Klopp's Tactics

[dockers_strike]

Love Jurgen to death. Even if we dont win anything with him, he has laid the foundations for whoever follows him much like Shankly did for Bob and I'll still love him.

 

But, his late use of subs or lack of, does my head in. It was pretty clear to everyone in the ground that a change was needed around 65 minutes. Not only were Spurs gaining a foothold again but Gini was visibly running on fumes, Milner was not creating or breaking up anything. The game was crying out for Fabinho's introduction. Yet we had to wait 3 or 4 minutes after their equaliser for Fabinho to get on. And immediately we looked better.

[TheHowieLama]

16 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

I don't think we've looked anything like you'd imagine a 90 plus point team looking. 

When the opposition dont score in more than half the games you play you are going to pick up some points.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

Fabinho brings so much to the side. 

[magicrat]

I've not got as much issue with Klopp's midfield selections as some. The failing yesterday was more to do with not converting our chances in the first half. Spurs didn't really cause us that much trouble at the back.

I was much more annoyed with the manager last season when he just would't accept Karius was hopeless.  

[aws]

I think Fabinho should be first midfielder on the sheet too.  But as midfield is the only part of the team where we can rotate a bit at the moment I think that's what Jurgen is doing. We've still got 11 games to go and I don't really think he's picking the same team every game. 

[Grinch]

The biggest problem is people expecting us to match man city with the squad we have.   To win every game, to not have spells where a side like Spurs look dangerous. 

 

FFS, think back.  When have we ever been that good? 

 

Problems with the midfield, no shit.  Seriously lacks creativity like it has for some time and since Kieta has been dismal to date, there's nothing we can do about that until the summer. 

 

So here we are about to smash our record points total, favourites for another champions League semi too.   If that's not good enough then well we'll just have to go again next season cause it's clear as fucking day that overall Klopp is getting more out of this squad than anyone ever could. 

 

Again I'm blaming the media.   The same media that like to lick pochwhathisnames hoop. 

[No2]

When we played them last season it was alarming how bolloxed we were after 70 minutes. We had ran ourselves into the ground, some lads looked like they had played extra time. 

 

Yesterday we re-established control with 5 or 10 minutes to go and looked the fresher team. Last season's tactics were more fun before they have obviously decided they don't work long-term. 

[Aventus]

1 hour ago, aws said:

I think Fabinho should be first midfielder on the sheet too.  But as midfield is the only part of the team where we can rotate a bit at the moment I think that's what Jurgen is doing. We've still got 11 games to go and I don't really think he's picking the same team every game. 

I understand rotation, but I'd like our best players on the pitch for our hardest games, resting Fabinho against Tottenham so he's fresh for Southampton doesn't feel right. 

 

We won though, so Klopp a genius and it was all part of the masterplan. 

 

 

 

Funnily enough I was more nervous at 1-0 than I was at 1-1. It was obvious that spurs would score and I didn't want it coming late on. Spurs getting a goal with 20 minutes to go was a small relief because I knew we'd go on the offensive again. 

[aws]

It was odd but maybe he had some niggle we don't know about and Jurgen didn't want him playing unless we really needed him. Hopefully he'll be starting most of the games in the run-in. 

[3 Stacks]

On 01/04/2019 at 09:25, Grinch said:

The biggest problem is people expecting us to match man city with the squad we have.   To win every game, to not have spells where a side like Spurs look dangerous. 

 

FFS, think back.  When have we ever been that good? 

 

Problems with the midfield, no shit.  Seriously lacks creativity like it has for some time and since Kieta has been dismal to date, there's nothing we can do about that until the summer. 

 

So here we are about to smash our record points total, favourites for another champions League semi too.   If that's not good enough then well we'll just have to go again next season cause it's clear as fucking day that overall Klopp is getting more out of this squad than anyone ever could. 

 

Again I'm blaming the media.   The same media that like to lick pochwhathisnames hoop. 

Our results since the beginning of 2018 have been absolutely unbelievable, but I think he's putting a lot of people's brains into a pretzel with his tactics, including mine.

 

We've essentially gone from a free-flowing high risk, high reward side to a conservative, defensive side that beats teams up physically throughout the course of a year. I think it's confusing people a bit. 

 

But to me, City are irrelevant and it's one of the reasons I don't like it when people talk about us needing to win trophies. We're doing very well relative to the context of the competition and hopefully that will be rewarded with trophies, but our progress shouldn't be invalidated if we don't. 

