The big win over Blackburn was immensely enjoyable and has lifted the mood in the Gooner camp to a great extent after an eminently forgettable January. A lot has already been said about the match and I don't want to revisit it in detail but there were two goals in that game that caught my eye.

Both the goals started from the back but were scored in a markedly different manner, each a delight in its own way.

For many, there has been a belief that in order to get the most out of Charlie Adam he must be played as part of a three-man midfield, alongside players who will be able to cover for his shortcomings and in doing so allow him to do what he does best—break down tough opponents and create scoring opportunities.

Against Wolves, Jordan Henderson only misplaced four of his passes from open play for a completion rate topping 90%. He may not have connected on any of his seven attempted crosses, which does rather drag down his overall numbers, but it is nonetheless an impressive statistic. As for how he achieved such a high completion rate, the answer is a fairly simple one: He kept it simple.

It's been awhile since I trawled through the Guardian chalkboards for interesting items. I know, we all missed it.
I remain convinced that Liverpool changed tact in midfield during the interval. The key seemed to be Spearing, more willing to stay in his own half and shield the defense rather than pressing higher up the pitch and leaving gaps.

The Guardian's chalkboards have been really useful to this site. We spend a lot of time trying to understand the game, understand why things have happened, and the chalkboards always helped us to do this.

Over time you learned to look for different things: how high up the pitch were the two teams' full-backs getting?

Not the president of Kramerica Enterprises....

This time the chalkboards do tell the tale.

Fulham played a 4-2-4 defense and engaged Manchester United's "back-six" with their "front-six." It was a good strategy despite the ending scoreline of 5-0. Sir Alex Ferguson recognized it as such, pulling off a woozy Phil Jones (from an early Clint Dempsey elbow) and adding in another attacker in Ashley Young to provide central linking while moving Antonio Valencia to rightback.

Still better than Barry

One to fill your time for just 24 hours before the next Arsenal game. Not only was Sunday's game a disappointing one with regards to the final results, it was also a frustrating one to watch because of the abuse Aaron Ramsey was getting from those around me. I had a differing view to what was shouted out around me.

The past three league matches have seen Charlie Adam paired with three different midfield partners, with each new pairing leading to a slight shift in the focus of Adam's game. From a largely offensive effort when paired with Lucas against Manchester City through to a job as the deepest midfielder against Queens Park Rangers, it's meant an interesting—and surprisingly successful—progression.

Lucas' absence and Liverpool's subsequent change in formation altered the position of two of Liverpool's key players against Fulham: whoever the holding midfielder is and Luis Suarez.
Jay Spearing often played further up the pitch than Lucas usually defends, while far more static in general.

You don't need chalkboards to tell you that Liverpool changed tact in the second half against Chelsea, unable or unwilling to keep pressing in the same furious manner as the first. This isn't revelatory information, and I tried to explain why in the match review: pressing for 90 minutes was an impossibility due to fitness and personnel, so Liverpool went all out for the early goal, then tried to soak up pressure and hit Chelsea on the counter in the later stages.

The English FA has gone quiet when it comes to Patrice Evra, Luis Suarez, and allegations of racism, but with the case still theoretically open there's finally some new information to talk about. Plus Liverpool's inability to stick with Plan A even when it seems to be working and preparing for a public execution at Wembley in today's news and notes.

Instead of an in-depth look at a single facet, I thought I'd post multiple chalkboards from Saturday's match, highlighting a couple of predominant themes.
Crosses
That Zonal Marking mentions this in his weekly league-wide roundup demonstrates how glaring a stat it was. 22 attempted crosses, two successful.

I still remember the days of the anti-intellectual era, so I'm pretty happy to see tactics-speak take a place in our collective chit-chat about soccer. But, at some point, tactics-speak must go beyond tactics-speak. Eventually, all discourses can become a closed system, an algebraic formula with a predetermined end that ceases to illuminate.

It's no secret Andy Johnson has had a windy time at Fulham: most expensive player; star striker; constantly injured; percevied shadow of former self. But things have been turning around, and more so than in the past 4 days.

