By Dan Asulin
Week after week I see the same pattern. A first team start in the EPL and a sub-par team start in every other competition. This past week Liverpool F.C fell to Swansea City in what was in my opinion an embarrassing loss that could have been avoided. Let us start by taking a look at the starting 11 that Brendan Rogers chose for the match against Swansea.
Jones, Robinson, Coates, Carragher, Henderson, Shelvey, Allen, Cole, Assaidi, Yesil, Downing all started on Wednesday with Ward, Suarez, Gerrard, Suso, Sterling, Skrtel, Wisdom on the bench. The team that started the match saw a 9 man change from the match against Everton on Sunday. My question is this, Why wouldn’t we start our best players in all competitions? Isn’t winning the point of playing any match?
We don’t have many goal scorers on the team and with Borini out things have been made even harder. To win games we must score goals so why not start Suarez our top scorer? Why not start Sterling who has proved himself in tough matches and recently scored in the Reading game. Why not start Gerrard who is another consistent goal scorer. Yesil and Assaidi have potential but they aren’t capable of scoring the goals we need.
Starting our best players in competitions should be our main focus but we fail to do so time and time again. This pattern can be seen in some of our earlier Europa league matches as well. Liverpool F.C is not the team it once was. We cannot afford to sit the best players on the team just because it’s a league cup match or a Europa match. We cannot underestimate the so called “average” teams anymore because we no longer beat those “average” teams. We want wins, no matter what fixture it is. Had we started the first team and given them more time to play I feel we could have gotten the result we were searching for. It is important to give every player a chance to play so that they gain much needed experience but only do so when we have a solid grip on the game and hold a lead. Hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and finish the season strong. YNWA