I don’t usually post twice in 2 days but my ruddy twitter timeline is going on an mission to get ‘Plan B’ trending. I understand the frustration of seeing us lose and being blunt upfront I get it, but to say Andy Carroll would have made a great Plan B in the last 10 minutes totally undoes everything Brendan Rodgers has been trying to teach since he arrived.
If you’ve ever played the game you’ll recognise this scenario, when you were younger at a local club training session the manager would express that he’d like the team to have a training match playing 2/3 touch passing football. This would not only improve you as a player but to also progress the team as a whole. Towards the end of the session he’d say, ‘Go on then everyone, as many touches as you like.’ So for the last 10 minutes of the session you’d totally forget about what you’d been learning and just do whatever the hell you’d like. For Brendan Rodgers to come in and repaint Liverpool’s style of play, only to see it torn apart in front of him would make his appointment pointless. The idea of Andy Carroll isn’t that he’ll throw 4 step overs get a bit of a space and unleash a shot, it is to pump it long and work off it, while it might be effective for some teams people need to understand that is not the plan any more for Liverpool, and it certainly isn’t the plan B.
If we see Andy Carroll play for Liverpool again under Brendan Rodgers I’ll be extremely surprised, he doesn’t fit plan A or B so he’s gone out to prove himself at a club that suits him and we should give him our thanks and wish him good luck, not crave for his immediate return.
You might be wondering, ‘So Ben you’ve told us that Brendan Rodgers doesn’t want Andy Carroll as a plan B, so what is his plan B’. Well although I don’t have a direct link to Rodgers’ coaching sheets I imagine it may include; 1) up the tempo, 2) overload the opposition and 3) push on your fullbacks to create width and another option in order to stretch the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if it said at the bottom of the coaching sheet, *Under no circumstances will we lump it long. Time will tell on that one.
This season is a work in progress, Joe Allen and Raheem Sterling are fine examples of Rodgers’ system working, press, pass and move. They’ve got it almost perfectly, all it needs is for everyone else to pick it up with a little bit of time. I wrote an article yesterday HERE that underlines why I think we’ll be fine so feel free to have a read of that.
YNWA
Ben Carr
As always if you’d like to take up any of my points with me on twitter you can find me here @DoctorBenjy