Why Roy Hodgson's Unsuccesful Tenure As Liverpool Manager Must End
January 5, 2011
Forget the media conferences where Roy blames everything from the Liverpool fans to the the culture origins of a reporter. Forget his gross mismanagement of quality players like Daniel Agger, Glen Johnson and Ryan Babel. Forget the bundling transfers of Poulsen and Konchesky.
Football is won and lost on the pitch. Managers have the task of preparing the players both mentally and physically for the game ahead and setting about a structure to which the players will abide too. The beauty of these tactics is a well-organised team can beat a team of better quality based on a cohesive plan preformed to perfection.
Unfortunately for all to see, Liverpool have been far from cohesive, leading them to a terrible season thus far. I will outline some hard truths about Roy's inept tactical approach and how his methods that have worked for the last 30 years are outdated and ineffective.
1. Pepe Reina
Pepe Reina is what is called a sweeper keeper. The joy with the sweeper keeper is that the defensive line can be pushed up further with the keeper ready to anticipate danger and sweep long balls over the top or through balls. Reina is one of the best—if not the best—sweeper keeper in the world. So why has Roy found it necessary to change Pepe's approach to the game?
It's no secret that Roy's teams play very deep, thus limiting Pepe's effectiveness as a sweeper keeper. Unfortunately, more suited to Roy's approach to the defensive line is a strong aerial keeper who can claim crosses, thus limiting the opposition's long ball game and telling teams to pass through us. Pepe is good aerially but not brilliant, and tends to punch the ball, which can put us on the back foot for longer with such a deep defensive line.
But even more important to that has been Reina's distribution. Rafa's philosophy in football was simply to control the game. Liverpool hounded the opposition high up the field defensively, and they played a slow tempo and kept possession until an opportunity presented itself offensively. Pepe was the first line of attack.
Case Study
In the corresponding fixtures last year, Reina had a distribution percentage of 96.8 percent. This year it is a lowly 61 percent. The figure would have been lower if not for the last 10 minutes, where Reina's distribution improved coincidentally with the big Greek going up front.
In fact, most of Reina's successful punts past the circle came in the last 10 minutes. These figures are damming to Roy and in no way reflect badly on Pepe. Reina is a consummate professional to do exactly what the manager wants, even though it is unsuccessful.
2. Torres Is Not Bobby Zamora
Simple right? With Reina pumping more long balls, they have to go somewhere. To Roy's credit, he found out much later in his Liverpool tenure that Torres will never be able to hold the ball up and win it in the air as much as Zamora.
Unfortunately, in his plan to change the system to suit the personnel, he decided to throw Ngog in the deep end and become that player.
Look, everyone knows Torres isn't exactly on form and confidence is low, yet Roy continued to employ him in possibly the weakest role he could. That's piss poor management.
3. Defending Deep
Roy likes his back line deep. Rafa liked it high up the field, pressing the opposition. Whichever is more successful depends on your personnel.
Houiller was hugely successful, with the Henchoz Hyypia pairing defending deep. It was successful because Hyypia cleared the long ball threat and Henchoz covered the space behind like a sweeper. Even at times in the FA Cup final, he was a sweeper keeper.
To employ a high back line, you need pace, a ball-playing defender, and a covering defender. Barcelona have Pique (ball-playing) and Puyol (covering defender), and it works brilliantly with Busquets protecting them both. The passing exploits mean they very rarely need much pace on the back line.
Rafa had Carragher (covering) and Agger (ball playing) as his high line partnership. Now defending isn't as simple as this, and you balance depending on your opponent's strengths.
Liverpool's defence can utilize both a high line or a deep line. Roy chose the latter, which may have led to standout performances from Kyrgiakos. As a whole, however, he has been employed in games we didn't need to defend so deep.
Take for example Wolves. Hennessey's goal kicks were predictable, and targeted one person: Paul Konchesky.
Nearly all goal kicks were at the right side of the Wolves midfield. This dragged Skrtel out wide to cover Konchesky and left Kyrgiakos with Banks Blake in a ground duel. Simple but effective tactics. Injuries may have forced Roy's hand, but if Agger was fit, would he even be playing anyway?
4. Long Ball Tactics
The main truth is Roy's long ball tactics don't suit the current team of players. It's ineffective due to having no aerial presence up front and a team better suited for playing short passes. Hodgson wants the team in his own image, but the fact is that when Rafa came in 2005 and purchased Josemi, Nunez, Alonso and Garcia, he transformed a deep-defending, counter-attacking Liverpool team into a possession-orientated, controlled attacking team.
Roy, on the other hand, purchased Poulsen, Konscheky and Raul Meireles, a passing Portuguese midfielder, a defensive midfielder and a small stature left back respectively. Now the problem isn't the personnel; it's the fact he bought them to play a system of long balls? No cohesion!
If I was Roy, I would have purchased a target man striker. Zigic was available, and I'm pretty sure Carew could have been purchased from Villa. I believe Konchesky would have benefited from a target man up front; the whole team would have if it was Roy's plan to play long ball. Instead, he bought a passing midfielder who was gonna get shifted out, right?
Case Study
Even in victory, Rafa's tactics meant we dominated possession further up the field. This was a different Villa team also: a motivated Martin O'Neill team against a demotivated Gerard Houiller team. Roy's winning Liverpool side had 25 percent of their passing in the top section of the field, where the striker and attacking midfielders would play; Rafa had 33 percent. If Rafa was too defensive for Andy Gray, then what the blue hell is Roy?
Conclusion
There are a lot of problems developing with the Roy Hodgson era at the moment. He asks for the team in his image, yet Liverpool managers before him have done just fine getting the team to adopt to his system. With any system, there is a core to it, and I think Roy missed the core ingredient to his 30-year system: a strong target man and a keeper with strong aerial presence.
He should have acknowledged the players' talents that he already has and tried something new. Instead, he tried to fit square pegs into round holes, and it backfired spectacularly. Unfortunately the victims have been us, the Liverpool fans.