Brendan Rodgers believes his Liverpool side can become more clinical –- by being more patient.
The boss felt his team worked the ball into good positions during Sunday’s 2-0 defeat to Arsenal, but that their play in the final third lacked cutting edge.
Last season Liverpool hit the woodwork 33 times, but Rodgers is confident that the Reds can soon start converting chances into goals.
“It’s something you continually work on all the time,” he told Liverpoolfc.com.
“We’re still getting the balance in a couple of areas of our game. We build the game very well through the thirds, but it’s about making sure that when we arrive in the final third, if we can’t find the moment to score straight away, we maybe have to have that wee bit more patience.
“That has a knock-on effect to the team. When you are that little bit more patient at the top end of the field, everyone else behind that then can get into position.
“We’ve created enough chances to score goals in the games. That’s been pleasing.
“It’s finding that football intelligence at the top end.”
Liverpool has claimed one point in its opening three Barclays Premier League games, with that coming against champions Manchester City in a game Yaya Toure labelled the toughest he’d had in England.
So what is the message to the fans at this juncture?
“The message is to keep the faith,” said Rodgers.
“West Brom, the first half was very good; we showed in the Manchester City game that we could be competitive; and then against Arsenal we weren’t quite at our best. There are a number of reasons for that, a lot of players were playing their third game in a week and you could see that played a part.
“It’s still very, very early on. We hope as time goes on we progress and can improve.”
While he urges the fans to stay positive, the manager admits he found it hard to relax himself after Sunday’s final whistle.
“You can’t relax! It was obviously bitterly disappointing in terms of the result,” he reflected.
“I never get too disappointed when we lose or too carried away when we win, but I felt for the supporters, because they were brilliant for us and we probably didn’t give them enough to get going.
“We have to make sure our intensity when we haven’t got the ball is maintained. It was very important in our preseason work, the ability to press the ball. We saw that against Manchester City, and it’s something that’s key to the style of our game.
“As a coach you go away and analyze the game. I watched the game a couple of times and tried to reflect on the good parts of the game, and try to improve on the areas we need to.”
