Why Roy Hodgson Has Not Been Able To Create Wonders at Liverpool ?
When Liverpool FC decided to give the managerial hot-seat to Roy Hodgson, it was met with mixed response from the media and the pundits. However, the idea that had a greater consensus was that the club needed stability more than anything else.
Amongst a lot of people who supported the idea of the Englishman for the managerial post of one of the biggest club in England was also a cluster of players from his former club, Fulham.Leading the pack was Simon Davies, the player who was also extremely influential in Manchester United's debacle at Craven Cottage even a few weeks back.
When asked about what they felt about Roy Hodgson's term at Craven cottage, Davies had said, Roy Hodgson's tactics were very monotonous, however, what he stressed upon after that was very critical. He said that under Roy Hodgson every player knew what their role was. Every body in the team knew what they were able to do and what they were expected to and thus the cohesiveness.
What the Liverpool fans must remember is that , even Roy Hodgson has stressed upon the point that he is getting to know the team better and is also experimenting with players for that very reason.
Under such circumstances it would be extremely unfair to ask Mr. Roy to deliver consistent performances right away.
Here in the following slides I have considered these and a few other points as to why Liverpool has been far from a success-story just yet in the premier league.
Joe Cole And Experiments
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Before I explain this point let me slightly digress.
Although most people who haven't followed Liverpool throughout all the games minutely wouldn't get it, but Joe Cole has been a pretty influential in Liverpool's play until now.
True, he hasn't been spectacular and some of his finishing skills have been found wanting at times but in terms of work-rate and support play Joe Cole has been the best player for the club in the Europa fixtures. It may be easy to dismiss the matches against weaker oppositions in those matches but even then it is games like those which serves as warm-ups to bigger games and so-far Liverpool has been quite good there. if stats are anyhing to go by, Liverpool has managed more goals thus far than their top four rival Manchester City in the Europa.
Now the reason why I have mentioned the above is because, Liverpool has been able to play Joe Cole only in one and half of the five Premier League matches and certainly missed the creative part of play which is so required to break open the better defences.
Roy Hodgson's eperimentation also didn't aid the cause. In what could be termed as Joe's best performance for the club so far, which incidentally was against Steau Bucharesti , Joe looked very good in just-behind the striker role and even scored.
Following that performance, he was slammed into the left-wing position against Manchester United. Now, everybody knows that Steau is no benchmark and Manchester United are far stronger opposition anyday, however,the lurking question is , Was it still correct to disturb the rhythm of the Joe only for Raul Meirles to fill the slot there, and that too in his first start for the club?
Before the match Hodgson did say, Meirles was a much more attacking player than Lucas, but then has been a second striker ever ?
What that change meant was that, hardly after the game began, Joe Cole was trying to be everywhere, from falling back to defend ..to going up through the centre, which was clearly his strength but not what Hodgson had asked of him. Thus the left flank was over-exposed and the world found out (as if for the first time !) that Nani could be too pacy for Konchesky at times.
The other experimentation was with the wing-play. As a commentator pointed out during the course of the match, that as with Rafa's regime , Hodgson has again over-emphasised on attacking through the centre and almost forgetting wing-play as a part of the strategy.
Clearly with, Maxi Rodriguez left alone in the wings against United, any reasonable wing-play was too much to ask anyway.
Extremely Tough Starting Fixtures
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What Liverpool would have ideally wanted after this massive changeover at Anfield was an easy start to the campaign where they could ease into the premier league.
What they really got was far from it . Whereas other strong clubs like defending Champion Chelsea are yet to face a team which can bet a top 10 finish, Liverpool had to face Arsenal,Manchester City and Manchester United away from home and also Birmingham City at St. Andrews . As for the stats the Brums are unbeaten at their home for 16 games prior to the Liverpool fixture tells that they far from an average club at home.
As is evident from the picture alongside, the reason for that is pretty evident. Mcleish's team managed to get most of the team in their defence whenever the opposition had the ball anywhere near their box. A pretty effective and tireless effort to cut off goals.
It is true, however that Liverpool did start off in a promising manner and were expected to do better with all their stars playing, however incidents like the Mascherano brawl before the Manchester City match up did little to aid the cause.
