Well I'm old enough (and old-fashioned enough?) to believe that your midfielders score goals. McDermott, Souness, Whelan, McMahon, Houghton.... How many PL goals have Adam, Downing and Henderson scored this season?
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Well I'm old enough (and old-fashioned enough?) to believe that your midfielders score goals. McDermott, Souness, Whelan, McMahon, Houghton.... How many PL goals have Adam, Downing and Henderson scored this season?
I get you, but to say Carroll hasnt played much is a bit of a smokescreen, he has made over 32 appearences, with 6 goals, at a ratio of 1 in 6. With strikers like that, no wonder we are where we are. Suarez would have expected to score more, but as someone said earlier he is our most creative player and is looking more and more dangerous as the games go on.Bellamy, for whatever reason is not being played frequently. I dont buy the knee issue, even with that you would expect him to play every weekend. Kuyt, well he isnt being played up front, so id put him with the midfield batch.Originally Posted by Luxo
Yaes goalscoring midfielders are hugely important, but their importance is overshadowed by the importance of your strikers getting your goals. That is after all what they are paid for.
I think it's fair to ask how many goals the Carroll, Downing and Henderson have got between them. A lot of money for so few goals.
Our full backs used to score goals for fun. Lawler, Neal, Nicol, Lindsay, Kennedy, Jones.
Lets not even get started on the wingers... Can anyone remember the last time we had a half-decent cross?
Off the top of my head, Kuyt, Carroll, Bellamy and Suarez have scored 19 League goals between them. Van Persie has 26.
OUCH!!!!!
Dont berate the midfields goalscroing prowess when the strikers are impotent!
Depends, how you judge a cross? Id say yesterdays cross by Gerrards cross for Suarezs goal was ok. My memory tells me it was level with the 18 yard box or thereabouts, but outside..from the wing. Im not trying to be clever, just trying to remember!
That was a rare clear cut chance, how many of those have we seen recently? All these chances people say we create are in actuality half chances.
It is well established, and has been for sometime, that our defence is better with Agger in it. It's also well established that he can't stay fit for a full season. So yes we do have an issue there.
As things stand the back 4 is the least of our problems, but there is a concern there. Johnson seems to have gotten a little injury prone lately too and is also a big miss with him being one of the few players we have who can attack with real drive and purpose.
We've only won ONE LEAGUE GAME when Stevie has started and that was the Derby.
Let me repeat that, we've won ONE LEAGUE GAME when Stevie has started.
Here is our form when Stevie has started DDDLDLWLL
This is very worrying, does Kenny not know where and how to employ Stevie?
Is Stevie no longer the player he was?
Is it the fact the he is missing a good partner in lucas?
I have no idea what is going wrong but those stats are truely worrying, as worrying as our league form.
Yeah, I agree with you Woody. We can wait for the epitaphs at the end of the season as we still have a FA Cup to win, but surely the biggest mistake we made was selling Meireles. Yes, I hear and know all the arguements that he has done nothing for Chelsea etc but he was doing stuff for us. He worked well with Suarez and he scored goals. Not Downing. Adam, Henderson or Spearing have scored goals this season - simple as that.
Just to the title: we just ******* overhauled our midfield. This is what annoys me.
Annoys me too. Not to say we didn't buy half decent players - Downing and Adam were brilliant last season and it was a fair call to buy them. They are just not gelling together for this club for some reason. I wish I knew the answer and then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The answer is getting the best out of Stevie.
Like I've been saying for a while... Sell Adam, and buy a new quality CM and DM, for proper competition for Lucas and Gerrard
And we've got young Shelvy in the mix too
I agree midfield is a problem, no the only one though, i think either Henderson or Adam need to go and bring a playmaker that can play alongside Lucas.
Its hard to put the finger on the exact problem, something has been wrong all season, we don't seem to flood the box looking for goals, we don't seem to have a 'Center' forward who stays in and around the box waiting for things to drop, service from the right has been very poor for most of the season, downing has started to show some potential since january.
spearing is soo limited in ability that it is really hindering us, the amount of poor decisions the lad makes is shocking, Henderson is a passenger, JJ Shelvey showed in 10 minutes yesterday that he is streaks ahead of both in pure ability, some of the balls he delivered into the box were sublime, hitting the diagonal balls, Don't know why he is not starting more often.
