New Attacking Style?

When Roy Hodgson was confirmed as manager of Liverpool FC the Media Spin machine seemed to go into overdrive almost immediately. Pundits were queuing up to tell us that our new manager would bring with him a new attacking style for kopites to salivate over, he would "release the constraints" placed on the team by Rafael Benitez and would entertain the masses as well as achieving a higher finish than 7th place. There was never really any basis for this view (Hodgson has never been known as a flamboyant manager, more of a pragmatist) but this is what we were told. This view was pushed harder following the signing of Joe Cole, this signing was used as evidence by some of the new attacking intent of Liverpool FC and our manager. A good performance against Rabnoticki seemed to kick this view on again and so the view was now no longer just being pushed by the media it was now accepted by a lot of people who had previously been sceptical. Since then however evidence to the contrary has been coming forward on the pitch. If performances against Trabzonspor and Arsenal in which we gave up a lot of possession and failed to exert our style on the opposition in any meaningful way went someway to curtailing things then a shambolic performance V's Man City should really have put everything into context.

The point of this post is not to slag off our style of play under Roy Hodgson in any way its more to point out that the whole exciting football myth which was pushed, then accepted, then dashed has really only served to undermine the ongoing project which Roy has in hand. It has lead to people being overly dissapointed with 2 results which really were not all that surprising, OK i didnt expect us to ship 3 without reply against Man Cty but at the same time I am not overly shocked that from our first 2 games (Arsenal at home and City away) we have only taken 1 point.

I felt in the Arsenal game we showed the discipline which we should be able to expect under Roy, however i was slightly dissapointed we did not hold posession better when at home. The defensive discipline we showed against the Gooners had lead to me being quietly confident that we might be able to frustrate City, however that confidence proved to be misplaced. The performance was poor, very poor, in fact really it could be an anomily and perhaps should not be taken to heart too much. Mascherano's antics certainly upset our preparations and I believe this could have lead to the (widely criticised) 4-4-2 formation chosen by Hodgson for this game. As a side note, when watching this game i could not help but feel that Aquilani would have been a useful weapon to have in our armoury, either in from the start behind Torres or even to come off the bench, silly to consider such things I suppose now that he is out on loan and no longer available.

At the moment we are still very much a work in progress. While trying not to get too down hearted about the recent results I am conscious of the fact that we are now under serious pressure to beat West Brom and get through to the next stage of the UEFA cup, anything less and I fear Roy will be under serious pressure regardless of how early he is into his project.