Lucas and Mascherano

[JohnDoe]

As Harry Hill might say....hmmm...not sure

Lucas plays more simple sideways balls and consequently retains it better, but doesnt often play a meaningful pass.

Mascher's been spraying a few more long diagonal balls this season and obviously the margin for error is much less, but he's got a fair few spot on and got us on the attack with them.

Alonso-esque, dare i say, but with far less of an accuracy and frequency percentage.

It's more simple than that. They are both bad and Lucas is more aware of his limitations while Masch is forced to take more responsibility.

[el matador]

lucas isnt anywhere near the player that mascherano is. Nowhere near.

Mascherano is a defensive midfielder / ball winner. His job is to get the ball back from the opposition and pass it to someone who knows what to do with it. In this role he is the best player in the world.

Unfortunately, once he has it and he looks up and sees kuyt, lucas and riera !!!

The lad is surrounded by **** and same goes for gerrard. How disheartening it must be when you're team mates are several standards below your level.

Only reina, carragher, agger, masher gerrard and torres are of the highest calibre. I would include johnson in that once he has run of 10 games.

As for the wingers / replacement strikers they are very average and definitely not top 4 standard.

If rafa only has £20m this summer then all of it should go on adecent winger.

[Craig_H]

lucas isnt anywhere near the player that mascherano is. Nowhere near.

Mascherano is a defensive midfielder / ball winner. His job is to get the ball back from the opposition and pass it to someone who knows what to do with it. In this role he is the best player in the world.

Unfortunately, once he has it and he looks up and sees kuyt, lucas and riera !!!

The lad is surrounded by **** and same goes for gerrard. How disheartening it must be when you're team mates are several standards below your level.

Only reina, carragher, agger, masher gerrard and torres are of the highest calibre. I would include johnson in that once he has run of 10 games.

As for the wingers / replacement strikers they are very average and definitely not top 4 standard.

If rafa only has £20m this summer then all of it should go on adecent winger.

It's funny, cos it's true.

I'd say though, IMO Riera is easily good enough for a top 4 side, and Benayoun even in wide positions. Dare i say, they're restricted by a rigid, slow-tempo system and mentality.

[Armchairkopite]

The problem lies with Rafa, he has us playing the game to keep control of the ball, retain possesion at all costs.

Our players are almost programmed to recieve the ball take a touch have a look and shift it to the side.

Rafa has these players playing within themselves and to be honest our set up has not been helped by playing Carra on the right and Ngog up front, both of these players are very limited in those positions.

Ngog particularly needs a good kick up the arse, he needs to find the space and use his pace a lot more then he does.

Torres will be a massive plus for us he can pull defences around the way Ngog cant which will give Gerrard more space to move into making us a more offensive side.

Personally i would drop Gerrard back into the centre of midfield and play Aquiliani off Torres because Gerrard can do damage from anywhere on the pitch.

I am frustrarated with Rafa at the moment to say the least but the return of Torres will now leaves no more excuses imo.

[Armchairkopite]

It's more simple than that. They are both bad and Lucas is more aware of his limitations while Masch is forced to take more responsibility.

What have Lucas and Mascherano got to aim for, Ngog, Kuyt and whoever has been put out on the left wing, hardly a plethoria of movement there.

I mean seriouly its not as if the movement up front is great and they are not seeing the runs being made is it?

[Kinell]

What have Lucas and Mascherano got to aim for, Ngog, Kuyt and whoever has been put out on the left wing, hardly a plethoria of movement there.

I mean seriouly its not as if the movement up front is great and they are not seeing the runs being made is it?

I wish we'd see more angled balls from these two, even over the top into space to give them something to run at, but as you mentioned in your previous post it seems to be Rafa's philosophy to retain possession and chisel away.

[Armchairkopite]

I wish we'd see more angled balls from these two, even over the top into space to give them something to run at, but as you mentioned in your previous post it seems to be Rafa's philosophy to retain possession and chisel away.

Its painstaking to watch mate, the worst part is that Mascherano and Lucas have the ability to play these angled balls.

It stems back to a lack of confidence in defence earlier on in the season when Rafa obviously made everything more rigid to stop us from conceding goals.

Now we have done that the players need to find their rhythm again, hopefully with the return of Torres Rafa and the team will have more confidence going forward to start taking some risks.