Suarez is an enigma, I think he is more suited to a wing forwards role than sitting up top on his own, I think he needs to play of a big striker like Carroll, the thing is when i see Carroll play he seems to be ordered to drift out to the wings and pick the ball up there were he is very un-effective, He should be told to stay up and around the area were he can be more effective.
Yeah, but for how long? He is 31 and cannot play forever. He needs support.
I'd like to see us buy Banega - been saying that for ages. He is a player that would come to Liverpool I think and provide the spark that we would need. He and a fully fit Lucas with Gerrard in front of them. Javi martinez would be good too but I am sure he will be the target for the Chelseas/Mancs/ etc/ I'd also go for James McCarthy if Wigan get demoted - I think this guy has the goods and have thought so for a while.
Exactly, we need to a make a big decision in regards to his ability if we can continue to get the best out of him in a central midfield position because the stats do not bode well.
If not, we need a new midfielder alongside Lucas for next season.
We've only won ONE LEAGUE GAME when Stevie has started and that was the Derby. Granted he did come off the bench and change the Newcastle match.
Let me repeat that, we've won ONE LEAGUE GAME when Stevie has started.
Here is our form when Stevie has started DDDLDLWLL
This is very worrying, does Kenny not know where and how to deploy Stevie?
Is Stevie no longer the player he was?
Is it the fact the he is missing a good partner in lucas?
Is it due to his stop, start season due to injuries?
Is it down to the wholesale changes in midfield, in general?
I have no idea what is going wrong as Stevie is a phenomenal talent but those stats are truely worrying, as worrying as our league form.
I would of thought having Stevie back would of spurned us on to victories and domination. How do we solve this issue?
In terms of goalscoring, you've definitely got a point
Totally agree with this, Compare Spearing, Adam, Henderson and Shelvey with Alonso, Mascherano, and Sissoko.
Lucas will be like a new signing (how many times have we said this about injured players?) so I expect that to heavily add some class to the midfield. I would much rather persist with our central midfield in either a 4-4-2 or 4-3-3, we can play 4-4-2 better with Lucas back as a true world class ball winner.
Would MUCH MUCH MUCH prefer we spent money on getting a goalscorer and/or a right winger.
Look, I do see your point and the stats are instructive. The point is though we were always going to struggle after Lucas' injury. The management made a decision that his loss would be compensated by Gerrard coming back from injury. The problem is that we had no natural defensive midfielder with quality to replace Lucas - we tried Gerrard/Adam, didn't work. We tried Henderson/Gerrard - didn't work. We tried Adam/Henderson, didn't work. So we plumped for Spearing and bless his soul, hard trier he is, he is just not the quality we needed to replace our most consistent player. This bad run, I would argue, also has a lot to do with the fact that the management didn't use the January window to buy a good defensive midfielder to cover off Lucas.
With our current injury problems I think we should adopt Rafa's old 1-4-2-3-1 formation:
--------------Reina-------------
Flanagan-Coates-Skrtel-Enrique
-------Shelvey-Gerrard--------
----Kuyt-Saurez-Downing----
----------Carroll--------------
I'd drop spearing because I don't think he offers anything positive to the team, Carrol would be told to stay up and around the box to bully the defenders and hold the ball up, Saurez would have more time and space when working in the hole, I'd be using Sterling/Henderson/Maxi as back up to the attacking players.
I can understand some of the arguments people make for whywe should've kept Meireles, but goalscoring is not a valid reason
Last season, he scored 5 goals for us during that wonder-streak - he didn't score any other goals before/after that spell in jan/feb
Meireles isn't someone who would've improved our goalscoring problem at all
Our midfield is a huge problem, no goal threat whatsoever and create little or nothing in the way of real goalscoring chances.
Suarez skews the chances statistics given he creates all his own chances (and then misses them).
You answered your own question there. He went on a goal scoring splurge when Suarez came to Anfield. No surprise there; they knew how to play with each other and they were building a great understanding before we sold him.
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