Football’s First Defender

In the end, Liverpool still played 3-0 away and easily defeated Tottenham, who had performed quite well before.

The doubts that Liverpool suffered after losing to Manchester City were completely shattered by Liverpool's victory in this strong dialogue.

Liverpool is still that Liverpool team. Although it may not have the dominance most of the time last season, it is still a T ONE team in the Premier League.

After the three rounds of the Premier League, it was the national team's match day. For the Chinese team, which no longer had the task of a major competition, some warm-up matches against underdogs in Asia were naturally not worth Yang Feng's traveling back and forth from Europe.

Yang Feng's national team debut continued to be postponed.

It's just that the Liverpool team itself is still being caught seriously. Sterling, who has been given high expectations recently, was directly promoted to the England national team. The England coach needs more young players to speed up the replacement of the Three Lions.

Sterling, who performed very well in the Premier League, was directly treated as the main force in the friendly match of the Three Lions for two games.

The name is to see the strength of the rookie and how well he cooperates with other players in the national team.

But such high-intensity use of Sterling also made Rogers scold his mother in anger at the Liverpool base.

The physical fitness of players is limited. Although Sterling, who played twice a week, was young, he was also sluggish after returning to Liverpool.

After thinking about it, in the fourth round against Villa, Sterling was not scheduled to start.

Coutinho replaced Sterling in the starting position, but the tactics of the Liverpool team have not changed, but the role of the midfielder is given to Coutinho.

Unlike Sterling's style of relying on speed, Coutinho's dribbling ability, similar to Chelsea's Hazard, can bring Liverpool a different way of attack.

However, Liverpool, which suffered from the FIFA virus, performed extremely poorly in this game.

Even in their own Anfield stadium, but the team faced Villa, who performed extremely well at the beginning of the season, but they did not play enough suppression at all.

In Liverpool's starting lineup, Coutinho replaced Sterling alone, but on the court, Liverpool simply could not create enough threatening offenses.

The most unqualified thing for Liverpool today is the team's running.

The continuous national team match days have had a great impact on the physical fitness of the players. Liverpool, which should be younger and more energetic, is at an absolute disadvantage in terms of running distance against Villa players who have rested for two full weeks .

Liverpool, playing at home, has indeed always controlled the offensive initiative on the field. However, in the case of Villa's resolute implementation of the defensive counterattack strategy, there is not enough running. offensive opportunities.

Liverpool still use more crosses from the wing, try to pass the ball into the penalty area, and find the double strikers Balotelli and Sturridge.

The game had just begun, and Liverpool's offensive from the left took the lead.

After attracting Villa's defense to tilt to this side, Moreno completed the transfer of the ball on the left, and accurately found the ball outside the penalty area, Balotelli near the center.

Balotelli jumped directly to head the ball and headed the ball to the empty space on the right.

Glenn Johnson plugged in on the right. After receiving the ball, he did not adjust directly and sent a precise cross.

A quick arc pass passed directly to the front of Villa's small penalty area.

After crossing diagonally, Sturridge took off and shook his head to attack the goal, heading towards the back point.

However, in the end, the ball still didn't control the angle well, and the football rebounded to the ground. When Villa's goalkeeper couldn't complete the save action at all, the ball finally almost brushed the goal post and flew out of the bottom line.

Liverpool almost finished the opening blitz.

Sometimes good or bad luck can make all the difference in the outcome of a game.

Sturridge's header before Liverpool was a hair's breadth away, but two minutes later, Villa fully demonstrated what it means to be lucky.

Villa seized the pass error of Liverpool's midfielder and made a quick counterattack. The Villa player directly kicked the ball from the side, and Yang Feng, who was defended in place, directly stretched his legs to complete the destruction.

Yang Feng just gave Villa a corner kick.

But it was this corner kick that gave Villa the lead in the game.

