Rodgers' early struggles in uncharted territory at Liverpool

Posted Monday, September 15, 2014 by ESPN

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers says it was a lack of quality not effort that was the main reason behind their surprise 1-0 loss to Aston Villa at Anfield.

When Brendan Rodgers brought in so many new faces over the summer, it wasn't a case of fixing something that wasn't broken. Liverpool's squad was so thin, and with the extra burden of Champions League fixtures, that every signing they made was a necessity.

I'm sure the idea was to bed most of the new players in slowly, introducing two or three into the starting XI initially and the others in dribs and drabs. The Capital One Cup and early Champions League group fixtures would have been ideal to give some of the other new boys the chance to get acclimated to their new surroundings before being considered for regular Premier League selection.

Certainly the last thing you want to do is throw them all in at once, unless you're a team that's in a rebuilding period, which Liverpool are not. Early-season injuries to a number of first-team regulars combined with the temptation to take some of his "shiny new toys" out of the box and play with them saw Rodgers go into Saturday's game with Aston Villa with almost a completely different team to the one that went so close to winning the title last season.

Liverpool lacked any kind of cohesion in their 1-0 defeat to Villa and were unrecognisable from the team that demolished most in its path in the second half of last year. But then they were, quite literally, "unrecognisable" from that team.

Of the 10 or 11 regular outfield starters from the run in last season, only three -- Steven Gerrard, Jordan Henderson and Philippe Coutinho -- started against Paul Lambert's side. You can perhaps add Mamadou Sakho to that (although he was not a regular last season), but the rest of the side was all new.

The dazzling football of last season was nowhere to be seen, but is that so surprising when neither were most of the players? Six of the 10 outfielders had four starts or fewer for the club, and three were making home debuts. There is always a risk when so many new players are included at once, and this one certainly blew up in Rodgers' face.

Resting 19-year-old Raheem Sterling is going to be a necessity at times this season, but surely the Champions League tie against Ludogorets on Tuesday night was a more logical time to allow him to put his feet up? With Daniel Sturridge unavailable, Liverpool needed Sterling against Villa more than ever.

Two or three months down the road -- when Sturridge is available and Adam Lallana and Lazar Markovic are up to full speed -- you can perhaps get away with leaving Sterling out, but he's the man in form right now and it was an unnecessary risk leaving him on the bench for an hour.

This is uncharted territory for Rodgers, however, having never had to deal with the extra demands of Champions League fixtures before. It's inevitable he will get some things wrong, as it is a difficult balancing act.

When the squad has been together a while, you can rotate with minimum disruption as the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City do regularly. It will take time for Liverpool to gain that level of comfort, and the lacklustre showing against Villa will probably not be a one-off, especially if they lose any more of last season's regulars to injury.

The quality of player was not Liverpool's problem on Saturday; the formation they were deployed in (4-2-3-1 didn't look good against Southampton either) and the number of new players included en masse were far more significant. Both of those are the responsibility of the manager.

Raheem Sterling did not start the Aston Villa match, and many Liverpool fans questioned Brendan Rodgers' decision.

Rodgers has every right to feel disappointed and angry that he will be without Sturridge for three weeks, but on paper Liverpool should still have had more than enough to overcome Villa.

The similarities with the Chelsea game from April were there for all to see, and the worry now has to be whether Liverpool can break down teams that defend deep and in numbers. Anfield was a fortress last season, and teams were often blown away by an avalanche of goals and devastating attacking play.

Rodgers needs to find a way to recapture that quickly as his team has been poor in both of its opening home fixtures. He is certainly capable of doing so as he's a terrific coach and Liverpool have come on in leaps and bounds under his leadership. The biggest obstacle he faces over the coming months is he simply doesn't have enough time to work with the players on the training ground.

Liverpool will mostly be playing two games a week now for a few months, meaning there will be lots of recovery days and training geared towards each specific fixture. Last year they'd have a full week to prepare between games and for Rodgers to implement his ideas in training. The results of that were there for all to see.

It's perhaps inevitable the Reds would have a stuttering start this season and long term there appears to be little cause for alarm. The short term might be a bit rocky, though. Liverpool appear to have bought well in the summer and will surely improve as the season goes on. I fully expect them to once again be very strong in the second half of the season, but will they be too far off the pace by then? Any more performances like this one and they may well be.