He was kind of left by himself though upfront. He's not a striker by nature and he's having to step up to the job at 20 years old. He's stalling because he's far and away our best player and we're reportedly offering him only 70k per week. I have reservations as to whether he will be a top player but letting him go would be a disaster. Especially when we'd go and buy Delph for £30m as his replacement no doubt
I cannot believe people here. Are they for real? What we needed today was to score one goal. Conceding one does not make one blind bit of difference. Rodgers should not have set himself to defend. he need to score one ****ing goal. The same thing last season. He needed to get a draw at home. A simple 0-0 woudl have done. instead he got his players to press a time wasting Chelsea. What's wrong with him? he does not understand tactics..
We had plenty of time to look and whilst we wouldn't find someone quite like Suarez, there are literally hundreds of players more suited to us than those two. Going back to the summer, I would still have gambled on Lambert. As an older bench warmer to rotate in and around, yeah, sure. Why not? But Mario was an atrocious signing and there are countless better options. I'm not paid to find players, but there are people at the club getting a very significant wage who clearly are inept. Rodgers and our transfer committee ballsed up in several ways. Not planning ahead and considering what we need to do should Suarez leave (which was always going to be a possibility) and then planing for a backup striker should Sturridge get injured. Origi maybe, but out on loan so no good to us. Then you end up having to gamble on Mario for whatever reason when, honestly, I would rather have a youth player in the team. Sorry, no matter how you look at it, our striking problem is Rodgers' and the committee's fault. All this 'losing two of the best strikers in the league' shows nothing more than our inability to forward plan.
That's his ego taking over. The second place went to his head and he believed he was a world class manager. He thought he could manage a player whom much more experienced managers had struggled with and had said was not worth it. Why did Rodgers think he could do better than much more successful managers than him? He was massively deluded and now the whole team is suffering.
Manager got the tactics right and we had one clear chance and other half chances in the first half (Sterling and Moreno). We needed to score in the first half when dominating, simple as that. Manager had nothing wrong to do with this, look at Coutinho and Sterling.
Defensively yes. He gave the ball away far too often with bad passes and poor control. his positioning was not up to his usual standards either, you may not have noticed because the game passed him by quite a lot.
If he'd have not wanted him he wouldn't be a Liverpool player! I think Carl is spot on, it was an ego move. Don't forget Mourinho had described him as unmanageable, Mancini had also failed with him, so he could have easily looked upon Mad Mario as a challenge that could prove just how great he was as a man manager.......it's blown up in his face
Far too sensible this We are not very good and when you get a couple of real good chances you simply have to take them against a top team We took only one chance over two legs and I feel sterling didn't even mean to hot that one where he did (off left) in the end we'd a lot of chances and fluffed our lines
All he has done is slag him off, leave him in the cold and call it a gamble. Doesn't look like he wanted him at all to me but whatever, all opinion
So we're only capable of playing one half of football? Rodgers got the first half right but, as also shown in the transfer market, never has a plan B. As soon as Sakho went off, he resorted to Johnson. At the very least, replace a CB with a CB when you're playing Chelsea who are a big and physical team. Lovren might have a chance of heading out a set piece and at least would have been playing in his natural position. He then threw on two strikers who played mostly out wide whilst keeping three players at CB when we needed a goal. He took off both our wide pacey players and replaced our team with slow players. We resorted to hoofing it forward (to Sterling, laughably enough) and had no ideas other than what Coutinho tried. I rate Rodgers as a coach, I think he's brilliant. I think he's a very average manager who can't deal with transfers, can't coach defending and has nothing more than a plan A. His substitutions were woeful.
Also think I didnt notice bcos Chelsea always won the ball back comfortably. Just didnt think Liverpool's midfield got into the game or controlled possession.
Good try tonight lads. RS is not a striker so failure to score was no surprise, we were never favorites so to stay in it until the end was nice to see. Costa was very dirty tonight imo, is he always like that!?
Really disappointed tonight because we should have won. We had 3 golden chances in the first half. Sakho had a poor game (by his standards) but the game changed when he went off (which says a lot about his standards). Rodgers should have done better with his subs. Taking off our pacy widemen, shifting Hendo out wide, playing Gerrard and Lucas in CM. We spent £45m on Lovren and Lallana and neither could get on the pitch, which Rodgers is responsible for. Mario wasn't that bad - everyone will focus on a couple of poor shots/passes but some of his link up play was excellent and he beat his man a few times. And he will get criticised for the goal which is harsh - he was marking Costa, not Ivanovic.
I miss the nineties. Back then, people appreciated effort, ability and determination and they didn't have a platform to spout random bollocks and undeserved abuse at players too. #scapegoats
And Henderson does often lose his runner and he lacks concentration at times. But in his defence, he's asked to do a lot of work around the pitch.
I still cannot understand Rodgers tactics. We had to score one goal (at least). So we needed an attacking formation. conceding one goal does not make much difference in the match (even in the first 90) as we HAD to get one goal. So we needed to put a striker on together with Sterling at the top. Then when we conceded we just needed to put it all in the attack. It didn't matter whether we lost by 4 or 5 goals in the end.
