---
title: "4 things to take from… Villa at Anfield"
canonical: "https://readliverpoolfc.com/columns/4-things-to-take-from-villa-anfield/"
type: "post"
language: "en-GB"
author: "Jake Askham"
section: "Articles"
published: "2014-09-15T17:20:10Z"
modified: "2014-09-15T17:29:37Z"
---

# 4 things to take from… Villa at Anfield

Over the last couple of seasons Villa have achieved great success during their visits to Merseyside and Saturday’s game was no different, with the visitors leaving with a 1-0 victory alongside a very solid defensive display. With the injury to Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling finding himself rested on the bench, Liverpool’s attack looked disjointed and lacking ideas. Rodgers opted for 3 changes and a switch back to the 4-2-3-1/4-3-3, with Balotelli playing the lone striker role in front of Adam Lallana, Philippe Coutinho and Lazar Markovic. On paper that’s a very good attack, but football is played on grass and the attacking quartet failed to gel.

**1) Why change a winning formula?**

I think all Liverpool fans agree that Rodgers got his team selection wrong on Saturday, something that doesn’t happen very often. He made 3 changes to the side against Spurs and reverted back to the 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 formation that he played against Southampton on the opening day of the season where the Reds were poor and were lucky to win the game. Injuries to Daniel Sturridge and Joe Allen forced Rodgers to make at least two changes, but resting the highly influential Raheem Sterling was slightly confusing. Even more confusing though was the adjustment in formation from the 4-1-2-1-2 diamond that had proved highly successful at White Hart Lane. It’s a formation that gets the best out of pretty much everyone in our team and allows us to play the fast, attacking football that saw us come within inches of winning the league last season. Had Sturridge been fit I have no doubt that we’d have used a diamond formation on Saturday, hopefully the game on Tuesday sees us give either Rickie Lambert or Fabio Borini a chance to partner Mario up front.

**2) Tempo is vital**

Nothing frustrates me more than when players take five seconds on the ball when they only need two. It doesn’t require the player with the ball to exert any more energy, but it forces the opposition to move more which then opens up gaps for the attacking team to exploit.

That contributed to the lack of urgency on Saturday, everything was played at a snail’s pace and made Villa’s life far too easy. The times when we did manage to get the ball forward quickly we looked fairly dangerous, but they were few and far between.

But tempo and fluidity can only really be achieved when you have a team that are comfortable with one another, that wasn’t the case on Saturday. Balotelli, Markovic and Lallana will all prove to be great additions to the team over the season, but they need time to understand the way we play and each other’s games. The prospect of those 3 players when they’ve had time to settle in is frightening, but it will take time. Introducing them one by one should maybe have been the approach taken by Rodgers and co.

**3) We still can’t defend corners**

Do we actually practice defending them or not? Every time we had to defend against a set piece where Villa could put the ball into our box it seemed like they’d score. Senderos had a great chance to make it 2-0 mid-way through the second half again from a corner, if he’d have scored that would have been almost game over. You can’t give teams chances like that because we will get punished.

If you were the manager of a mid-table club you’d recognise we struggle massively against teams that defend deep and restrict the space in behind so you’d set your team up to do just that. Then you’d see how bad we are at defending corners, so you’d practice them in training. So if you combine our lack of organisation from corners with our inability to score against teams that defend deep, we may have some real problems at home this season.

**4) Defending in general play**

Although Villa offered very little going forward, I thought our defending during general play was actually quite good. Our positioning prevented the pace of Gabby Agbonlahor getting in behind our defence and at no point during the game (apart from corners) did I feel that we were going to concede, which makes a nice change.

But we need continuity; playing the same back four against Ludogorets would be a good idea as the more time they get on the pitch together the better they’ll become as a unit. Well that’s the theory anyway.

***Conclusion***

It was a bad day at the office, but as long as we learn from the mistakes then it isn’t all doom and gloom. There’s plenty of potential within this side; once we unlock it, teams will be scared. We just have to be patient.