In the third phase before the goal, notice again Spearing’s position circled in red.
He is now in the position he should have been, covering behind Coates however too late to influence the play. The ball is crossed from Taiwo (yellow) and Cisse out-jumps Skrtel to score the equalizer. Skrtel’s position (white line) is good here however as the ball comes in Cisse takes a step back and gains that yard of space needed and powers the header into the net. All though Skrtel could have done better you sometimes have to give credit to the striker and it was a terrific leap and finish by Cisse.
Lastly the winning goal by QPR is a worse catalogue of errors from Liverpool players. The goal originates from a long kick up field by the QPR goalkeeper Paddy Kenny. Skrtel is competing for the header with Zamora circled in red. Both Coates (white) and Enrique (blue) do the correct thing by retreating a couple of yards to cover in behind him. There is also an argument to say Gerrard (green) and Spearing (yellow), either one should be a couple of yards back to fill in that zone in front of the back four. Again it’s left to Skrtel to step up and as a result as the play develops he leaves space in behind for Mackie (the eventual goalscorer) to run into.
So here in the last phase of play (phase two screenshot below) before Mackie scores we can see a couple of mistakes by Liverpool players. Again are one of Gerrard or Spearing too far forward? Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on them. Both Enrique (blue) and Coates are in decent positions to cover for the out of position Skrtel. Enrique has done particularly well to come across and cover the space behind Skrtel. Skrtel circled in red competes with Zamora from the returning header from Luke Young, however, for some reason Skrtel ducks and lets the ball run through to Enrique.
One can only assume he got a call from Enrique to leave it. However, Enrique horribly mis-judges the ball and tries to make a clearance with his un-favoured right foot, misses the ball and Mackie runs through to score the winner. A real series of errors from Liverpool players and schoolboy defending to say the least.
Some might say I am being a bit harsh on Jay Spearing, however, I believe he is a really good player, he has great battling qualities and can man-mark an opposing player out of the game. Having said that he really needs to work on his positional sense. Especially as a defensive midfielder. Ask yourself one question, would Lucas Leiva have taken up those positions in Spearing’s place? Maybe with more games under Spearing’s belt he will develop a better awareness of the space around him.