Here's Andy Johnson's last six months: 22 appearances, 9 goals, 1 assist

And six months prior to that: 22 appearances, 2 goals, 3 assists.

In a season that has seen more than its share of less than stellar performances while discussion about his future has pushed to the fore, the reaction to Jamie Carragher's composed performance at Goodison on Saturday was swift and unanimous. The club's official website, never ones to shy away from hyperbole, gauged the prevailing mood and turned things up to eleven when they skipped obvious choices Lucas Leiva and Jose Enrique in favour of promoting a Carragher every-touch compilation.

If nothing against Brighton or Wolves was going to convincingly answer the questions left behind by the Tottenham debacle, at the least fans could hope nothing that happened would make the players involved seem any worse. And if Andy Carroll's first positive performance of the season at least set out a convincing blueprint for the player moving forward, Charlie Adam's performance only left more questions despite forcing a Wolverhampton own goal.

Afterwards, opinions ranged from Andy Carroll having finally shown something of his worth as more than a target for long clearances to him having done nothing in particular to rewrite the gargantuan failure narrative he's been saddled with since arriving at Liverpool for £35M in January. Sometimes those wildly divergent opinions even came from the same pundit.

Below is a comparison of individual statistics from Henderson and Kuyt's last four league games when played on the right of a 4-2-2-2. Formation notation is subjective, especially with this season's group of players, but these are how I saw each formation at the start of matches. For Henderson, that's wins over Wolves and Bolton, the draw against Sunderland, and loss at Stoke.

Nothing from me I was at Dad's for his birthday. Saw the MOTD highlights and it looked like perhaps we were a shade unlucky: Kasami flagged offside (he'll get his first goal soon, eh?) when it looked touch and go, Ruiz hitting the post from close in when a goal seem more likely. Really though you wouldn't have expected us to unlock a Roy Hodgson defence away from home and 0-0 was to be expected.

Is Jamie Carragher Still a Certain Starter for Liverpool?

AnfieldIndex Liverpool FC Stats | Liverpool FC Blog | Liverpool FC Forum Follow me on Twitter @joescouse_lfc At the age of 33, time is against Jamie Carragher. This season more than ever, his status as a first choice starter is under intense scrutiny.

The CONCACAF Champions League does not have the fame of its European counter-part. Part of that is because at this time the CCL has a single significant league. The Seattle Sounders could help rewrite that second sentence with a win in Wednesday night's match in Costa Rica against CS Herediano. Nine points in just three matches with two of the remaining at home changes the way Sigi Schmid can manage his roster for the rest of Group D and MLS Regular Season play.

Liverpool's 3-1 win over Bolton wasn't much better than last year's 2-1 win over Bolton. What? You thought otherwise?
Liverpool had more possession, took more shots, and created more chances in last season's meeting. Bolton's pass completion rate was far higher on Saturday than in January.

With the benefit of hindsight...

The midfield issue

Injured Murphy + growing realisation that teams can stop him and stop us + Wolves impressive midfield work = dodgy performance.

Murphy's legs will go, but it's as much the team's problem as his. That's why I liked Sidwell coming on and smashing things around a bit.

Although some of this information is elsewhere on this blog in other form, by popular demand in response to the earlier post, here are the total number of (Guardian Chalkboards/Opta defined) goals from fast breaks (first graph), as well as the ratio of fast break goals to all goals (second graph) for last season (2010/11).

I've been looking for a positive way to say goodbye to Blackpool who were relegated after playing a single spirited and entertaining season in the Premier League. So here's my swan song for the Tangerines.
Corners are neither the most common nor the most efficient way to score. But as it turns out, Ian Holloway's men were the season's Corner Kings.

In this first part of Carlos Ruiz According To Heat Graphs, the Brotherly Game introduces every heat graph from games that MLS has on MLSsoccer.com. The heat graphs are part of MLS' new Chalkboards on its Matchcenter section of MLSsoccer.com.

