It’s only four games without a win but somehow it feels like we’re in the midst of a crisis right now. In isolation, losing at Leicester with a second string side in a cup competition that Klopp and the club privately don’t give a flying one about isn’t really cause for panic, but the way things have been going of late we needed something to get us back on track. Instead we’ve just got more reason to feel worried and disillusioned.
Ok, it wasn’t our strongest line up but it seems to be the same story regardless of who is in the starting line up. Lots of good football, chances not taken, defensive lapses, disappointment. Let’s not forget either that Leicester left their best players out too and were still able to beat us fairly comfortably in the end.
If our makeshift line up had been kept out by Maguire and Schmeichel and then got done on the break by Mahrez and Vardy that would have been understandable, almost acceptable even. This was nowhere near acceptable though as the drop off in performance between the first half (which was excellent) and the second (which was dogshit) was alarming. Coutinho going off really shouldn’t have caused that, but without him we completely fell off a cliff. There was no leadership and very little fight.
The Brazilian bossed the first half and for the most part Leicester couldn’t get near him. Whereas on Saturday he seemed to be oblivious to the fact that Andy Robertson was on the pitch, this time he found the overlapping Scot over and over and between them they caused havoc. Robertson’s timing of his runs and delivery when he gets there caught the eye in an opening 45 minutes that was really impressive other than for the lack of goals.
We should have been two or three up by half time as it was almost total dominance of the ball and Leicester were hanging on. The keeper wasn’t made to work as hard as he should have been but we had numerous chances that we didn’t take and the football was superb. Then Coutinho was brought off and it came to a grinding halt.
I'm fine with the decision to sub him. We need him fresh and available for more important games than this one and it would have been risky to overplay him. Klopp had the choice of leaving him on the bench and bringing him on, but he took the gamble of starting with him and hoping we could get the game won by half time. We should have too, so I’d suggest that decision was the correct one.
We’re just not making our superiority count at the moment though and we let teams hang in there when they should be getting blown away. It’s all very “Kenny’s last season” right now. Dominating teams but not making it count and then every shot against us goes in. We’re in a better situation overall than we were back then as there is far more organisation about the way we play (we don’t have Suarez though), but it’s easy to forget that because of the continued mishaps at the back that are undermining everything.
We all know that Klopp should have done more to strengthen his defensive options over the summer, but Virgil Van Dyke wouldn’t have made any difference against Leicester because he’d have been sat on his couch watching on TV like Matip, Firmino, Salah and the rest. This is a fundamental flaw throughout the team, and it’s different players making the errors all the time.
It’s not just about failing to buy a centre half although that would obviously have helped. It’s not like we can’t defend at all, as we don’t actually give up too many attempts on goal. The ones we do give up tend to be wide open chances that usually go in though. I don't know how you fix it and more importantly, I don't think Klopp does either.
We’re just giving away shit goals all the time and Klopp does not know how to stop it and he’s more or less admitted that himself by saying they work constantly on this stuff in training only for it all to go out of the window during games.
The first goal we gave up was more or less the same as the one Burnley scored at the weekend. Diagonal ball into the right back channel, header into the centre, ball drops to a completely unmarked player on the edge of the box. Were the back four the problem though? They could have pushed out a bit higher and maybe caught Leicester offside, but other than that there wasn't much they could have done.
Flanagan was beaten in the air by Wes Morgan, but that’s a battle he’s rarely going to win. Gomez is marking Slimani and the ball goes over both of their heads. Klavan possibly should have been tighter to Iborra but he may not have been able to prevent him knocking the ball down to Okuzaki anyway, and Robertson actually does well to get across to make a challenge on the goalscorer and is unfortunate that he can only divert the ball past Danny Ward.
The real issue here is where the fuck were the midfielders and how were they allowing four Leicester players to be pushed up against our defence while they stood and watched? Just what the fuck was Henderson doing on that goal? He wasn’t sitting in front of the defence protecting them, he was skipping around like a fucking moron watching it all unfold.
It seems that every time we have a bad result and performance people are losing up to question Henderson’s leadership and suitability as captain. It’s not a direction I usually go in as I’m a big Henderson fan and there’s a low hanging fruit element to a lot of the criticism he gets in my opinion. That said, he was fucking garbage in the second half and when we needed leadership he offered none. No drive, no passion. Not acceptable.
Then there’s Oxlade-Chamberlain. I might be over reacting because I’m so pissed off, but might be as bad a full debut as I’ve ever seen, all things considered. I’m not including kids making their first start, I’m just referring to experienced players making their first start. Maybe Skrtel against Havant & Waterlooville was worse, but at least he had the excuse of playing in a new country. I can’t believe how fucking useless AOC was.
