I've been playing about on the Guardian Chalkboards analysing yesterday's game.
A couple of things strike me when it comes to the centre backs.
The first is that Skrtel lost an awful lot of duels in the air. Yet what was curious is that Soto wasn't actually involved in many.
This is odd because I'd have expected that Soto was in there to deal with the aerial threat, yet Skrtel was left to deal with two thirds of the aerial battle.
I've not watched the full game back on LFCtv yet so I'll have to watch out for this, but would I be right in thinking that Skrtel was matched up with Kenwyne Jones and losing out? It was certainly Jones providing their aerial threat, not Fuller. So why wasn't Soto sent to mark Jones.
Soto was only involved in 4 aerial battles compared to Skrtel's eight and Skrtel lost out on half of them. Soto won three of the four of his, but why wasn't he involved more?
Was he asked to mark the wrong man? I'll be interested to view these aerial duels when I see the game, but you may have some thoughts yourself.
The other really noticeable point from the Chalkboard is that in the entire 90 mins Liverpool failed to produce a single successful cross. This could be a comment on poor delivery or a commentary on lack of men in the box. It's hard to see from here, but it's a shocking stat.
On the left pretty much all the responsibility for crossing into the box was Konchesky's. Rodriguez didn't deliver a single cross all game whether successful or not. Only Babel on the left delivered anything, one ball delivered from deep that was cut out by Collins.
On the right hand side, there was little width either, as central players such as Kuyt, Gerrard and Ngog were the only ones delivering from wide areas, and even then not often.
The right sided midfielder (on the day) Meireles only made one contribution and that was a ball in from a central area that was cut out by Wilkinson.
As such our two wide players contributed just one attempted cross between them in the whole game and even then it wasn't successful and even then came from a pretty central area (two if you add Babel's deep, failed cross later on).
Any thoughts?
A couple of things strike me when it comes to the centre backs.
The first is that Skrtel lost an awful lot of duels in the air. Yet what was curious is that Soto wasn't actually involved in many.
This is odd because I'd have expected that Soto was in there to deal with the aerial threat, yet Skrtel was left to deal with two thirds of the aerial battle.
I've not watched the full game back on LFCtv yet so I'll have to watch out for this, but would I be right in thinking that Skrtel was matched up with Kenwyne Jones and losing out? It was certainly Jones providing their aerial threat, not Fuller. So why wasn't Soto sent to mark Jones.
Soto was only involved in 4 aerial battles compared to Skrtel's eight and Skrtel lost out on half of them. Soto won three of the four of his, but why wasn't he involved more?
Was he asked to mark the wrong man? I'll be interested to view these aerial duels when I see the game, but you may have some thoughts yourself.
The other really noticeable point from the Chalkboard is that in the entire 90 mins Liverpool failed to produce a single successful cross. This could be a comment on poor delivery or a commentary on lack of men in the box. It's hard to see from here, but it's a shocking stat.
On the left pretty much all the responsibility for crossing into the box was Konchesky's. Rodriguez didn't deliver a single cross all game whether successful or not. Only Babel on the left delivered anything, one ball delivered from deep that was cut out by Collins.
On the right hand side, there was little width either, as central players such as Kuyt, Gerrard and Ngog were the only ones delivering from wide areas, and even then not often.
The right sided midfielder (on the day) Meireles only made one contribution and that was a ball in from a central area that was cut out by Wilkinson.
As such our two wide players contributed just one attempted cross between them in the whole game and even then it wasn't successful and even then came from a pretty central area (two if you add Babel's deep, failed cross later on).
Any thoughts?
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