In all seriousness, the interesting thing about the fallout from the Villa game is that Stevie's role us up for discussion. I was thinking about it over the weekend and Rogers has done that really well. He also seems like he's learning his lessons and admits when he gots it wrong. 2 articles from The Guardian sort of say the same thing. If he can use these lessons well, then it was worth the dropped 2 points imo.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/jan/20/premier-league-talking-points
2) Rodgers's Gerrard discussion may come sooner than expected
Over his long and illustrious career Steven Gerrard has made headlines by being a gallivanting giant around the pitch,
shooting down the odds stacked against his team with incredible strikes, lung-busting runs and bone-crunching tackles. What he has never been, is a midfield metronome. At his most effective he was a second striker to Fernando Torres. At his most prolific, he was a right-sided midfielder who cut in. In both these roles his athleticism was key. Tailoring this kind of game is difficult for an ageing player who has never been able to control traffic in midfield, instead preferring to bustle his way through it. Rodgers's midfield has looked at its most fluent this season with a trio of Lucas Leiva, Joe Allen and Jordan Henderson, each sharing the responsibility between them in the absence of Gerrard. Henderson, particularly, has looked like the shackles have been taken off without the shadow of his club captain looming over him.
Gerrard struggled badly in the first half of the 2-2 draw against Aston Villa. He may not be a spent force yet, especially given that Lucas – whose presence as a second-half substitute brought an assuredness back into Liverpool's play –
may face a spell on the sidelines, but if a successful Champions League push means fielding a midfield without England's World Cup captain, then Rodgers may have to get even more creative with his formations or find himself having a tricky conversation much sooner than anticipated.
Gregg Bakowski
And Brodge admitting he got things wrong....
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jan/19/liverpool-brendan-rodgers-aston-villa-draw
Liverpool will intensify efforts this week to sign Mohamed Salah, the 21-year-old Egyptian winger whom Basel rate at £12m. More ingenuity, more excitement and more depth are always welcome, though they are not necessarily the priorities for Brendan Rodgers on the evidence of another Anfield trial by
Aston Villa.
Like Lloyd Bridges's character in Airplane!, who picked the wrong week to give up smoking, amphetamines and sniffing glue, Rodgers chose an inopportune time to promote Liverpool's title claims, Steven Gerrard's development as a deep-lying midfielder in the Andrea Pirlo class and then to rest Lucas Leiva. And the wrong opponents. "Probably across the board we were not very good," the Liverpool manager conceded. "Myself included."
Villa's midfield diamond and front two prospered as an imbalanced Liverpool toiled without the Brazilian midfielder's astute protection. They resembled a cohesive, potent unit for the 21 second-half minutes Lucas was on the pitch. His exit with a knee injury after an innocuous collision with Fabian Delph may have serious repercussions for Liverpool's campaign – and perhaps January's transfer business – should scans over the next 48 hours confirm the worst. "It's in God's hands," tweeted Lucas after leaving Anfield on crutches.
It would be wrong, however, to pin a disjointed Liverpool performance and anxiety-strewn draw on one selection decision by Rodgers. "For me, the system is irrelevant," he said. "The style will always be maintained to control and dominate games. I felt we could be aggressive and our front two would really give them a problem but we never got control of midfield and we couldn't build the game from behind."
