Most of my notes are from the first half - I felt the second half was a little disrupted and sloppy. We were up 1-0 for the first part of the second half and up a man and I think we played very cautiously and sat back so our performance wasn't quite as good as in the first half.
I gotta say, I think Brendan Rogers is a really good manager and Liverpool are very fortunate to have him. He's shown that he can learn and adapt, his teams have a nice style and his man management seems decent.
1) LVG's style?
This isn't really a critique, more just pointing out that a period of play that I felt is pretty much the representation of LVG's style (or at least what he's shown at United so far).Starting at 9:26, we have possession of the ball on the left (I think it's Phil Jones).
Now it's 9:52, 26 seconds after we initially gain possession and after a series of passes, the ball just goes back to Phil Jones on the left again. We basically kept cycling the back along our back line while Liverpool players pressed our players.
Now it's 10:14 and the ball finally makes it to Herrera in the midfield, advancing into Liverpool's half. That's a full 48 seconds of passing it back and forth between our defenders (not entirely true as some of our midfield players did participate in the play but they played back passes straight back to our defenders)
In the previous picture (above), you see Herrera is being pressed quite aggressively and he ends up passing it back. At 10:40 (below), 26 seconds after Herrera has the ball above, Phil Jones now has the ball and he's basically at the same location Herrera was. The difference is, with all of our passing, we've managed to shift our defenders and deeper players forward - hence Jones has the ball and Blind is to his left and Carrick to his right.
Basically, we spent close to 30 second and probably around 10-15 passes to keep possession while moving our attacking players forward step by step (or pass by pass).
End result, Herrera gets the ball and he chips a short cross to Fellaini who heads it across goal for Mata to run onto. Nothing happened but it was a good chance.
I counted the number of passes it took during this entire sequence - 32. 32 passes to cross the ball to Fellaini for him to get a head on it.
Again, I'm not criticizing this as I think it's actually a very good tactic especially in the early stages of the game. It allows our players to get on the ball, it keeps us relatively safe, and it forces the opposition to chase after our passes, tiring them out. Our players handled Liverpool's aggressive pressing here perfectly. If we were losing and it's the 80th minute, it would probably only take about 2 passes to get the ball to Fellaini's head and thus the same result.
2) Blind ignoring the midfielder as a left back
This is definitely something LVG needs to go over with Blind if Blind is going to play (or deputize) there. I'm sure you remember how Blind completely destroyed Emre Can today but with all the time and space he created after destroying him, Blind should have done much better.He chose to cross the ball (I think aiming at Fellaini) but it hit the first Liverpool player and didn't get to him). He could have easily just dragged it back to Herrera (circled in red) who is completely open while the other three United players in the box are well marked.
The exact same thing happened last week, I mentioned it in this post, point number 1.
This is something that's easily practiced in training - add the drag back to midfield as part of the crossing that's practiced during crossing drills.
3) More Valencia mistakes
Example 1:Liverpool just got possession of the ball and they're dribbling down our left. Valencia is just completely out of position here. The Liverpool player he's "marking" is Sturridge and although Valencia is fast, he can't be giving a pacy player like Sturridge this kind of start on him if a cross comes in. He should be in the blue circled area.
The Liverpool player does cross it and Sturridge beats him to it by a mile. Also, I'm not sure why Valencia is so central and didn't at least try to get closer to Sturridge. If he was in the blue circled area and he ran at the exact same speed, he would be exactly where the ball is right now.
Valencia here is defending against Coutinho in our right corner area. Notice how close he is to Coutinho. What you also don't see here is that Valencia sprinted into this position and depending on the referee, Coutinho probably could have just fell down and gotten a foul called as there was a slight shove from Valencia.
End result, Coutinho almost get's past Valencia. He does a back flick and tries to spin past Valencia but is unable to. However, the ball does go behind Valencia and as a defender, you never want the other player to get the ball behind you in a dangerous area.
Fortunately for me, 30 seconds earlier, Carrick was in the exact same position defending against Lallana and he shows a much better way to defend there. He stands just slightly farther away from Lallana which gives him time to react if Lallana tries any tricks or tries to spin past him. It also ensures that a Lallana can't go down to the slightest touch since it's obvious Carrick isn't close enough to shove him over.
4) Why is Falcao so far back?
I'm not sure who's at fault here but I suspect it's more Di Maria's fault than Falcao. I think that Di Maria got lazy and stayed forward and Falcao ran back to the receive the ball and fill the space that Di Maria was supposed to be in. They shouldn't be in the position that the picture below shows - it should be the opposite with Falcao up and Di Maria receiving the ball deep on the left. I also don't think LVG intended for this to happen as well.
Conclusion
Let's keep winning and nab second place from Man City. Thanks for reading!
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