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Arsenal vs Liverpool - what formation/squad to go with?


Gym Beglin
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Fucking hell, Henderson has definitely not been one of our best performers this season. He's easily been one of our worst

 

Didn't expect you to agree given you haven't said anything positive about him since he arrived at the club, regardless how well he plays.

 

Shame he didn't come from Swansea, you might support him then.

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What are they smokin?

 

article-2443651-1885840400000578-906_634

Fair play to jack whiltshere, he deserves a lot of applause for what he's achieved in such a short space of time.To rise so quickly through the ranks of british football to put himself right in the top bracket of irritating, pug faced, thick as shit british footballs playing the game today is some achievement, especially when you consider he's almost risen to levels of utter cunts like rio ferdinand, patrice evra and danny welbeck.

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Didn't expect you to agree given you haven't said anything positive about him since he arrived at the club, regardless how well he plays.

 

Shame he didn't come from Swansea, you might support him then.

That's bullshit. Go into any of the old Henderson threads and you'll see me defending him. You're just a snide who can't take any criticism of your fancy boy

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That's bullshit. Go into any of the old Henderson threads and you'll see me defending him. You're just a snide who can't take any criticism of your fancy boy

 

Not unjust criticism, no.

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Rogers is stubborn. He's flogging a dead horse using the captain in a deep role.

 

Maybe the manager of the month award went his head a bit.

 

Rodgers doesn't play Gerrard there because Gerrard doesn't press from the front.

Imho for Gerrard to truly shine he needs to be played further forwards with some defensive responsibility taken off his shoulders.

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Gerrard is a bit of a millstone for Rodgers., he can leave any other player on the bench but never Gerrard, regardless of performance. It's not Gerrards fault, it's fans pressure.

Did he tell you this? I don't believe that to be the case at all. Anyway, Henderson and Lucas would need binning before Gerrard, and I can't believe he's scared of benching either of them.

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Did he tell you this? I don't believe that to be the case at all. Anyway, Henderson and Lucas would need binning before Gerrard, and I can't believe he's scared of benching either of them.

Exactly, its our rather mediocre options in the midfield that is the problem, not Gerrard.

 

I think Gerrard should be at the stage in his career where he can be used as we see fit, as it stands at 33 he is still our best midfielder by a country mile.

 

I like Hendersons energy but he needs to show more in terms of quality as we cant carry him. That shite shot after he got in the box on early in the game Saturday summed him up perfectly.

 

If anything i'd like us to get back to the style of football we played at the start of last season - it suited Allen perfectly and I'd hazard a guess that Alberto would do pretty well too

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You talk about midfield three like they were the only barrier between Mignolet and them. You're conveniently forgetting the three centre backs! We should have had 8 people in midfield if we pushed the defenders up enough.

 

The galling thing is that Arsenal didn't really have anyone with pace who could break clear on the halfway line and NOT be caught up by Sakho or Toure. We could easily have camped on the halfway line played in their half for 90 minutes. We CHOSE to play Arsenal on a full-length pitch when in reality we could have played on a half pitch and put a 40 yard buffer between their dangerous players and our goal.

 

I'm not finished bashing Henderson yet either, or Gerrard for that matter.

 

Mobility and intelligence is seriously lacking with those two, and yes you could say the same of Lucas but by Christ his midfield partners didn't half make his life impossible. Arsenal beat us to every ball, it was frustrating as fuck to watch because the ball wasn't there to be won! They just needed to stand their ground and face up their man, instead, they were trying to win the ball back off the toe of an Arsenal player in midfield as soon as they committeed themselves to the tackle the Arsenal player just pushed the ball out of their feet and ran past our midfield and they were on the break again with acres to run into.

 

Gerrard won 66% of his tackles (in the last 3 games, he has won 100% of his tackles).

Another OPTA stat is around 'duels', where it's jostling for the ball rather than a straightforward tackle, and Gerrard won 36% of these 'duels', by far his lowest of the season, and he accomplished no interceptions either, but managed two clearances.

 

Henderson won 66% of his tackles, and 40% of his duels. He also managed two clearances and one block and one interception. Henderson also had a better pass success rate than Gerrard (90% vs 87%), and got three shots off, all of which were wank.

 

Lucas won 50% of his tackles, and 50% of his duels, and made 3 interceptions.

 

The thing is, Lucas is meant to be tackling and defending and 'dueling'. One of the other two isn't. Maybe neither of them are, if you look at the OPTA page for the game and see the average position for each player, it looks very much like Lucas was the sole defensive midfielder. ( http://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/latest-news/148397-arsenal-2-0-lfc-opta-chalkboards ).

 

So...'what the fuck' gents? This is part of my issue with Gerrard and Henderson as a pairing, neither of them would change anything, they are passive personalities. We could all see the game was slipping away, and at that point I want a central midfielder to make an executive decision and either drop back to help out Lucas and face-up opponents, or push forward and become more of a nuisance. Arsenal seemed to be able to deal with two strikers, but a third man stood between them would have caused some panic for Arsenal. Same in the opposite direction, once Arsenal broke past Gerrard and Henderson then there were usually 3 players running towards Lucas, he never stood a chance, but if one of Genderson dropped back then it massively negates that threat.