Ngogs biggest weakness for me is that he doesn't make enough intelligent runs through the middle and we have missed a player like that, especially because we only play with one up front.

[Exiled_red]

What have Lucas and Mascherano got to aim for, Ngog, Kuyt and whoever has been put out on the left wing, hardly a plethoria of movement there.

I mean seriouly its not as if the movement up front is great and they are not seeing the runs being made is it?

The movement of our team in the attacking areas of the pitch is woeful, almost everybody is stationary when the are looking for the ball, we need to get back to the pass and move, at the moment we seem to have a pass and stay approach from many players

[el matador]

The movement of our team in the attacking areas of the pitch is woeful, almost everybody is stationary when the are looking for the ball, we need to get back to the pass and move, at the moment we seem to have a pass and stay approach from many players

is the movement that we are missing being restricted by rafa's system ?

He clearly wants his two midfield players to sit which means that the onus is on the two wide players and the two forwards as neither lucas nor masher are even remotely a goal threat.

If this is the case i dont get the aquilani purchase because his natural game is to go forward from midfield.

Why not buy steven defour instead who's natural game it is to sit

[el matador]

It's funny, cos it's true.

I'd say though, IMO Riera is easily good enough for a top 4 side, and Benayoun even in wide positions. Dare i say, they're restricted by a rigid, slow-tempo system and mentality.

we have three players who all prefer to play in the hole behind torres and of those three only gerrard is any good on the flanks.

Neither benayoun nor aquilani can be classed as wingers and despite steve scoring 21 and creating about 20 from his time on the right hand side I dont think he really wants to play out there.

There is another possible reason for the aquilani purchase - as a replacement for gerrard.

If we dont qualify for CL then i think both gerrard and masher will leave. Gerrard will be forced to leave and masher will probably force his own departure.

[JohnDoe]

Do people seriously think that if Rafa told Lucas and Mascherano to start going forward more they'll turn into box to box midfield sensations? Or if they had better movement in front, they'll become better passers? They're doing what they can, not what they're limited to do.

Gerrard will be forced to leave and masher will probably force his own departure.

Mascherano will leave regardless. He's off this summer, definitely. He won't sign a new contract.

[Armchairkopite]

Do people seriously think that if Rafa told Lucas and Mascherano to start going forward more they'll turn into box to box midfield sensations? Or if they had better movement in front, they'll become better passers? They're doing what they can, not what they're limited to do.

Box to box sensations are not what we are looking for but I do think Lucas has an eye for a forward pass that has a Rafa patch over it.

[JohnDoe]

Box to box sensations are not what we are looking for but I do think Lucas has an eye for a forward pass that has a Rafa patch over it.

I was a bit tongue in cheek with that description, but Lucas has started in 25 league games, scored no goals and has made one assist the entire season. I'm not buying it that he has those abilities and big bad Rafa is preventing him from showcasing them. He's playing with, as people say, a world class defensive midfielder in Mascherano. There is no pressure on him to defend so much. Lucas hides from the ball, he doesn't want it and never showed the ability to demand it under pressure while wearing the Liverpool shirt, unless we're talking about friendlies or two games against Newcastle.

He just doesn't have the pace, the strength and the technical ability to perform an attacking role in the Premier League, so he's reduced to running around and pretending. That's not good enough.

[Exiled_red]

is the movement that we are missing being restricted by rafa's system ?

He clearly wants his two midfield players to sit which means that the onus is on the two wide players and the two forwards as neither lucas nor masher are even remotely a goal threat.

If this is the case i dont get the aquilani purchase because his natural game is to go forward from midfield.

Why not buy steven defour instead who's natural game it is to sit

I'm not sure, there are still 4 players ahead of them who could/should be making runs ahead of the ball that aren't. Even if we had a more attacking centre mid the majority of the time he should be looking to pick out the players ahead of him, so I'm not sure how much difference that would make it this repsect.

[Exiled_red]

Do people seriously think that if Rafa told Lucas and Mascherano to start going forward more they'll turn into box to box midfield sensations? Or if they had better movement in front, they'll become better passers? They're doing what they can, not what they're limited to do.

Mascherano will leave regardless. He's off this summer, definitely. He won't sign a new contract.

I'm not saying that they'd be better passers if they had better movement in front of them, we'd just find out if they have the ability to play that type of game. At the moment they are playing 'safe' sideways passes, so we don't know how good their passing really is.