The Soccer Blog: Striking a Balance

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Striking a Balance

By: Ed | September 14th, 2010

Steaua on Thursday, United on Sunday…triage already?

With squad depth and fitness an issue so early in the season, I fear the answer is yes.

I’m typically not one to want to talk at length about prioritizing one competition over another—it’s too tempting to ramble on about courage and honor and such. But with so many matches in the coming weeks, it’s unavoidable. Only one match gone during this stretch (along with the longest break Liverpool will have for two weeks) and I find myself drawing up wildly drawing up team sheets that look like they’re coming out of a Master League from Pro Evo.

The fact of the matter is that, like it or not, there’s going to be some heavy prioritizing of the personnel that takes place. Thursday’s match is followed closely by Sunday’s, Sunday’s by Wednesday’s, Wednesday’s by Sunday’s, etc. etc.

So we’re going to see some different names at different times, and for me, the cup competitions are going to to have to fall by the wayside for the bigger names.

The League Cup isn’t really worth the discussion; always an opportunity for the fringe first-teamers and promising reserves, and this year won’t be any different. We’ll probably see Brad Jones, Stephen Darby, Jay Spearing, David Amoo, and Nathan Eccleston among others. And unless it’s against one of the lower division teams, the opposition will proceed in a similar manner.

The Europa League is a slightly different prospect, but I still think it’s got to take a backseat. Like last season, it’s not a competition that the club are going to place much stock in for better or worse. Take Thursday’s match, for instance—eyes are already firmly planted on Old Trafford, despite the reassurances we’ll no doubt hear in the build up to the match about “taking every match seriously” and “the Europa League is a fine competition.”

I think this means a mixture of regulars and younger players—maybe not the Darby-Amoo-Eccleston combination we’ll see in the League Cup, but more along the lines of Kelly-Babel-Pacheco-Ngog. Still first-team players, but not ones that have broken through. I’d guess they sprinkle in Sotirios Kyrgiakos, Martin Skrtel, Steven Gerrard at times, Joe Cole to get his legs back, Lucas/Poulsen, and a couple of the promising youngsters on the bench.

Like I said, it seems far too early to talk about weighing the importance of each competition, but the reality is that this squad will struggle to compete on three (and eventually four) different fronts.

Injuries to Dirk Kuyt and Fabio Aurelio (combined with the worry about Paul Konchesky), along with the ever-present worries for a few of the other regulars, mean that proven talent and experience are at a premium. To try to stretch the squad this early in the season, in my mind, would be an awfully big gamble. Now if the Champions League is involved, it’s likely a gamble that nobody would question taking. I suppose this is the luxury of a seventh-place finish.

But regardless of the personnel that Roy Hodgson decides to use, I think we can all agree that the approach needs to be the same—it’s the exact discussion we had after the match on Sunday. Whether it’s the youth and reserves in the Carling Cup, the fringe first-teamers in the Europa League, or a full strength “best” eleven on Sunday at Old Trafford, Liverpool need to play as though they expect to not just stick around and have a decent run-out, but that they can compete with some sort of identifiable urgency.

You know, having expectations that are just above “not that high.”

Some Related Liverpool Posts:Squad Announced; Fernando Torres Has Been Paying AttentionMatchday: Liverpool v. West BromMatch Preview: Liverpool v. Trabzonspor, 08.26.10Match Preview: Liverpool v. Birmingham City, 09.12.10Liverpool 2 (3), Trabzonspor 1 (1): Moving On

Category: Europa League, League Cup, Miscellaneous, Premier League, Team News

Tags: Christian Poulsen, Dani Pacheco, David Amoo, David Ngog, Europa League, Fabio Aurelio, Fernando Torres, League Cup, Lucas, Martin Kelly, Miscellaneous, Nathan Eccleston, Paul Konchesky, Premier League, Ryan Babel, Stephen Darby, Steven Gerrard, Team News
« Jamie Redknapp, Five-Syllable Words, and Fernando Torres | Home | Subscribe

The Offside RSS Feeds

Share.wp-notable img {border: none;margin-left:5px;} digg:

Jay Wrightthe energy and tempo that would be displayed by some of the younger players would lead to far superior performances than those regularly put up by their hard-working 'senior' counterparts. Hopefully if some of the fringe players perform well, they'll get a chance to hold onto their places and play THEIR way into form this season, instead of routinely being dumped for underperforming first-teamers

I'd much rather see Babel, Pacheco & Cole (or Shelvey) supporting Torres (or Ngog) instead of Maxi, Jovanovich and Kuyt! and am sure that results would not suffer in the short term either as well as improving our long term prospects.

With Gerrard plus Meireles/Poulson/Lucas backing them up through the centre of midfield, we'd look a much more dangerous outfit than we have in God knows how longGalahadThreepwoodI'm on board with the idea of prioritizing the Premier League over competitions like the Europa League and the FA Cup. I want us to make a good effort to compete in everything we do, of course...but a Europa League trophy would be small consolation if we lost somebody like Meireles or (God forbid) Torres in the process.

In an aside, I would love to see Roy give some of the promising young guys, like Kelly and Pacheco, a chance to play in Premier League games. Although I doubt this will happen, I'd like to see Kelly take over at right back, with Glen Johnson moving up to the wing. Johnson's got pace in spades, and can be dangerous in attack, but he's becoming a defensive liability (his performance on Sunday was absolutely dreadful, and I'm still unhappy about his error in the Arsenal game). Maybe something like this:

Reina
Kelly Agger Skrtel Konchesky
Meireles Cole
Johnson Gerrard Jovanovic
Torres

Some caveats: Obviously, this leaves no role for Kuyt, who I would love to see on the squad. And Meireles and Cole are complementary players, so it might be redundant having them both in central midfield. But I think Gerrard does play best in the hole behind the striker, so I'm reluctant to move him back to the center with Meireles. It's not a perfect solution, obviously, and it may not be workable in practice. I'd just like to do something with Johnson that doesn't involve him being a fullback, because I'm increasingly convinced that it's not his strength.NoelIn war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity... unless it's over United, in which case screw those guys. Or Chelsea. Or City and their 300-man squad. Or Real Madrid, because I seriously can't stand those guys and I'm glad their new manager more than makes up for any linger fondness I felt towards Xabi, because that was kinda awkward there for a while.

What was I saying? Something about going down swinging being better than shuffling off with barely a whimper because, eh, you weren't expecting too much to begin with?

Eh, I guess that'll do.blog comments powered by Disqus

Already candidates for succeeding Capello are stepping forward Fabio Capello WILL Step down after Euro 2012 Two games, Two wins. Where from here? more news...

Search The Offside

The Soccer Blog

Pages

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Striking a Balance

No comments:

Post a Comment