The Guardian football writers have been pretty scathing in recent weeks about Rodgers' management decisions.
http://www.theguardian.com/football...ut-for-premier-league-championship-league-one
5) Will Lambert and Lallana get another chance together?
In the 65th minute of
Liverpool’s lame defeat at Hull on Tuesday night, Brendan Rodgers had a brainwave: he introduced Adam Lallana and Rickie Lambert from the bench. That meant 25 whole minutes together on the pitch for players who spent years colluding to undo defences while at Southampton. Bearing in mind that Rodgers tries to cultivate a style of play that relies heavily on players being in sync with each other, you would have thought that Lambert and Lallana’s understanding was something to build on, but the manager has been oddly reluctant to deploy them this season, just as he seldom used to put Stewart Downing and Andy Carroll on the pitch at the same time even though those players seemed naturally complementary.
Rodgers has only started Lambert and Lallana together four times in the league, and in none of those matches did they both play the full 90 minutes. They began at Crystal Palace in November and Lambert scored after two minutes from a pass by Lallana, then Lallana missed the next two games before the pair started again at Leicester, where Lambert took out the nearest defender as Lallana scored Liverpool’s opener. They both started the next match, at home to Sunderland, but as neither had scored after 70 minutes, Rodgers withdrew Lallana and never started the duo together again.
Perhaps the decision to deploy them at the same time against Hull means Rodgers is going to give their partnership a belated chance to flourish anew? The dire form of Mario Balotelli and, recently, of Raheem Sterling would make refusing to do so even more baffling than before. Meanwhile, Queens Park Rangers’ hopes of staging a late escape from the relegation zone will depend heavily on Charlie Austin, who, if Rangers do go down, would be a reasonable summer recruit by Liverpool, assuming Rodgers would then actually use him properly.
PD