Aye but praise and encouragement quickly turns into hype, expectations
go up and then all of a sudden the lad is under too much pressure, imo.
Downing and Assaidi are the natural options imo.
Like no one reasonable is going to have a go at Sterling, but what I'm seeing is
for example no real cover for Wisdom to begin with, was Suso playing that side?
(when Henderson has done that job last season, how well is a matter of opinion)
and Sterling getting a caution from the ref in the first half (effectively meaning
he'll have little defensive input from then on).
Are we going to get some consistent performances in November with this kind of
experimentation when the lesson of the derby is surely that the original line-up
was not thought out properly and we were lucky not to be blown away in the first
half, imo.
Rodgers really has very little to work with. Whoever came in as manager would have faced the same problems thanks to Dalglish and Comolli's negligence, not just in buying who they did, but still going ahead with the deals at the prices quoted.
Rodgers was not my choice but I do feel for him looking at that squad. Henderson proved himself to be woeful out on the right last season, and him being in an attacking front three is probably even more alien to him than the position Dalglish kept shoving him in last season. And as for Downing. He went missing more times than an English tourist's child abroad.
Granted, Sterling isn't going to give any full back much coverage but if Johnson wasn't injured then we'd have probably seen him given the nod ahead of Wisdom to deal with Mirallas.
I understand what you are saying re praise and hype etc, but it depends on the individual as to whether they see praise as a spur to improve even more or an indication that they've "made it". Soon enough the papers will start to hype Sterling and it will be down to the club and the players to help him keep his feet on the ground.
If our expectations go any higher than the rightful level and we start expecting a 17 y.o to be our saviour then we are at fault when it doesn't quite work out that way.
As for the performances it's hard to know. Has too much been changed too quickly? Probably.
Without the ability to bring in a significant number of players that are at a stage where they already understand the way Rodgers wants to play, maybe he'd have been better going for evolution than revolution.
Rewind to the most recent time where our football proved to be successful (Dalglish's half season) and start from there. Most of those players are still here so only really Dirk and Maxi have to be replaced. Allen could have slotted into that style OK.
Then as we bring in more players that are more suited then change things accordingly and let the personnel available dictate the pace of change.
Maybe Rodgers is having to give the kids a go so he can see which ones he can count on in the future and which he can't. He looks like he's made up his mind about some of the more established players and he's having to use the season working through who has a future and who doesn't and go with those who are seen to be the future rather than those who are soon to have LFC as their past. It gives him a better understanding of what is needed and how to prioritise the recruitment process, which is likely to take a while as we neither have the cash to make wholesale changes or the appetite, I'd imagine, as changing too many players in one go leads to a team of strangers like the one we saw last season. Changing the playing philosophy AND the players wholesale is probably too big a leap even for someone as brave/reckless (delete as applicable) as Rodgers.
It's just frustrating that the bedding in period/evolutionary stage is going to seemingly be such a long one, meanwhile we see other teams apparently overtaking us and those we were aiming to catch up with move further ahead.