- Joined
- Aug 18, 2009
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- Liverpool
Just bizarre. What happened? Is it a lack of confidence? For me I think it comes down to communication. Watch this video and tell me if you can see him gesturing or yelling at his back 4 at any point:
This is something we've criticized him for but really it falls on the entire back 6, particularly the senior players. Watch Gerrard at the 2:17 mark of this video. Lovren was committed to pressing Oscar out wide, so it falls on both Gerrard and Moreno to recognize where the danger area is. Both are on their heels when Oscar pokes it through for Ramires and while we weren't punished for it, it was a situation that we've seen replicated week in week out this season. As a defender in particular you cannot just assume that your team mates are going to recognize danger, you defend as a unit and use all 4 pairs of eyes to analyse the situation and if you can see a team mate out of position you bloody well let him know about it. Lovren was fantastic at this while at Southampton (as you can see in that first video), he was always ensuring they were in position which is great because it's probably the most important part of his job. However, for whatever reason he seems to have lost his voice in a Liverpool shirt - I don't know if he feels like he should be deferring to Skrtel or something, but neither of them are vocal enough in commanding that back third.
The other thing you notice every week (and again it comes down to communication) is that he and Skrtel regularly get their roles mixed up when competing for 50/50 balls. Take Chelsea's first goal for example, he and Skrtel both compete for the same ball, why? That rarely happened when Agger was in the side because Agger recognized that when Skrtel was hunting the ball, his job was to sweep in behind and clear the 2nd ball if Skrtel was unable to clear it on the first attempt. This is a simple fix for a CB like Lovren who has demonstrated that he's perfectly capable in the past. I hope it's been pointed out to him, as all it requires is for him to be more aware. He's incredibly frustrating to watch because we've seen he's perfectly capable, all between the ears. Hopefully he can turn it around soon.
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