Steven Gerrard says Liverpool forced Aston Villa away from their gameplan on Saturday. The Reds ran out 1-0 winners at Anfield.
Liverpool had a first on Saturday – trying to stop Steven Gerrard from winning at Anfield. And they did it, too, thanks to a second-half penalty won and converted by Mohamed Salah.
The Reds didn’t have things go their way in this one, though. Aston Villa did a great job of limiting their clear chances and while Liverpool could have scored more, this was a proper fight.
Andy Robertson described it as a ‘proper win’ afterwards – and that just about sums it up.
Gerrard saw Villa sit deep, gave up the ball and didn’t allow Liverpool any space around their box. It nearly worked, too, if not for Salah getting the better of Tyrone Mings.
We mentioned after the game that this was the Villa gameplan and their best way of showing some control over proceedings. Gerrard, however, says that’s not the case – Liverpool forced them to play that way.
Steven Gerrard on the Villa gameplan
“If I’m honest, we didn’t plan to sit in, play that deep and park the bus,” Gerrard told Premier League Productions. “I think Liverpool force that on you at times with the speed, the way they press, the way they counter-press, their quality.
“The idea was to stay in the mid-block as much as we can. Then try and steal the ball in certain places and try to play down the sides of the centre-backs. That was the plan but sometimes that gets overpowered.”
There’s a couple of things to take away from what Gerrard says, then. Firstly, it shows how dominant Liverpool really were, forcing a change in strategy purely through playing their own way – but that’s not exactly unusual.
And credit to Villa, too. They switched up their gameplan on the fly and even if it wasn’t their original idea, they were still a breath away from getting at least a point.
That Gerrard appears to know what he’s doing.
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