Rafa needs to sort this out and quickly!

Portsmouth Vs Liverpool Tickets Still Available!

“When you talk about Liverpool for the title, all of a sudden they’ve got frailties, and I don’t think that bodes well.

“Liverpool have lost nine goals in six matches, which is far too many. They have problems with the zonal defence.

“Carragher and Skrtel for a long time have been rock solid. But they just made one or two mistakes against West Ham.

“And when you start making mistakes you go on the pitch a bit hesitant and indecisive and before you know it you’re under pressure.” – Alan Hansen

27 in 08/09, 28 in 07/08, 27 in 06/07, 25 in 05/06. That’s our Defensive record for the past four seasons, pretty impressive isn’t it. However this term in six games we have already conceded nine goals, so what’s the problem?

Clearly set pieces and long balls into the box are causing us all sorts of problems. But why? It’s the usual centre backs we are using with Jamie Carragher and Martin Skrtel the mainstays at the back and even when Daniel Ayala was thrown in at the deep end at home to Stoke, we managed a clean sheet.

Alan Hansen is right, zonal marking is not doing the trick thus far this season and we need to snap out of our collective errors at the back. It seems to be a case that we are finding it hard to deal with basic balls into the box and our defenders don’t know who they are marking and as a result confidence and self esteem is hit and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle, fortunately scoring at the other end is not a problem and therefore we are still ending up the right side of 3-2 wins but this is not sustainable.

Rafa can obviously see whats going on and has probably rammed these points home to the players, but maybe its time to start man marking against teams with more than their fair share of big bulky players, especially on set plays. It has even on occasions got to Pepe Reina who is occasionally coming for balls he shouldn’t be considering.

It’s a big problem, but one we can hopefully shake before it becomes a real headache.

YNWA


Don’t forget to check out Online Football Manager!