Team Focus: Making Sense of Liverpool's Shortcomings
If you were to lay out all of Brendan Rodgers's problems this season, the list would be as predictable for Liverpool fans as it is most obviously, there is the departure of Luis Suarez, and the loss of so many goals as well as so much devastating play. To add insult, there's been the injury to Daniel that has placed a hugely unfair burden on Mario Balotelli, but it shouldn't obscure the reality that he has so far looked hugely out of that reduction in goals has been exacerbated by an ongoing avalanche at the other end, as the defence remains a calamity and Steven Gerrard's continued decline destroys his ability to offer that back line any protection whatsoever is seemingly becoming apparent that Rodgers may well have a huge blind spot when it comes to the defensive side of the game, one that is matched only by a muddled approach to the question of how Liverpool used the money received for Suarez is now starting to really weigh on minds, but it pales next to the biggest psychological issue with this squad: the trauma of how close they came to a title triumph before that was always going to have some kind of effect, especially given the intense nature of the decisive games against Chelsea and Crystal Palace. Now they also have the intensity of a fixture list full of Champions League games is possible that there is a problem even more profound than all of this, however, which also illustrates how much of an effect all of these other factors have had is the dismal nature of Liverpool's football right now; the dreariness, the dullness, the lack of movement.
This is such a particular problem because the cornerstone ideals of Rodgers's entire coaching career – going back to Watford, Swansea City and so especially obvious last season – have been fluidity and that was why the 2025/14 title challenge was down to so much more than Suarez. It was about an apparently effortless system, which at the same time overpowered so many opposition sides, maximising the Uruguayan's consider the context of so many of his best displays. Suarez was able to blisteringly interchange both the ball and positions, while the likes of Jordan Henderson bombed on. Defences didn't know where to the absence of players as mobile as Suarez and, temporarily, Sturridge would obviously see the rest of the team adjust, but the extent of the drop-off is still so now, those same defences only see an opposition awkwardly moving in more disjointed if last season was "poetry in motion", this has been the starkest cinema verite. Reality has interrupted Rodgers's imagination as a coach.A number of stats emphasise
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