fair to blame the player solely for it.

In all honesty, defensive woes have been a constant for Liverpool in the Rodgers era. Even last season, when the manager really worked wonders with the team, their play often looked chaotic. Luis Suarez, the Lord of Chaos, thrived in those circumstances, playing and scoring as if possessed by demons, but it was the shambolic back line that arguably cost them the title.

Rodgers tried to deal with it by bringing in Lovren, but he hugely overestimated the impact his big-money signing could have on the team. Without him changing much in Liverpool’s defensive organisation, the Croatian just blended in and made the problem even worse. It’s fair to say that Lovren seemingly buying into his own hype after a dream move to Anfield hasn’t helped, either.

Also, whereas at Southampton, who led the league in ball possession, he had a formidable shield from the midfield in Morgan Schneiderlin and Victor Wanyama, the Reds just don’t have that—neither in Steven Gerrard nor in anyone else, really. For all their attacking potential, diminished greatly by the Suarez departure, they’re still very vulnerable through the midfield, and the addition of one defender can’t do much to help that.

Especially if he’s not the commanding type he was made out to be.

It may be useful to take a closer look at Lovren’s status in his homeland, where the general public has always remained suspicious about his abilities and more than a few eyebrows were raised when Liverpool paid £20 million for his services.

Jon Super/Associated Press

Although he did play in all three Croatia matches at the World Cup and did fairly OK, Lovren has never been considered a sure starter for the national team. These days he’s the third centre-back in the pecking order, behind Lokomotiv Moscow’s Vedran Corluka and Dynamo Kiev’s Domagoj Vida—and these are hardly world-class players. Sure, Lovren is a nice and intelligent guy, but a leader he is not; he proved erratic far too often and his reliability has repeatedly been questioned.

Whilst at Lyon, he managed to set a negative record by being named Ligue 1’s worst player of the week three times in the 2012-13 season by L’Equipe, the prime daily sports newspaper in France, and was subsequently ostracized from the team. They must have been ecstatic to have offloaded him to Southampton for €10 million, but last season shows the Saints knew exactly what and why they were buying, because Lovren was immense for them in his debut Premier League season.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that the same cannot be said for Liverpool. They just bought one of the league’s hot players and expected him to solve their defensive problems, while it seems that those lie in the system itself.

Maybe Lovren can still raise his game and justify his hefty price tag. But can he really do that without Rodgers acknowledging he might have misjudged him and finally committing to a more thorough overhaul of the Liverpool’s defensive play?

Stats courtesy of WhoScored.com.

Follow @AlexHoliga