Well on the bright side it was marginally better than the West Ham performance. Of course there’s also the distinct possibility that the Hammers are better than this Manc side so I’m not sure how much to read into that. This was bad. Very bad in fact, but at least we scored and managed more than one effort on target, so there is that.
In terms of a positive, I’m afraid that’s all I got. We’re just a bad team aren’t we? I mean, I look around the league and I see a dozen or so sides who look better than us right now, including the likes of Everton, Leicester and Palace.
After those three clean sheets to start the season we’re back to normal now and have let in six in two games. So yeah, despite all Brendan's big talk the defense is still an issue. We’re not bossing games and dominating possession either, so the midfield is still an issue. And most depressing of all, we’re creating virtually nothing so the attack is a big problem too. Aside from that though we’re fuckin’ golden.
I wanted to wipe the slate clean and forget about last season, but I’m at the end of my tether with Rodgers now. Five games in and I’ve had enough already. It’s not about the results, it’s about what my eyes are telling me when I watch us. This is a terrible team right now and there’s nothing at all that is even hinting that things might get any better. If they were just showing me something, anything, I could put these last two results to one side and get behind Rodgers, but there’s NOTHING.
Just what is it going to take for him to scrap this one up front bullshit? When the line up was announced, virtually everyone thought it would be a midfield diamond with Ings up front and Firmino playing as an attacking midfielder. Instead they were shunted out wide and neither of them made any kind of impact on the game. Why the fuck would you do that?
What’s Brendan’s problem? If he wants to be married to this 4-3-3 system, then why is he overloading the squad with number 9’s and 10’s? In that system there’s only room for one of those (there’s no 10 in his 4-3-3), which means others are then stuck out wide in positions they aren’t comfortable playing. It’s stupid. If you’re gonna play that system, buy some fucking wingers, numbnuts.
When he appointed his new coaching staff he said it was to take the team “in a different technical direction”. More buzzwords and bullshit. What’s different now to last season? Aside from us creating even fewer chances I don’t see much difference at all. No wonder Pascoe’s lad was gloating about this defeat on twitter.
We’ve got good players and the squad looks ok to me. A little unbalanced perhaps, but I don’t think quality of player is our problem - Rodgers is. What is he even trying to do? This team has no identity anymore, no playing style. When he first came we could all see what he wanted to do. He adapted his methods when Sturridge and Coutinho came in and changed how we play, but the team still had an identity and a distinctive style. I don’t know what the hell this is we’re watching now, it’s as bad as the last throes of the Houllier and Benitez reigns and anything that was served up under Hodgson.
We don’t pass it well which is difficult to accept given it’s supposed to be the core element of Rodgers’ “philosophy”. If your team can’t pass the ball then what fucking use are you when your entire ideology is meant to be based on possession and passing? We aren’t winning it back quickly when we don’t have it either, which again, was supposed to be what Rodgers was all about. This team isn’t doing anything well at the moment. In fact it looks to me like whatever tactics he’s trying to employ are acting as a straightjacket to some talented players.
Honestly, if you were to just say to that group of players “go out there and just have some fun” and not even bother with any sort of tactical instruction, I bet they’d make a better fist of it than we’ve seen in these last two games.
That first half was just dire. It was like watching two fat fellas trying to do the pole vault, or two women playing pool. Just completely inept from both sides.
It looked like we went there with the sole intention of keeping it tight and frustrating them. I’m ok with that (up to a point), although I can see why some aren’t. Yeah, United are poor and not worthy of that much respect, but we’re not that good ourselves and if we’d gone there and left ourselves open early we could have been out of the game by half time. I understand not going gung-ho as the onus was more on them than us, so keeping it tight isn’t the worst approach in the world.
The issue I have with it is the system we played made it too difficult for us to then do anything when we had the ball and our counter attacking play was non-existent. It consisted of launching at Benteke’s chest and then after he lays it off gradually passing it around until it ended up back with Mignolet, or it was Emre Can going “fuck this, I need to do something here” and charging 40 yards at full pelt before realising there was no-one else with him and either losing it or having to pass it backwards. Just what do they actually work on in training?
The other problem when you play like that of course is that it only takes one mistake, a piece of magic or a set-piece to ruin your entire plan, and that’s what happened four minutes into the second half. Firstly, it wasn’t a foul for me. Clyne didn’t do anything wrong, it was just good defending. That said, we fell asleep from the free-kick and were deservedly punished.