Even in the first half when we were well on top he wasn’t doing enough and his end product was terrible. When the game got away from us after the break all he did was give the fucking ball away every time he got it. Staggeringly shit. £40m really doesn't get you a lot these days does it?
I didn’t want us to sign him and said so throughout the summer in the TLW diary (I wanted us to go for Mahrez, you know, someone who actually scores six goals in half a season and not in his entire fucking career), but that being said, I could see the logic in bringing him in and I would have started him against Burnley last weekend.
It annoyed me that he didn’t start that game because the whole reason for signing him was that we had a natural wide player with pace when either Salah or Mané were unavailable. Having watched him stink it up in this game I now know why he was on the bench last weekend. Yes he needs time, it was his first game blah blah blah. I get that, but even so, that was fucking shite. And what was all that weird shit with his socks all about? That bothered me almost as much as his shite performance.
I was actually calling for Markovic to be brought on in this game. THATS HOW BAD CHAMBERLAIN WAS. What I don’t get is why he bothered leaving Arsenal to come here when he’s actually got more chance of cracking their starting line up than ours.
He was never going to displace Mané or Salah (or get into the first choice midfield either for that matter) but this game at least gave him a chance to show he could adequately fill in. Instead he was outshone by a 17 year old kid. If he makes the match day squad ahead of Woodburn for this weekend (which he no doubt will), the young lad has every right to be pissed off.
Woodburn’s introduction turned the game, although sadly not for the better. That was in no way his fault though as individually he did ok. It’s just that he’s not Coutinho and the whole game changed when we no longer had the Brazilian pulling the strings and making Leicester chase shadows.
Still, Woodburn was the only player in the front six who did anything in the second half so he can hold his head up.
Solanke gets a pass too, I thought he was really good in the first half but it was difficult for him after that because we weren’t dominating anymore and he was often starved of the ball. I really like this kid though and I’d like to see more of him but not when he’s surrounded by the second string.
That won’t be easy because he’s behind Firmino and Sturridge, but Sturridge is due an injury any time now and we can’t start Firmino every game so big Dom’s chance will come soon I think.
There are others we’ll not see in the squad again though. This was probably Flanno’s swan song and under the difficult circumstances I thought he did ok. He didn’t do anything in attack and at times he had his hands full with Demarai Grey but he hasn’t played a competitive game for us in years and you can’t expect him to be at his sharpest having not featured since pre-season. He stuck at his job and battled away. On a list of things that were wrong about this game, Flanagan's performance is way down it.
Danny Ward won’t be seen again either, unless he’s still here when the FA Cup comes around, and if he is then I expect he won’t be happy about it as why would he be? He’s too good to be anyone’s third choice. I’m not saying he should be first choice, we haven’t seen enough of him to know that, but he played well in this game. He was good under the high ball and he made one great save to prevent it going 3-0.
Marko Grujic might not get a game until the FA Cup either, and as much as I like him I can’t really mount any kind of case as to why he should be given a chance in the league or Europe based on how he played in this. He was ok for the most part, but then had a terrible spell in the second half and was lucky not to be sent off as he’d escaped two clear yellow card offences before he was eventually cautioned for a wild lunge. That booking cost us because later on when Slimani skipped past him to score the second goal he was unable to make any kind of challenge because it would have been a red card.
Then there’s Ings and Markovic, who were both on the bench for this one but who won’t get near a squad again unless we have an injury crisis. All of these players will be counting down the days until January when they can go out on loan. Never mind January though, the fans will be counting down the days until next summer if this continues, as it’s sucking all the enthusiasm and hope from us.
I don’t know how anybody can watch what is happening at the moment and not be massively disheartened about where it looks like we’re headed. Things can turn around quickly though, I mean it was only three or four weeks ago we were on a high after spanking Arsenal. It won’t continue like this and I’m sure it will get better soon, but we always have a run like this one just around the corner at any point.
The whole thing is just a fucking ugly mess right now. If our situation was a haircut, it would belong to Danny Ings. What, you didn’t think I’d get through this report without picking up on that?
Star man is Robertson for a brilliant first half. Gomez showed some promise at centre back too, even if he began to wobble a bit late on when we started to come under pressure, and Ward was pretty much faultless.
Team: Ward; Flanagan, Gomez, Klavan, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum (Ings), Grujic; Oxlade-Chamberlain, Solanke, Coutinho (Woodburn):
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