We need to score more goals from midfield

So the only way I can think of us scoring more goals from this department is to replace the none goal scoring midfielders with the goal scoring midfielders.

Drop Jermaine Pennant on the RW and move Gerrard from the centre of the midfield as he is not been that effective there, he should be moved onto the right of midfield where he scored 23 goals in one season from.

As Gerrard has been moved from the centre of midfield to the right of midfield that means someone will need to fill in, but who? Xabi Alonso? No because he doesn't score enough goals, Lucas Leiva? Not yet, Momo Sissoko? No way, Yossi Benayoun? Yes! Why? Because he is the only other player who could play attacking midfield in the Gerrard role. He is not a Gerrard type player but he is an attacking player who'd give us flair, fluency and creativity, also this is his best position.

Next to Benayoun would have to be one defensive midfielder to balance things out. It would be between Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano & Momo Sissoko. Personally I'd chose Javier Mascherano because like Benayoun he is fluent, quick and can pass a ball but the most important is the fact that he's our best tackler we have in midfield, a player who reads the game better than most.

On the left wing is in my opinion my hardest choice to chose. Ryan Babel? Harry Kewell? Fabio Aurelio? John Arne Riise? I'd chose Ryan Babel simply because he's the only player who can play down the flanks for us with something to prove. He is only 20 years old, we can see he's got potential and we know he can score goals. If you going to play with wingers then play with two wingers but Babel and Gerrard are not wingers, but they can play on the side of midfield with the ability to score goals and create goals which I personally think Riise, Aurelio, Pennant and Kewell are poor at.

This midfield would be very creative, fluent, quick and clever, and most important would be I feel that they are well balanced.
Midfield is the main department of the team. It's like the brain of the body, it controls the game. So if you have two defensive midfielders in the middle of the park the game might be a bit slow, and too solid. If you want to play creative football, then you need to play with creative midfielders and I think Pennant & Riise are far from being creative. Two defensive midfielders wouldn't be creative enough, Gerrard thinks his best posistion is in the middle but really Rafa knows what Stevie's best posistion is and thats on the right. He won UEFA right sided midfielder of the year when he scored 23 goals from that posisition. If we had a midfield of Riise, Mascherano, Gerrard, Pennant then where is the creativity going to come from? Gerrard has been poor in the middle so far this season, Pennant and Riise are predictable and the best they can give is blind hit crosses into the box, Mascherano is a defensive midfielder.

My Midfield:

Babel---Mascherano---Benayoun---Gerrard

This is sort of what i feel, the problem is that rafa rotates, so that team may play now and again, but mostly never, would like to see what happens when this team is fielded, i would give Lucas Leiva a chance though, he seems to be a brilliant prospect

Wasn't our previous problem that our strikers weren't scoring enough goals?

What next - our centre halves aren't scoring enough goals from set pieces?

Your post made the statement but can you clarify why our midfield need to score more goals exactly?

I think the balance of a holding midfielder such as Mascherano and then an attacking Gerrard works perfectly.  

So far this season we have played 13 games and scored 24 goals.

- 15 goals from our strikers
- 8 goals from midfield/defenders
- 1 own goal.

I think this looks perfectly reasonable to be honest, and after the sufferences of previous years when we have constantly bemoaned the lack of goals from up front this looks healthy to me.

So my point is - what's your point?

I think that we need to do something different to get out of this "sticky" phase, perhaps having a more attack minded midfield could do it?

My point is not just goals from the midfield. If you had read the whole post you'd of known where I was comming from!

My point is having that kind of midfield would not just mean our midfielders would score more often, it would create more chances for players such as Torres and Voronin.

If you really think we are going to be playing good attacking football with Sissoko, Pennant and Riise in midfield then you have another thing comming. They are useless, they can't score OR create! Gerrard plays better when he is on the right because he cuts in and becomes a threat then, he has so much energy that he can cover both posistions! Benayoun should play in the middle because he's more creative than Gerrard is.

Think about it, Gerrard has so much pace and energy, he has a brilliant cross on him so really his best position should be on the right and I think the season we finished with 82 points proved that!

So JD, tell me what your midfield would be and why...

My point is not just goals from the midfield. If you had read the whole post you'd of known where I was comming from!

And my point is I don't think we have major problems with our strike rate.  You mentioned Gerrard lot in your post about him being on the right etc.  Those 2 games when we scored 10 goals in two games he wasn't playing. You can point at the opposition but the fact is we were clinical in those games.

