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Liverpool 4 Notts County 2 - Match Report


TLW
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It's fair to say that didn't exactly go according to plan. When you include so many first choice players for a cup tie against lower league opposition, the last thing you want is three injuries and key players having to play for 120 minutes. We got through, yet it's almost unforgivable how difficult we made it for ourselves with a shocking, Billy Big Bollocks 2nd half attitude.

My emotions are all over the place with this one. Happy to be through, gutted about Kolo, seriously pissed off with the arrogant, complacent 2nd half attitude that caused the unnecessary situation we found ourselves in, but also pleased with the character shown to dig in and come up with the goods when things went really pear shaped. At 2-2 and down to ten men, there was a very realistic chance we could lose this game, but the performance from that point on was excellent it has to be said and the players showed balls to get the job done.

Read the full report here.
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Nice report, as always. In fact, I'm never going to say it again because it's a bit inglorious. I'll tell you if it's shit, how about that!

 

Where did that second half performance come from? There's a troll hiding in our side and it pops out at about the time we look like doing something to be proud of, and it tries to ruin it.

 

Good teams beat poor teams 6-0. I remember us doing this to teams 20 years ago, just turning over sides in the early rounds of cup games, it was men vs boys. The key is 'control', we seldom lost control of opponents, however much they might squirm.

 

That was what Notts County did, they squirmed their way out of our grip. So, what IS our grip? Which department is to blame? Is it the fault of the entire team or just a portion of it?

 

To me, it's a midfield problem still. Regardless of the forwards missing chances (and that is a problem), it was no excuse for the midfield to lose their grip on our opponents. Our midfield stopped controlling the game, or were unable to control them once they worked up a head of steam. And who knows the real answer, maybe the problem was Chris Kiwomya's novice tactics, and once the game went to 2-0 the players just ignored his tactics and started to look to win their individual battles. We've also shown that we tire around the 60 minute mark in games, and this was when the battles were lost in the middle. I don't like the theory that we tire badly after 60 minutes, it's not like these players haven't played almost a thousand top flight 90 minute games between them, so where is the game intelligence here?

 

I'm furious and delighted with yesterday's performance. We were a joy to watch with 10 men, but we were appalling in the second half with 11 men. Johnson and Gerrard put in derisory shifts especially, but the make-up of the midfield three just didn't work when we were up against it.

 

I'm not sure we're ready for a midfield three in the way that Brendan wants to use it. The defence need to take on more responsibility further up the field. I'd like to see us try a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 with one of the centre backs (Agger or Toure) coming out and being a DM. The wing back role suits the full backs we have, you could even see Sterling exelling as a right wing back. And then having three midfielders in the middle whose main task is to break forward and be a goal threat. At the minute I just think there's too much emphasis on those midfield three being 'solid' and not enough emphasis on getting quality end product out of them. I think that there's a 'how many Liverpool midfielders does it take to change a lightbulb' joke on the horizon.

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