The corner kick was taken and passed to the middle of the penalty area. When Gerrard and the opposing midfielder Smith competed for the top, both of them touched the football, which caused the football to change direction.

The ball bounced directly not far from the penalty area.

Everyone rushed to the landing point of the ball and worked hard, but Alabangho himself stood in the landing area.

Yang Feng and Skrtel were not given a chance to defend.

He turned sideways and shot in the air.

Mignolet's divine reaction, this time there is no way to face such a close-range shot.

The ball was swept directly to the dead corner in the lower right corner of the goal by Alabangho.

1 to 0!

Liverpool's offensive did not score a goal before, and Villa scored directly with the first shot of the game.

Alabangho celebrated crazily with his teammates at Anfield. In the past season, this was a nightmare home for all teams in the Premier League. It is hoped that it will be broken by a "civilian team" like Villa for more than a season. undefeated gold.

With a goal in less than 10 minutes of the opening game, the Villa team, which took the lead, insisted on their defensive counterattack tactics even more.

All the players returned to their own half, setting up one line of defense after another, making it more difficult for Liverpool to attack afterwards.

Liverpool's offensive, facing Villa's iron barrel formation, has not played too many smooth offenses at all.

Even looking back, at the beginning of the game, Sturridge's header was Liverpool's best scoring opportunity in the first half.

Throughout the first half, facing Villa's iron barrel formation, Liverpool has been unable to find a chance to create a threatening shot.

During the intermission, Rogers made quite bold tactical adjustments.

The midfielder directly replaced Aspers and added three forwards, hoping to break the defensive situation of Villa on the field.

The addition of forward numbers, however, doesn't do much to really improve the offense.

Villa have enough players to pile up in the penalty area.

And what about Liverpool?

Balotelli, Sturridge, Aspas, even Coutinho in midfield, Henderson and Gerrard are not the kind of players who are very good at fighting for the top.

However, when Liverpool's penetration in the center was greatly restricted, they could only use two sides, relying on the front of the full-back to drive the ball, but you couldn't get past the defense of Villa's central defender at all. Most of the crosses were passed. Villa's defensive players successfully cleared the siege, and did not allow Liverpool's offensive players to have a chance to shoot in the penalty area.

The game time is passing by little by little, and Liverpool has been unable to break the deadlock at home for a long time, which has made the mentality of some Liverpool players have begun to become anxious.

Although Villa had 2 wins and 1 draw in the first three rounds of this season, and their points were higher than Liverpool, but this kind of non-big six giants team, Liverpool did not take a fancy to it at first.

Especially the Anfield stadium, for Liverpool, is a venue where gods block and kill gods, and gods block and kill gods. I didn't expect Villa to really cause such huge trouble for themselves.

If you can't score a goal, everything is in vain. After 60 minutes of the game, Liverpool began to attack more vigorously.

Completely disregarding the defense is to try to equalize the score or even overtake the score in the game.

The two full-backs began to play like wingers, and the double center-back line of Yang Feng and Skrtel was also constantly advancing to meet the team-mates whose overall lineup was advanced.

It's just that, under the anxious state of mind, there is still a lack of tacit cooperation, which makes Liverpool's offense not very holistic.

The team consciously tried several collective offenses, but failed to achieve very good offensive results, and finally fell into the previous mode of fighting each other.

At this moment of crisis for the team, everyone can only hope that someone can stand up and use his personal strength to save the team and allow the team to continue the unbeaten home game of the league for more than a year.

Unfortunately, that hero has never appeared in Liverpool.

On the contrary, it was Villa's counterattack, which played even more vigorously when Liverpool were all on top.

In the whole game, Villa's shots were definitely not as many as Liverpool's, but every shot by Villa was a very threatening offensive round, while Liverpool's shots were mostly long-range shots that were not too threatening.

After 70 minutes of the game, thanks to Liverpool's crazy offensive, Villa's counterattack became more threatening every time.

It's just that Yang Feng, who is guarding Liverpool's defense line, played really well in this game.