Player's Form, Experimental Line Ups and Formations and Strategies
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It is a well established fact that unless the players in the team, especially the senior and more talented ones start delivering, results can easily go astray. At this moment that is exactly what Liverpool are going through. None of Liverpool FC's players have been in good form and on a consistent basis in the matches played thus far.
Steven Gerrard was good against Manchester United, Pepe Reina was awesome against Birmingham City, Torres had a moments brilliance now and then, notably when he scored his only goal so far in this campaign against West Bromwich and thats about all .
Whereas in teams that are heading the tables, at least one player has been in pretty sublime form e.g. Drogba and Malouda for Chelsea, Berbatov for Manchester United and a host of players for Arsenal.
The other point that must be mentioned in this aspect is the lack of goals and even scoring opportunities could be the experimentation policy used by Hodgson. In all fairness to him, the league is still in its early stages and he as a new manager has the right to juggle the team around see which way works better. However as of now he has not been able to put the pieces together it must be said.
Other than the problems relating the wing-play which I had mentioned earlier, the team has also had other glaring problems.
There has been a notable effort to just play the long balls upfront to Torres , a ploy which is yet to bear fruit. What this long ball ploy has done is almost killing up the proper link-up play which could be more effective now that Torres is yet to attain full match-fitness. Moreover, the oppositions have marked him well and he has struggled to beat them for pace or in the air.
There has also been the experimentation with formations and men used in those formations. A 4-4-2 approach as well as a 4-2-3-1 approach has been followed by Hodgson at times with defensive mind-set. With the arrival of Meirles, it is expected that the fans would not have to see the Lucas-Poulsen pair holding up the mid-field as it gets too one-dimensional with both of them being used simultaneously.
Another shift in strategy has also been the defensive plans. Liverpool now seem to go for more of man against man, for set-pieces unlike strictly using the strategy of zonal marking and Martin Skrtel has been very lucky so far in not conceding more than one penalties in his grappling approach during corners and free-kicks.
Also following Arsenal's strategy to use Wilshere on a more regular basis, Hodgson could have tried the same with Pacheco for Liverpool. However, he has used the spaniard sparingly even in the Europas and gone for Kelly and Jay Spearing, although the later looks highly unlikely to make the cut to the senior eleven anytime soon.
Undue Focus Off The Pitch
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A potent point was made by Steve McMahon (ex-Liverpool and England player) in the build-up to the big match of Liverpool vs Manchester United . He pointed out that almost all the key players (the latest being Pepe Reina) are pointing to the fact that Liverpool FC need a change in ownership and the likes.
Whilst its obvious that the club needs massive changes on the ownership fronts to move forward, what such responses from the players say is that they are unduly bothered by the overall saga, which should not be the case now that the transfer window has closed and the squad cannot be further strengthened by major additions. Moreover McMahon said that, it is no cause of worry for the players as they must do their job in the first place to better the team's performance and it is not yet the case that their wages have been defaulted , so they must bother more about the on-the-pitch occurrences.
As is clearly visible, some of the players are already off the pace and any more dilution of focus could only do more harm than good.
Whatever be the case Liverpool FC need the ownership issue settled and fast to avoid that permanently. That said, Liverpool are now about to enter a phase where they play comparatively weaker opponents as opposed to most of their journey so far and they need to win and on the trot, so the players have to behave more responsibly and aid the manager in building the cohesive unit that he wants.
Still Early Days...
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Enough said, its still early days Mr. Hodgson and he would remember from the past, the comeback stories right from his days at Malmö Fotbollsförening to Fulham .
He will now need to put together all his experience and pull out Liverpool FC from where they are. Few if any Premier League manager today has managed as many comebacks as Hodgson with different clubs (only Wenger comes to mind.)
However, time, patience and hardwork have always been the key components to success for Roy Hodgson and he hasn't really been a quick fix or instant solution anywhere, so with a club like Liverpool now, we need to give him time to hit back and what better than analysing Liverpool's status after the upcoming 5 games which really has only one really tough fixture (Everton(Away)).
Hopefully, the squad will respond to the need of the club and the management will do something to see off the off-field as quick as they can, because only then would we be correct to evaluate Hodgson's influence on the Liverpool football club in the coming days.