 

Of course, I'll blame Rodgers for it as well, but I'm a believer in players being the captains of their own destiny once they cross the white line. I'm talking about a midfielder deciding to play slightly advanced or slightly withdrawn, I'm not on about him taking an executive decision to play as a left back. Small in-game decisions like that need to be made by players, they especially need to be made by captains.

 

 

Of course, there are other problems we had/have. But the midfielders don't have make life more difficult for us sometimes and don't help themselves.

 

Coutinho came on and immediately shown just how primitive Henderson is as an attacking midfielder.

 

 

I think we've done this Henderson thing for a good while now, and aside from the West Brom game it really hasn't worked this season. Even against West Brom I'd argue that he wasn't instrumental. In fact, his pass success rate in that game was only worse than the game against Southampton, with an 81% success rate. There are occasional glimpses of quality but he really should be performing at a better level than this in my opinion.

 

Other players born in 1990 include:

 

Mario Balotelli

David De Gea

Bojan Krkic

Toni Kroos

Lewis Holtby

Victor Moses

Aaron Ramsey

Andre Schurlle

Miralem Pjanic

Kevin Strootman

Rafael

Yann Mvilla

Lewis Holtby

Gaston Ramirez

 

 

Yes, in some cases you can say that these players need to develop more, I'll accept that. But I don't want Henderson developing as part of our first team, he's in too important a position to not be a great footballer.

 

 

Gerrard's excuse is that he's 33, whereas Henderson's excuse seems to be that he's 23. How about we have a midfielder who has no excuses?

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Gerrard's excuse is that he's 33, whereas Henderson's excuse seems to be that he's 23. How about we have a midfielder who has no excuses?

 

I think everyone would love better centre midfielders, but we have got what we have got until January.  Lucas, Gerrard, Henderson and Allen are our options until January.  So let's talk about the best way ahead with the options we have rather than craving other players - you can do that in the transfer thread.

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I think ANY combination of a midfield 3 would have struggled against a midfield 5.

We needed a fully fit Johnson and Enrique but they would have known when to tuck in to up numbers in midfield and when to stretch play out wide.

Why the fuck do you keep going on about 3 v 5 in midfield? Do we even have 5 central midfielders. What chances do you think we'll ever play 5 central midfielders in a game?

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Why the fuck do you keep going on about 3 v 5 in midfield? Do we even have 5 central midfielders. What chances do you think we'll ever play 5 central midfielders in a game?

 

I think he means Arsenal had Giroud upfront on his own.  So they had five players in midfield, not necessarily centre midfield however all of those players liked to be central, even if some of them start wide and come inside.

 

Our wing backs had to deal with their full backs overlapping, which meant our centre midfield of three, have five other players to deal with and they were out numbered..

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I'm not sure what you mean about 'coping', because I'm quite happy with the two options on the bench (Luis Alberto and Joe Allen) coming into the starting line-up and being more than capable of performing well.

 

I'm perplexed by Rodgers' attitude towards Allen, and whether this is all an injury-related hangover and that he doesn't want to push him too hard too soon, or if he's having serious second-thoughts about Allen's ability.

 

I've seen nothing so far to think that he's an appalling player, he needs a run of 10 games to be able to see where he's at, like Henderson has had.

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By the way, I didn't think Arsenal were great shakes themselves.

I saw nothing there to really think it was a special team, which made the loss even more upsetting.

 

Rediculous goal from Ramsey, I'm verging on blaming Mignolet for that one.

Bit of a spawny opening goal as well, cracking header from 18 yards, hits the post and lands perfectly back to him...the sort of luck you can't buy, but great technique on the strike. Also felt Mignolet might have gotten up quicker after the header as well.

 

I hated that game. Loads of mistakes, poor conditions, it was a bit of damp squib all round. I didn't hate the fact we lost to Arsenal, I hated the fact that we were happy to have a victims mentality and not willing to fight the conditions and adapt to them. Fair play to Rodgers, he changed things early, even changed formation, but the players just didn't respond, there was no fight in the middle of the park and it set the tone.

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Hardly a good performance from us, but neither from Arsenal id say. The goals came out of situations that shouldnt happen really. I think we really missed Johnson and Enrique as well. Wouldnt say Flanagan or Cissokho were all that bad, well Aly was actually, and they didnt offer what the other two would have.

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Hardly a good performance from us, but neither from Arsenal id say. The goals came out of situations that shouldnt happen really. I think we really missed Johnson and Enrique as well. Wouldnt say Flanagan or Cissokho were all that bad, well Aly was actually, and they didnt offer what the other two would have.

 

You what? They tore us a new arsehole

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Guest Numero Veinticinco

You what? They tore us a new arsehole

 

No they didn't. They were better where it counted, but we could have drawn that game with a little luck. Neither side were good. 

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