The philosophy of possession football is an interesting one. The recent footballing domination of Barcelona and Spain has got many coaches and teams intrigued and changing their own styles of football. In particular, FSG and Liverpool FC. From the moment Kenny Dalglish was sacked, the names that surrounded the speculation about the managerial vacancy all had one common feature: the managers all played a certain style of possession based football. Frank De Boer, Roberto Martinez, Brendan Rodgers, Jurgen Klopp (although, his style is more counter attacking football, Borussia Dortmund have still had a relatively high average percentage of possession this season at 56% according to Squakwa Sports), and Pep Guardiola (although this was incredibly far-fetched). The possession game was FSG’s aim.
The appointment of Brendan Rodgers brought forth many articles which outlined his tactical system and his philosophy. They also brought out many quotes.
“I’ve always worked along the statistic that if you can dominate the game with the ball you have a 79% chance of winning a game of football.”
“When you’ve got the ball 65-70% of the time it’s a football death for the other team. We’re not at that stage yet but that’s what we will get to. It’s death by football. You just suck the life out of them.”
But the most important quote of all in my opinion is this one shortly after the pre-season match against Toronto on the 21st of July:
“It’s just that wee bit of penetration that’ll get better as the time goes on. Because possession’s no good on its own, you’ve got to be able to penetrate.”
Without penetration there is no point in possession. It’s as simple as that. This was evident under the Dalglish regime. Liverpool played some nice football under Dalglish, but goals win you matches and the lack of goals and penetration were ultimately Dalglish’s downfall.
So when Rodgers came in, he instantly knew he had to rectify this problem. He had to get Liverpool firing again…
Friday the 31st of August. 11:16AM
I wake up early in the morning (which is unusual for a summer holiday day, but today is an exception). I stretch my arms, open my curtains and windows and breathe in the fresh air. “Today is going to be a good day”, I think to myself. I grab my iPad and I tweet “Strap in guys, it’s going to be a bumpy ride”. The day ended up bumpier than I had anticipated…
Transfer deadline day. The day of Jim White. The day when you turn on Sky Sports, grab 7 odd packs of crisps, your laptop and sit in front of the TV glued to Sky Sports for the next 12 hours. The day when the appearance of Jim White can make a grown man shake with excitement. The day of either extreme joy and excitement or the day of disappointment and frustration. I woke up in the morning with dreams of Walcott or the slightly more realistic dream of Clint Dempsey. After a summer of speculation and gossip, I was sure Liverpool would sign Dempsey. Brendan Rodgers wanted one more attacker, he’d said as much in his press conferences. The Liverpool fans wanted one more attacker to cap off what had largely been a successful transfer window.
The transfer window has recently been an obstacle for Liverpool. When it comes to buying players we’ve either bought stupidly (Poulsen, Jovanovic, Cole, Konchesky, Adam) or overspent on talent (Carroll, Henderson, Downing). When FSG got rid of Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli, I thought “finally the club will show more sense in the transfer window and spend not only wiser, but on better quality players”. I had endured too many jokes about Carroll’s lack of goals, Henderson’s price and Downing’s lack of an assists from school mates. Finally after many transfer windows of trying, it looked like Liverpool had FINALLY had a good transfer window. All we needed now was the icing on the cake. One more quality attacker to get some more goals. We had brought in Joe Allen from Swansea, who was the billed as the Welsh Xavi, and a player who knew the system in and out, back ways and sideways. We had seemingly addressed our goal scoring problems by signing Fabio Borini who was the clinical striker Liverpool had cried out for during much of Kenny Dalglish’s second reign at Anfield. We had signed the relatively unheard of Assaidi for a very small price which seemed a bargain. We had signed the Bundesliga player of 2010/2011 in Nuri Sahin to supplement our already formidable midfield with even more quality. We only needed one more attacker…
Friday, 31st of August. 11:01 PM
My eyes are sore. I’m sat in a mess of wrappers, pizza crusts and flakes of crisps. My iPad and my phone are both buzzing and notifying me of incoming messages. I read one text from a friend about the failed signing of Dempsey. I dropped the phone and pick up my iPad. My entire TL is going mental. Meltdown does not describe the anger felt by Liverpool fans. I simply tweeted “sigh”. The tweet is lost in a tirade of foul-mouthed abuse mainly directed at Ian Ayre and FSG. Not only had we lost out on a target, we had lost out by only a few million or nothing, in footballing terms. To make it worse…Dempsey signed for Spurs. The rage was understandable, and in the heat of the moment the rage had blinded most of us from looking at how well the club had done in the transfer window. 5/6 targets were acquired at great prices as well. However, most of us were too angry to look at anything rationally. So I went to bed and prayed for a result against Arsenal on Sunday…
Sunday 2nd of September. 3:35PM
Bitter disappointment and frustration. The fluid possession based football that had been promised by Rodgers wasn’t even seen today. Arsenal had more shots, they had more shots on target, they even had more possession and most importantly they scored more goals. A day which had started with excitement over the debut of Sahin, ended with even more disappointment. Sahin’s performance was lacklustre to say the least. Glen Johnson had one of his worse performances in a red shirt, getting ripped apart from a quick Arsenal counter attack for Arsenal’s first goal. Even Suarez didn’t play well, his only chance of the match a disappointing shot which capped of a very poor performance for Liverpool. And quite obviously the criticism of the team’s performance merged with the disappointment in the lack of Dempsey. Once again people took to twitter to pour out their emotions about the club, once again the majority of the abuse was levelled at Ayre and FSG. Those were a few hard days for Liverpool fans.
October
Fabio Borini has fractured a bone in his foot and he is injured for 3 months. Jesus Weeps. The lack of attacking depth in Liverpool’s squad has led to the quick promotion of German youngster Samed Yesil and Spanish starlet Suso. Oussama Assaidi has suffered as well from a lack of physicality and his appearances have been limited. However, the step up of youngster Raheem Sterling has been a positive in all of this. His rapid improvement has helped to at least sure up one of the attacking positions in the team and Rodgers has moved Enrique further forward to also compliment the attack. Suarez is quite literally carrying us, his brilliance the highlight of our season thus far. There is no question about it: Liverpool NEED forwards. I’m the biggest advocate for using youth players, but at such a critical stage of the season, first team quality was definitely needed. Rodgers had stated as much:
“I think we will hopefully be able to do business at the beginning,”- said Rodgers.
“That was our strategy coming out of August – that we could get that support at the beginning of the month. That’s the idea and if we could do that, it would be a big boost for us.”