So JD, tell me what your midfield would be and why...

 

So the only way I can think of us scoring more goals from this department is to replace the none goal scoring midfielders with the goal scoring midfielders.

Drop Jermaine Pennant on the RW and move Gerrard from the centre of the midfield as he is not been that effective there, he should be moved onto the right of midfield where he scored 23 goals in one season from.

As Gerrard has been moved from the centre of midfield to the right of midfield that means someone will need to fill in, but who? Xabi Alonso? No because he doesn't score enough goals, Lucas Leiva? Not yet, Momo Sissoko? No way, Yossi Benayoun? Yes! Why? Because he is the only other player who could play attacking midfield in the Gerrard role. He is not a Gerrard type player but he is an attacking player who'd give us flair, fluency and creativity, also this is his best position.

Next to Benayoun would have to be one defensive midfielder to balance things out. It would be between Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano & Momo Sissoko. Personally I'd chose Javier Mascherano because like Benayoun he is fluent, quick and can pass a ball but the most important is the fact that he's our best tackler we have in midfield, a player who reads the game better than most.

On the left wing is in my opinion my hardest choice to chose. Ryan Babel? Harry Kewell? Fabio Aurelio? John Arne Riise? I'd chose Ryan Babel simply because he's the only player who can play down the flanks for us with something to prove. He is only 20 years old, we can see he's got potential and we know he can score goals. If you going to play with wingers then play with two wingers but Babel and Gerrard are not wingers, but they can play on the side of midfield with the ability to score goals and create goals which I personally think Riise, Aurelio, Pennant and Kewell are poor at.

This midfield would be very creative, fluent, quick and clever, and most important would be I feel that they are well balanced.
Midfield is the main department of the team. It's like the brain of the body, it controls the game. So if you have two defensive midfielders in the middle of the park the game might be a bit slow, and too solid. If you want to play creative football, then you need to play with creative midfielders and I think Pennant & Riise are far from being creative. Two defensive midfielders wouldn't be creative enough, Gerrard thinks his best posistion is in the middle but really Rafa knows what Stevie's best posistion is and thats on the right. He won UEFA right sided midfielder of the year when he scored 23 goals from that posisition. If we had a midfield of Riise, Mascherano, Gerrard, Pennant then where is the creativity going to come from? Gerrard has been poor in the middle so far this season, Pennant and Riise are predictable and the best they can give is blind hit crosses into the box, Mascherano is a defensive midfielder.

My Midfield:

Babel---Mascherano---Benayoun---Gerrard

Yeah, well said, i've said it all along Jermaine Pennant does not have the speed to outrun defenders and parking him at the half way mark is a sheer waste of time and a liability in the event he looses the ball. How many times have we seen him dribbling the ball from the half way line to the corner and swinging in the passes? Hardly any. Even if he does so, the quality of his crosses is extremely poor, either over hit or under hit (one wonders what he does in training). He is only effective when near the opposition corner and Rafa is too blind not to see that. I'd prefer we get a natural winger comes Jan. perhaps Querasma. Keep SG in the middle and partner him with Mascherano who has shown glimpes of attacking flair in the game against Spurs and should be encouraged to do so more often. Besides that, he moves fast on the attack with his swashbuckling style and i don't think opposition defenders fancy marking him. He has shown that he's not scared to take on oposition defenders, that's what we need most now from our team. Momo, well he's still got a long way to go with his first touch which always lets him down. We've got to be honest, he's only a defending midfielder and that's no good for us. Only uses him when we're 5 goals up. Xabi, well i've always thought that he's too soft and slow and does not have that creative ability and when he tried to be hard he normally gets a yellow card. 

On the left, as a stop gap measure, Ryan Babel is ok but need to get one proven left winger comes Jan. Harry Kewell (injured too often), JAR (too slow and too much left footed and can't go pass the half way line unless he's already parked himself high up in the opposition half)) and Fabio Aurello (Slow and does not have the physique) are not ideal wingers. Ryan Babel has good ball dribbling skills, fast and robust, pair him with Torres which may get us the goals & sell Crouch (back passes and tumbles too often & can't score the easy goals but scored the difficult ones) comes January. Benayoun has the attacking flair and creative and can  be parked beside SG if we need more attcking flair.

