masterwig said:
I think it is more productive to compare ourselves to Villa.
Man for man I'd say we are at least even. But their performances have been miles ahead of ours. We have to look at why that is. It is easy to say the difference is simply that O'Neill is a better manager but I think that perhaps the difference is more complex than that. O'Neill has had more time at the club to mould the team. Having never been involved in professional football I couldn't say how long it takes to put major changes in place but it may well take longer than 8 months. Sven got off to a flyer and that has possibly hurt Hughes' reputation. However, I think that in those glorious early days with Sven we were a very fragile team and rode our luck a lot. Once the luck started to go against us and injuries etc mounted up we could all see how weak the team really was.
@ Falling Star, I always had the Liverpool system as something like this:
GK
RB CB CB LB
DM DM
AMR AMC AML
ST
Perhaps with the likes of Alonso given a defensive midfield job but with a touch more freedom to move forward. Gerrard as the AMC, with the likes of Babel, Benayoun and Kuyt being asked to play on the 'wings'. Wingers is actually a misnomer here, as the AM 3 is very narrow, and you don't seem to see the FBs pushing on so much.
IMO this makes Liverpool a bit of a one trick pony, so if you come up against a team like City which is generally very good at dealing with stuff coming through the middle but very easily embarrased by attacks from the flanks (look how you scored), you'll tend to struggle. The red filth's succes is built on being able to score using a wide vareity of different types of 'play'. Ie the high ball/ direct route down the middle, crosses into the box from wide, counter attacks, through balls into the channels, etc etc. They're better at exposing a weakness in a defence. The twats.
