But Suarez was getting passes to his feet. All Liverpool's forwards were getting loads of touches of the ball, and weren't managing to do much with it. I don't see anything that Gerrard could have done in those instances where he took shots that he hadn't already tried plenty of times with no useful outcome. All those things that you're mentioning that are part of Rodgers' approach had been tried and failed, because Mourinho had seen them all coming and set up to thwart them.
Again, I'm not saying Gerrard was right to take all those shots, but I see no evidence that Liverpool would have done any better in the game if he hadn't.
And 'trying to force a goal', in some shape or form, was exactly what they needed to do. He took those shots because he could see that plan A wasn't making any headway, and plugging doggedly away at it for another half hour wasn't going to change anything. The problem was that Gerrard didn't have any effective way of doing so, so he kept trying the aimless shots. Possibly a better player might have been able to conjure up a better 'plan B', but the blame still has to fall largely at Rodgers' feet for such a one-dimensional, inflexible approach to the game.
Rodgers does not implement a patient attacking approach. His liverpool teams tend to be dynamic, aggressive and direct in attack, Mourinho created no opportunities for this therefore plan A failed.
Plan B they tried, as you said, for an hour and that was passing the ball around the box, looking for the movement of his forwards and using his vision and anticipation to spot the forward in a position where he could try and do something. As the playmaker it is his job to create chances and it is his job to set the tempo, a varying tempo around the box of patient passing followed by quick one touch passing would force Chelsea players to mentally switch between a slow tempo and quick tempo, thus increasing the likelihood of an error as they might not anticipate the pass and so decrease their chances of reacting in time.
I honestly do not believe resorting to the shots was the answer and it was in fact the mouse trap Mourinho set, this is what he wanted Gerrard to do. We have seen time again in football, you can take great players out of the game (Ronaldo + Messi) if you stop the playmaker from creating for them (Xabi Alonso + Xavi). It is one thing when the central midfield are dominant and superior but this wasn't the case here, it was a psychological trap, bait if you will and Gerrard fell for it.
Gerrard tried to create chances for an hour or whatever it was, this is important in football however after this point he abandoned this and went for shots. I refuse to accept all football games should be won in the first 60minutes and so if a play maker is unable to create chances in those first 60minutes he should then abandon this tactic and resort to long shots.
I feel as the game went on and the Chelsea defence grew mentally tired and physically fatigued the chances for error were greater therefore he should have carried on doing the very thing he stopped doing and getting that ball to his attackers because it would have taken only one Chelsea error for them to draw level.
I can't disagree that quite a bit of the blame has to fall on Rodgers because he should have prepared his team better. The playmaker however is not free of blame when he decides to abandon the tactic of creating chances in favour of long distance shooting just because he ran out of patience. Because of Gerrard, Liverpool played 60minutes of football and 30minutes of rolling the dice.
How often have we seen games won when a team persistently tried to patiently create chances? Games won nearer the end when the opposition defence is fatigued and more prone to error? Coutinho, Sterling and Suarez should have been the targets and when Sturridge came on him too. And Gerrard should have continually tried to create for them knowing one slip, one mistake, one second lapse in concentration is all that they needed.
If he did this and they lost then he cannot be blamed as he performed his role in the team, he tried to create as the playmaker should. As it is, he abandoned a tactic reliant on creating chances in favour of long range shots at a Keeper probably preparing all week to deal with such. A tactic now reliant on the luck of a deflection, the roll of a dice. This is not the function a playmaker should perform and so one must question Gerrard's decision.