Each heat graph's coloring shows the locations where a player is for lengths of time during a game.

Everyone 'knows' that Franz Beckenbauer was brilliant. In a recent Guardian poll he was the first defender selected in their greatest team of all time.

I think everyone is right Beckenbauer really was an astonishing player but I wonder how many of the voters had actually seen him play before making their choice?

As you may know reading this blog, I've been digging through some of the Opta/Guardian Chalkboards data on shot and goal creation in the Premiership and I finally had the time to take a quick look at some of the season totals to update the numbers I reported at the half-season mark.
A quick caveat: the numbers are subject to the definitions of match situations used by Opta/Guardian Chalkboards, of course.

If you've been reading this blog these last few weeks, you know that I've been spending way too much time digging through data on shot creation in the Premier League with the help of the Opta/Guardian chalkboards. But I can't quite help myself, so here's yet another installment; this time it's on the (relative) uselessness of free kicks.

In a heady stretch of six matches between January 16th and February 12th, Raul Meireles scored all five of his Liverpool goals. When the goals started to dry up, some began to wonder just how important he was to the team's continued success—especially given the way everybody else in the side seemed to be clicking as Liverpool flourished with an up-tempo pass and move game and the goals poured in against everyone from City to Fulham to Birmingham to Newcastle.

Under the management of Kenny Dalglish and Steve Clarke, Jay Spearing has enjoyed a consistent run in the Liverpool's first team. His displays have earned plaudits and excellent reviews both from Kenny himself and from others in the football world. The continued absence of Steven Gerrard has propelled Spearing into a key man for King Kenny.

When Hernandez scored for Manchester United in the first minute of play against Chelsea today on a fast break after a beautiful pass from Park, it reminded me of the high value such shots have for teams. Mind you, these kinds of opportunities don't come along all that much in the average match: I have previously noted that teams actually create relatively few shots from fast breaks.

It's not hyperbole to suggest that yesterday saw yet another Dalglish tactical masterstroke, this time with a half-time change.
The early goal meant Liverpool were comfortable, but Newcastle's response pegged the home side back as the interval approached, mainly through Jonas and Enrique's work down the left.

I've been spending a few posts looking at shot creation in the Premiership. One of the things I haven't spent much time on is differences across teams in in terms of who has been creating the most and least shots from different kinds of situations. These situations are open play, corners, free kicks, fast breaks, and penalties.

I've been spending a few posts looking at shot creation in the Premiership. One of the things I haven't spent much time on is differences across teams in in terms of who has been creating the most and least shots from different kinds of situations. These situations are open play, corners, free kicks, fast breaks, and penalties.

In an earlier post, I examined shot creation in the Premier League to see what number and proportion of shots are created from different match situations. The numbers, courtesy of the Opta/Guardian chalkboards and covering the first half of this year's EPL season, showed that most shots were generated from open play (11 on average per team/match).

In an earlier post, I took a closer look at shot creation in the Premier League to see what number and proportion of shots are created from different match situations. The numbers, courtesy of the Opta/Guardian chalkboards and covering the first half of this year's EPL season, showed that most shots were generated from open play (11 on average per team/match).

Up until the last four games, Jay Spearing's rarely looked liked having a long-term future at Liverpool. Admittedly, he also hadn't gotten a consistent run in the side until Gerrard's season-ending injury, only once playing more than two consecutive games: earlier this season against Steaua and Northampton.

Liverpool were impressive all over the pitch yesterday, but three areas stood out, especially when contrasted with last week's disappointing result at West Brom.
• Midfield Passing
Both Spearing and Lucas were far more influential against City. Some of that was down to Mancini's surprising tactics, with a central midfield of Barry and Toure, but both were vastly improved in their own right.

Scotty Parker was one of the reason for West Ham staying up last season. Parker's goal against Wigan last season was the highlight of a personal desire to keep the Irons in the Premiership.
The other reason West Ham managed to stay up last season was because they won more points against fellow relegation strugglers.