No chance for Villa to fight back.

Either use foul actions of receiving yellow cards, or directly complete interceptions, steals, or try their best to block some angles after the opponent enters the dangerous area of ​​​​the penalty area, so as to reduce Mignolet's defensive area.

In the second half, Yang Feng's dedicated defense prevented Villa from scoring a goal to expand the score.

Let the game point difference remain stable at one goal, giving Liverpool hope of recovering the score.

However, this time, the hope did not become a reality after all. With the defense doing its best to ensure that Villa did not score again, Liverpool's offensive players did not knock on Villa's door throughout the game.

Villa's performance was really good, and they played a very representative game in this game.

It directly broke Liverpool's unbeaten home game in the league for more than a year.

After losing the game, Liverpool suffered doubts again.

Especially regarding Liverpool, the doubts about the ability to attack tough problems have reached the maximum.

The offensive means of positional warfare, Liverpool today is extremely single.

Last season, the small-scale teamwork has not been revealed after Suarez left the team this season.

Although Liverpool's counterattack ability has not declined, it has improved due to the growth of Sterling and others.

But if you can't break the deadlock and take the lead, how can there be a chance to defend and counterattack?

In La Liga, Barcelona, ​​who got Suarez, has killed all sides in La Liga, and the team's offensive firepower has been further improved.

With Suarez's containment and passing, Messi's data is rising slowly, which also makes many fans miss Suarez and vent their anger on Liverpool's management and coaching staff.

"Why did you let Suarez go?"

After losing to Aston Villa, some people even questioned that Liverpool was just like last year's Tottenham. After selling the core offensive players, even if the team spent money to buy personnel, the team's competitiveness has declined seriously. , There is no previous offensive deterrence at all.

Amidst the renewed doubts, the fifth round of the Liverpool League is an away game against West Ham United.

If we talk about the previous game against Villa, Liverpool can say that the FIFA virus affected the performance of the players.

In this away game against the "Hammer Gang" West Ham United, Liverpool had a full week of recuperation, and the players should have recovered from the fatigue of the national team match day.

However, what everyone did not expect was that Liverpool once again performed quite weakly in this game.

The team's biggest problem is still the tacit cooperation between the midfield and the frontcourt.

In this game, Rogers emphasized the cooperation of passing and cutting, and began to limit the offense on the side.

However, Liverpool, which focuses on penetration in the middle, forcibly dug holes for their defense.

With the increase in the number of passes in the middle, Liverpool's turnovers also began to increase.

Especially in the connection with the new aid Balotelli, everyone still passes the ball according to the way Suarez sends the ball, but Balotelli obviously does not adapt to this offensive rhythm.

The pass could not form a cooperation, but instead increased the chance of stealing the ball for the home team, which directly threatened Liverpool's defense in turn.

In the first half of the game, West Ham United relied on counterattacks to achieve a 2-0 lead.

It wasn't that Yang Feng was weak, but the opponent's counterattack was extremely fast, and even scored the second goal. After stealing the ball in midfield, West Ham United directly formed a 3-on-2 situation.

And all the attack points on Yang Feng's side were feints.

There were no West Ham United players. On Yang Feng's side, everyone passed the ball before Yang Feng rushed over, or they didn't even touch the ball at all, just running and pulling away Yang Feng's defense.

Falling behind by two goals at halftime, Rodgers had to make offensive substitution adjustments at midfield.

Although Sturridge's 64-minute goal allowed Liverpool to see the hope of winning points again.

However, West Ham United's quick counterattack in the 81st minute of the game completely killed the suspense of the game.

3 to 1!

Liverpool suffered a two-game losing streak.

Liverpool, which won the championship with an unbeaten record last season, began to "pay off debts" directly this season.

Why is there such a big change in the strength of the team?

What happened to Liverpool?

Can the problem of offense be solved?

It has become the biggest question that plagues Liverpool fans.