Rodgers should adopt "Madrid" approach against Ludogorets (ESPN article)

by Dave Usher for ESPN

Liverpool travel to Bulgaria to face Ludogorets on Wednesday night with their hopes of progression from the Champions League group stage hanging by a thread. The Reds have lost their last four games in all competitions and know that if that run extends to five, their return to European football's showcase tournament will have been a short and embarrassing one.

It's been a traumatic few months for the Merseysiders, who have already suffered nine defeats in Premier League and European action this season. Yet despite their woeful start, things could be a lot worse. The Reds need only beat Championship club Bournemouth to secure a League Cup semifinal spot, and despite losing six league games, already they remain just five points off the top four (although they're even closer to the bottom three). Last but not least, they can still qualify from their Champions League group if they can just summon up a couple of wins from somewhere.

Victory in Bulgaria would leave qualification to the knockout stages in their own hands, as all that would then be required is a two-goal victory over FC Basel at Anfield. Not a straightforward task by any means, but I'd imagine most fans would have taken that scenario when the draw was made.

So although all is not lost yet, it soon might be since in their current state it is hard to see where their next win is coming from. Liverpool are a team that are struggling in all areas of the field right now. The goalkeeper has been poor, the defence even worse, the midfield is not helping much at either end of the field and the attack looks completely impotent. Where do you start fixing that mess? The logical answer would be to start at the back.

When a new manager comes into a struggling club, the first thing he usually does is look to secure things in defence. The attacking side of things can wait, the main priority is almost always to become hard to beat, to keep some clean sheets and to build from that solid base. Rodgers is not a new manager of course; he's into his third season at the club and had put in place a style of play that was based on the opposite: he didn't build from the back, he built from the front.

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