Upon reflection of Liverpool’s 2-2 result against Newcastle on Saturday, one player whose absence was felt for Liverpool was left back Jose Enrique. Brendan Rodgers said in his post match press conference:
”Jose was injured. He’s had a problem all season with his knee and he’s struggled.
“In fairness to him, he’s put himself out for the team to go out and play.
“But he was suffering with it and we just felt it was best for him to come out and make it right. And that coincided with Aly Cissokho coming back.
“With Cissokho and Glen Johnson, the running and the work that they put in today was brilliant, considering they had literally just re-joined training.
“The role they played [wing-back] demands that they have to get up the pitch and they’ve got to get back. So it’s a great credit to them.”
Aly Cissokho filled in for Enrique as he made his first Premier League start for Liverpool. One can see that Cissokho needs some time to adjust his game to suite Liverpool and the Premier League as a whole. The French left back was too one dimensional in my analysis and always used his left foot wanting to beat the defender on the outside when he clearly does not have the pace to do so.
From an attacking point of view, Cissokho offered very little going forward considering the amount of space he had down the left, space that Enrique would have used more wisely.
One can also lay the blame of Newcastle’s second goal on Cissokho as he was ball watching when the ball came into the box and he did not pick up the man he was marking.
It was a game for Cissokho to quickly forget and learn from it and I am sure he will be told at Melwood what he needs to work on if he wants to push Enrique for a starting role in the side. For now let us hope that Enrique makes a speedy recovery and is available for the game against West Brom.
Hope Enrique gets well soon
“wanting to beat the defender on the outside when he clearly does not have the pace to do so” Are you kidding? Aly is one the quickest players in the Liverpool team and Enrique is more wasteful going forward imo. Enrique is a beast in defence so I’d pick him in the big games but against the team sitting back at Anfield I’d go with Aly to help break them down with his bursting runs.
Were you watching the same game?
we really missed enrique against newcastle
We the fans of lfc we realy missed Enrique
We the fans of lfc we realy missed Enrique,cuz he is the best left back in the premier league for now
Cissokho was decent in attack but not so strong defensively as Enrique has been. Still Reds only have another set-piece howler to blame for lost points
and here’s me thinking it had more to do with the fact Rodgers has guarenteed 2 of the new central defenders starting places
my main concern this term is the number of goals that our team concedes through setpieces….surely BR has to do something about it cz we tend to defend well in open play but our positioning is very poor when dealing with dead balls..