1. Will pressure actually help Raheem Sterling?
All the warnings about Raheem Sterling this season seem to have centred on his heavy workload and even heavier weight of expectation, with concerns that such pressure would burn out one of the brightest hopes of English football before he could really start. While it's true that Brendan Rodgers doesn't seem to have managed Sterling's workload particularly well (120 minutes in the Capital One Cup against Middlesbrough, anyone?) despite promising he would, it's understandable that a manager approaching desperation would lean heavily on his best player.
The trouble is that, with the injured Daniel Sturridge unable to offer assistance from the sidelines, Sterling's performances have noticeably dropped off as Liverpool's have (or perhaps that should be the other way around), the forward looking tired and bereft of confidence, something exemplified by his weak finishing in a 3-0 defeat to Manchester United last weekend. "Raheem is an outstanding talent," Rodgers said Friday. "It is incredible the stick that the kid has received. He has been outstanding for us, wherever he has played."
Rodgers clearly saw something in that performance though, as well as his two-goal showing against Bournemouth in the Capital One Cup this week, to see fit to compare Sterling to one of Liverpool's opponents on Sunday. "At Old Trafford he was unfortunate not to score and in that role he plays, you think of Alexis Sanchez when he plays for Arsenal," Rodgers said.
This, to say the least, is a rather premature comparison, but Rodgers often makes faintly ludicrous-sounding statements in public that are aimed at nobody but the player in question (see declaring Steven Gerrard the best holding midfielder in Europe last season), and this seems to be what he is doing now. Perhaps Rodgers believes that, rather than the spotlight weighing Sterling down it will, in fact, inspire him, and that the 'false nine' role is the way to get the best from both player and team.
Rodgers may look like a man managing without a plan, but not much else is working at the moment, so putting your best available player in the position where he is most likely to do damage is at least worth a shot.
LIVERPOOL LATEST
- Spotlight: A statement game for AFC and LFC- Jolly: Lack of defensive midfielders
- Transfer Talk: Delph the new Gerrard?
- Three Points: Bournemouth 1-3 Liverpool
- Capital One Cup semis: LFC vs. Chelsea
- FC TV: Rodgers appears short of ideas
Everyone was very positive after Liverpool's 3-1 win over Bournemouth, with Rodgers and Adam Lallana, among others, talking of using the result as a springboard for better things. "It's a good bit of momentum we'll pick up," Lallana said after the game. "We'll take a lot of confidence out of the performance."
We have, of course, been here before with Liverpool this season. They haven't managed to string a run of three wins together, while supposedly confidence-boosting victories over Tottenham, Ludogorets, QPR, Swansea and Leicester were followed, respectively, by a defeat to Aston Villa, a loss against West Ham, a 3-0 hammering against Real Madrid, then a 0-0 with Hull, a four-game losing streak and a 0-0 with Sunderland. Liverpool may well have gained something approaching belief from reaching the Capital One Cup semifinals, but if they can't convert that into a good performance and win against Arsenal, then it won't be an enormous amount of use.
3. And for Arsenal too?
It has been a similar season of false dawns at Arsenal. After every disappointment comes an apparent revival and a false chorus of 'Crisis? What crisis?' but the truth is that Arsenal's record in big games has been dire for some time now. Their recent run of five wins in six games did include a victory over Borussia Dortmund, but Jurgen Klopp's side are on their knees at the bottom end of the Bundesliga at the moment and were without several key players, so the importance of that result (even though it did secure their qualification for the knockout rounds of the Champions League) is perhaps questionable.
As, admittedly, is the status of an encounter with Liverpool. Can a match against a side currently 11th with only six wins to their name really be considered "big"? But of course these games are about more than just form, and even if it isn't a significant catalyst for the rest of their season, this does at least represent a chance for Arsenal to heal a wound or two from earlier this year.
"Every defeat hurts, every defeat is a scar in your heart forever," Wenger said Friday about their 5-1 defeat at Anfield last season when Arsenal were blitzed by a rampant Liverpool side containing Sturridge and Luis Suarez that scored four goals in the first 20 minutes. "But we also have very good memories at Liverpool. We won many games there as well. And even last year, we lost against them and the week later against the same team, we won 2-0 at home in the FA Cup... Liverpool is a good game for us to show that we can have the continuity in finding a good balance between attacking well and defending well, because Liverpool are always very strong at home. We want to continue to be faithful to our philosophy, to play our game but also be solid defensively."
While its status as a big game, in terms of relevance to the league as a whole, can be questioned, certainly the significance to the teams involved is clear.
Whichever names Rodgers picks out of his hat to play in defence for Liverpool -- and, if he persists with the back three deployed in the last two games, injuries to Dejan Lovren and Glen Johnson might actually force his hand to select his best available trio -- they will face a significant test. Indeed, is a back three against a forward line as rapid as Arsenal's really a good idea? None of Liverpool's available central defensive options are particularly quick, so against Sanchez, Danny Welbeck, and perhaps even Theo Walcott or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, buzzing around Olivier Giroud, all possibly receiving prompting from the in-form Santi Cazorla in his new central role, it could get ugly.
While Rodgers does seem rather keen on the formation, surely a back four with the relative speed of Alberto Moreno and Javier Manquillo would seem a more sensible option, if only to fill some of the space on the flanks that could be so easily exploited.
5. Could Olivier Giroud be Arsenal's key man?
While the least quick of Arsenal's attacking options is Giroud -- and there is still the sense that he is not quite good enough for a side with designs on a title challenge -- he still represents a significant option for Wenger. "He gives us different options because we can go for a longer ball," said the Arsenal boss after Giroud had scored twice against Newcastle last weekend. "We have plenty of players who can play short and he gives us a variety in our game."
With four goals, Giroud is already Arsenal's second top Premier League goal-scorer (behind Sanchez's nine) despite only making three starts, but it is perhaps the type of goals that Giroud is capable of scoring which is as important as his strikerate -- the first against Newcastle being a case in point. That goal was as simple as you could hope for: Giroud passed to the flank, ran into the box for the cross, then powered an almost Andy Carroll-esque header into the net. There are few other Arsenal players capable of this sort of directness and, against a jittery Liverpool defence playing ahead of Brad Jones whose limitations were brutally exposed by Manchester United last weekend, Giroud could be Arsenal's key attacking option again.
No comments:
Post a Comment