One of Brendan Rodgers’ main philosophies when he came to Liverpool, and it seems that we’ve just sort of abandoned it.
Source: liverpoolfc.com
‘Death by Football’ is a style of play focusing on possession, precision passing, patience and control. The team concentrates primarily on keeping the ball, passing it around and making opponents ire themselves out chasing shadows. There is a high level of concentration and composure required to implement this style and it brings reliability at the back, precision in midfield, with patience up front. In a way, it is a mix of the styles of Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich and José Mourinho’s Chelsea. It allows total domination of a game, and a much better chance of winning it.
However, instead of continuing with the implementation of this strategy, Rodgers has had to adopt a different style of play.
In the 2013-14 season, Liverpool played with an explosive, counter-attacking style. While effective in the short-term, this level of energy, momentum and goal-scoring is not sustainable. We were too unpredictable, too explosive and too unstable. We crashed. In 2014-15 losing SAS hit us hard, the goals dried up and we continued to concede, the unstable, explosive style had finally back-fired as we weren’t able to finish the chances created and instead lost the ball, leaving our defence wide open and as vulnerable as ever. We weren’t able to consistently win without Suárez’ genius and Sturridge’s finishing.
Luis Suarez causing havock. Source: liverpoolfc.com
Only once in the last two seasons have I noticed us clearly play with the ‘death by football’ style. This was arguably our best performance of the season in a 2-2 draw with Arsenal at Anfield in December. Total domination, we controlled the game from start to finish, conceding two sloppy goals when our concentration momentarily dropped.
With Liverpool struggling for an identity in recent months, why not return to Brendan’s original plan? Why not take control of games with a stable, consistent and dominating style of play. Watch teams like Chelsea and Arsenal, they dominate games and consistently win. Chelsea have won the league with three games to spare because they approach every game with the intent to control it, the pace, possession, scoreline, all of it. Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Barcelona, all of these teams will lift their domestic league trophies this season. What else do they have in common? Control. Domination. Fear. Teams fear playing them because of the things they are capable of doing to opponents.
In December, we passed the ball around and controlled Arsenal as if they were a bunch of children chasing a ball that some teenagers had pinched from them. We were in control, the ball was ours and we weren’t letting them get anywhere near it. We could have embarrassed them if not for awful defending and loss of concentration. 9 times out of 10, it works.
Liverpool is a name teams should fear, in 2013-14 they did, but with Suárez gone, Sturridge unreliable and Sterling on his way, that explosiveness and intensity is hard to implement. Brendan, I’m begging you, go back to death by football, make them fear us again.
Stuart Walding
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