Give Gomez his chance! The Liverpool back four we want against Bournemouth
By David Gate
Liverpool need a dynamic performance on Sunday against Bournemouth in the Premier League. Here is the back four that will hep the Reds get the vital win.
Aside from Dejan Lovren’s naive moment against Everton (though it wasn’t a penalty) we have defended well in the last six games. In that span we have conceded only three goals and have kept three clean sheets.
So surely everything is fine with our back four? Not so fast. The pressure has been off the defense against a teams who have no intention of attack (West Brom and Everton). Against Spartak Moscow, Brighton and Stoke we went ahead early and hit them on the counter attack.
That is how our defense is designed to be. Only against Chelsea did they have to stretch themselves. And we could keep the clean sheet on that occasion.
The two most recent games shows us where the back four needs to improve. We can’t just be happy with clearances and tackles. We need incisive passing and movement from our back four. That means more flexibility; full backs who can overlap and join the attack; a center half who can bring the ball out.
There is much debate in the fanbase about whether or not the heavy rotation (5 or 6 players a game) is helping or hurting us. It is certainly good from an injury perspective and for the long-term fitness of key players. The flipside is that the team is certainly suffering from a lack of momentum.
We would be better off in the next run of games only making 3 or 4 changes. The exception will be where there is only two days between the Leicester game on Dec 30th and the Burnley trip on New Year’s Day.
Here is the back four we want to against Bournemouth…