Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers was delighted with Lucas Leiva and Kolo Toure’s performances in their last game against Stoke City. Lucas and Toure put in good defensive displays to help Liverpool achieve only theirAi??third clean sheet this season and ended a run of three successive defeats in the Barclays Premier League.
Rodgers decided to go with the experience of Kolo Toure as new summer signing Dejan Lovren has failed to impress and also played Lucas ahead of Steven Gerrard who had played the full 90 minutes against Ludogorets. He spoke to the club’s official website and said,Ai??”I’m very happy with their performances.
“I think their contribution has been vital in the last two games. They are players who understand the league, players who are experienced and players who are winners. Both have been outstanding and they haven’t played a great deal, but they’ve come into the team and done very well.”
With poor defensive displays, Lucas’ primary role was to shield the defence and to fill in at the full back positions whenever Glen Johnson and Jose Enrique ventured forward. He fulfilled that role well which could earn him a few more games than expected as he was never really in Rodgers’ first team plans.
“Season is just getting started,” says Rodgers
After a wretched run where his side picked up just one point in five games, Rodgers now believes that his side can put in a good string of results after the victory over Stoke. His side were slightly lucky as Stoke’s Bojan Krkic troubled the defence on more than one occasion but failed to find the back of the net. Nevertheless, Rodgers said that his team had the belief and the character to go on and win the game,Ai??”It was hard-fought.Ai??We showed wonderful courage and patience to keep going in the game. The first half was a bit slow. We had a lot of the ball but not so many chances.”
“I just felt that in the second half we needed to turn the screw a little bit in terms of our intensity and the speed of the game. And then we looked as if we would get a goal and thankfully we did.
“I think you see a group of players who recognise that we haven’t been to the standards that we expect. But you can see their ability to want to keep going and to improve.”
Liverpool will feel confident ahead of their next game against Leicester City as they lie bottom after having picked up just one point in their last five games. The reds have the chance of picking up six points in their next two games before facing off against rivals Manchester United on December 13th.
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