The saddest part is as soon as they scored I knew we’d lost. This team doesn’t have it in them to come back from adversity. They’re a reflection of their manager now unfortunately, totally lost and bereft of any fight or clue. Before long it was 2-0 and it was definitely all over then.
Gomez shouldn’t have gone to ground but I’ve watched it a few times now and he’s actually sliding alongside Herrera rather than into him and he doesn’t take him out. Herrera steps away from the ball and into the challenge to initiate contact. Technically it shouldn’t have been a pen but we’ve had the rub of the green a few times already this season so I’m not complaining about this one, but it could have gone either way.
Rodgers’ answer to going 2-0 down was to keep the same system but switch both of the wide players. Yeah coz that’s going to make a big fucking difference isn’t it. Ibe at least showed something and this was easily his best performance of the season. He had a good shot well saved by De Gea and got a couple of crosses in too.
Origi was as ineffectual as Ings, but he’s also as blameless as Ings. It’s difficult to be too critical of Firmino too because he shouldn’t be playing wide either. As if it’s not hard enough to adapting to a new team, a new league and a new country, he’s playing out of position too.
This is what happens when you buy a player and then don’t know how to use him. I’m sick of us doing this shit. If we needed a right winger then buy a fucking right winger (or don’t loan out the one you bought for £20m a year ago!). Don’t spend £29m on someone who plays centrally and then shoehorn him into the side on the wing. This is the kind of shit we’ve been doing for years, is it any wonder we don’t fucking win anything anymore?
Firmino was crap, he looked off the pace again and his last contribution was a terrible touch that robbed him of what would have been a tap in. Even Benteke was doing my head in though to be fair. While I could appreciate that he was getting fuck all service, he was still pissing me off as he didn’t seem to be offering enough.
That might seem a bit harsh, but I’ll explain why. He was up against Smalling and Blind. Now Smalling is a difficult opponent as he’s quick, strong and physical. So, that being the case, you’d try and get yourself onto Blind as much as possible, right? So how come Benteke just stayed central all the time and allowed Smalling to mark him?
He may have been playing to orders (I defo wouldn’t rule that out), in which case this criticism isn’t fair, but I wanted to see him drift out to the right when Shaw went forward, so he could isolate Blind and try and roll him and run him down the channels. Of course he’d still be relying on someone to actually feed him the ball, which may not have happened given the way the rest of them played, but nevertheless, he was annoying me.
That said, Rodgers is to blame for that as well. Was he not paying attention when Swansea turned United over by switching to two up front and a midfield diamond? Or would his ego not allow him to take a leaf out of his former student Garry Monk’s book? Two up front would have allowed Benteke to get at Blind, just as Gomis had done a fortnight ago.
That goal was fucking amazing though wasn’t it? Not that Martin Tyler thought so, given his reaction you’d have thought it was a tap in consolation when we were three or four goals down. As it was, that goal put us right back in it and we might have got a second if we hadn’t immediately allowed them to restore their two goal lead.
And Tyler’s reaction to that Martial goal tells you everything you need to know about where his head was at. Screaming “YEEEESSSSSS” like fucking Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, the absolute fucking shit bird. And Skrtel needs his arse kicking for how easy he made it for him. Sick of him doing that backing off thing and letting people run at him. Put a tackle in soft lad.
It was just shit all round. There’s not even any point talking about individual performances. Rodgers is the problem and until he’s removed players will continue to struggle.
It’s obvious now he’s not going to be able to turn this around and the question now is not if, but when he will eventually be sacked. They won’t do it yet because they’ll look like the incompetents we all know them to be. Things will have to get worse than they are now, but looking at how we’re playing and the games we have coming up, does anyone doubt that’s going to be the case?
Star man was Clyne, although I was tempted to give it Lovren because after all the stick he got after West Ham he did nothing wrong. I can’t help but root for the guy now, I think a lot of the ire directed towards him is down to how people feel about Rodgers. Similar to how Konchesky got it in the neck because he was seen as Hodgson's boy (and because his ma has a big mouth).
Under a new manager Lovren might actually be alright you know. We all might.
Team: Mignolet; Clyne, Skrtel, Lovren, Gomez; Lucas (Moreno), Milner, Can; Firmino (Ibe), Benteke, Ings (Origi):
Recommended Comments