Goals whether from MF or the strikers is not the issue main ussue, however its the chances we create is a worry for me, We dont create enough. Look at Arsenal,  manure(apart from this season), the chavs create numerous clear chances in most games. We on the other hand create 5-6 clear chances in 1 game and then 5 or 6 clear chances over 3-4 games. So how do we create more chances on a consistent basis, I think the key is Stevie G but not from central MF. Give Stevie a free role, he has the energy and class, so give him the base and let him do his stuff. 
My team would read as a 4-2-3-1 formation that you could change to a 4-4-2 to a 4-3-3 to 4-4-1-1 and on and on (enough attacking options here I would thnk)
                            Reina
finnan            Carra       Agger      Arbeloa/Riise
           Mascherano/Sissoko     Alonso
Voronin/Benayoun   Stevie      Babel/Kewell
                            Torres

If we play Stevie out wide and play Alonso and Mascherano in the middle i dont see us getting any more goals from the middle of the park as the other 2 arent really attck minded in the same way that Stevie is,plus wed end up with the old argument of should Stevie be in the middle after a few games out wide.

Keep SG in the middle and partner him with Mascherano who has shown glimpes of attacking flair in the game against Spurs and should be encouraged to do so more often. Besides that, he moves fast on the attack with his swashbuckling style and I don't think opposition defenders fancy marking him. He has shown that he's not scared to take on oposition defenders, that's what we need most now from our team.

Spot on mate I agree that Gerrard and Masch work well together in the middle and all this talk of having Gerrard on the wing is quite frankly ridiculous as all the times Rafa has played him there he's had a below average game and you can see from watching previous games (including while playing for England) that he is a natural centre midfielder and he has created more chances from that position for both club and country.

Drop Jermaine Pennant on the RW and move Gerrard from the centre of the midfield as he is not been that effective there, he should be moved onto the right of midfield where he scored 23 goals in one season from.

Fair point but Gerrard is a midfielder and it should be down to his service to the forward's scoring the goals not him contending to be the club's top scorer it makes the midfield quite venerable and I for one would prefer fewer goals from Gerrard while he's playing in the centre than risking more goals being conceded.

If we play Stevie out wide and play Alonso and Mascherano in the middle I dont see us getting any more goals from the middle of the park as the other 2 arent really attck minded in the same way that Stevie is,plus wed end up with the old argument of should Stevie be in the middle after a few games out wide.

Spot on mate I agree that Gerrard and Masch work well together in the middle and all this talk of having Gerrard on the wing is quite frankly ridiculous as all the times Rafa has played him there he's had a below average game and you can see from watching previous games (including while playing for England) that he is a natural centre midfielder and he has created more chances from that position for both club and country.

Fair point but Gerrard is a midfielder and it should be down to his service to the forward's scoring the goals not him contending to be the club's top scorer it makes the midfield quite venerable and I for one would prefer fewer goals from Gerrard while he's playing in the centre than risking more goals being conceded.

Kelv78, there does not need to be a fixation about getting goals from the center of the park. The key is how does the MF get the team more goals. The MF must control and dictate the tempo of the game which leads to goals, CMF does not need to get loads of goals,

AJ, Stevie G and alot of others might think he is a natural CM player, he might want to play there and aot of people want him to play there, but to get the best for LFC(Not Stevie) then he should not play CM. you say "below average games on the right wing" - well so far this season in CM when he has played he has been below average in most, if not all the games and we have little control of alot of the games when he has played in CM.The key point here is, for all his world class abilities, controlling the MF and the game is not one of them.
Stevie should be given the freedom of the park to have a free role.Whether he starts on the right, left or where ever, he needs to have this license so he drive the team with his inspirational long passing, marauding runs, crunching tackles(he can do all these from anywhere in the park)  knowing he has the solidity of Masch and Alonso to control and dictate the tempo of the MF and the game.
You think the MF is vulnerable without Stevie G,  I think not when you have Masch and Alonso

You think the MF is vulnerable without Stevie G,  I think not when you have Masch and Alonso

Where is Alonso right now? and ok I agree that he needs a free role but surely not on the wing when we only have Mash and Sissoko atm that can control the centre.  I would like to see him play there a few games but just to keep things steady if the strikers are scoring little and not as a permenant fixture.

The thing is Alonso needs a free role aswell as Gerrard does otherwise you'll never see the best out of him. With Sissoko and Mascherano they are better players when they are kept to one role, especially Mascherano.