[Sugar Ape]

Interesting article by Paul Joyce with Pep Linders in the Times today. It’s behind a paywall so I’ll copy it.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/porto-hoped-to-draw-liverpool-for-revenge-8dt6lzs3g

 

Pepijn Lijnders: Porto hoped to draw Liverpool for revenge

The Liverpool assistant manager tells Paul Joyce what he learnt as a coach of the Portuguese club

 

One moment Sadio Mané was attempting to pilfer possession outside his penalty area, the next he was gleefully tapping the ball into an exposed Porto net.

 

Liverpool’s third strike in the Estadio do Dragao had taken only 12.28 seconds from conception to completion to make Europe sit up and take note even before goals four and five added a layer of gloss to a shimmering Champions League performance.

 

That gaping 5-0 scoreline from 14 months ago felt like the sort of harrowing result to scar the hosts, a night left seared on the Portuguese psyche that would prove difficult to forget.

 

The reality is Sérgio Conceição’s side have never even sought to banish it from their minds.

 

“There was only one club in the last eight that wanted us and that was Porto,” explains Pepijn Lijnders, Liverpool’s assistant manager.

 

“All the others in the last eight wanted to avoid us, but Porto will love the chance to go again against us. I know it because of their mentality. Sergio is a motivational coach and he will use that. Motivate is not the right word. It is revenge. They want to set something right.”

 

Lijnders, 36, speaks from a position of strength as the rivals prepare to meet again in Europe’s elite competition, although this time the collision comes in the quarter-finals, not the last 16, with Anfield hosting the first leg rather than a dead rubber.

 

For seven years the Dutchman coached in Porto’s academy after being recruited from PSV Eindhoven aged 24 in 2007 to implement a project called “611” that was designed to create a new generation of players.

 

He trained all the teams from under-eights through to under-19s, his remit later broadening to include the B team before becoming involved in the first-team set-up, with the emphasis on accomplishing better technique to complement ter raça, as Lijnders says, or guts, which is ingrained.

 

Several well known names passed under his tutelage. For example, Manchester United’s Diogo Dalot, while Rúben Neves, of Wolverhampton Wanderers, was his captain for seven years, starting from the under-11s.

 

Lijnders smiles at the memory of André Gomes, who is on loan with Everton from Barcelona, being the one he would ask to showcase drills because he was the most talented and would be able to bridge the language barrier.

 

“In the beginning, I couldn’t speak Portuguese so I always used the skill of the best players to show things,” explains Lijnders. “Andre left Porto early, but he was the one who always demonstrated: hiding the ball, protecting it and playing himself free to play the better pass.

 

“Porto had made a five-year plan to restructure first-team football, the academy and the scouting department.

 

“Restructure is the right word, not structure, because within the club there was already so much quality and organisation.

 

“The only thing we trained was offensive aggression, create to score, because defending then automatically happens. If I constantly stimulate you to outplay your opponent, then you have to defend it. The main idea was make them tactically better.

 

“The attitude of Porto is: always more, always better. They love the ones who hate to lose. Many clubs are in the game because of football, but Porto is in the game for silverware. That is their reason.

 

“That is the mentality of the president [Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa] and for the last 35 years it has been a very stable club because he has been there.

 

“He made a blueprint for winning, a culture for winning, because before Porto was not a club that won many titles. It was Benfica. They were the club from the capital. Porto was the club from the north and they are completely different types of people.

 

“People [of Porto] are hard workers. I am proud to say I was part of Porto’s family and had the chance to understand their mystique.”

 

Lijnders had briefly left Liverpool to take charge of NEC Nijmegen in Holland when the two teams went head to head. He returned to Anfield in the summer and, looking back, remembers being mesmerised by that first-leg encounter.

 

Porto had chances — Otávio at 0-0 and then Francisco Soares went close to halving a 2-0 deficit just before the break — but Liverpool would run amok.

 

It is easy to consider the manner of Liverpool’s victory, Lijnders calls it “one of the best commercials we had”, as both a blessing and a curse. The spark was lit for their surge to the Champions League final and yet the impression that display, and others like it, left also ensured that it became a reference point for opponents trying to fathom ways of stopping Jürgen Klopp’s side.

 

Liverpool knew that. They sensed that sides would try to play differently against them this season and so, rather than standing still, sought to adapt.

 

There have been occasions when Liverpool have been free to raid forward — the visits of Arsenal and Napoli to Anfield are two that spring to mind — but many more when they have been confronted by caution with rivals only prepared to play on the counterattack.

 

The answer has been to improve the team’s tactical acumen and look to dominate in the opposition half. Using a dictaphone, a coffee cup and a bottle of water to illustrate his point, Lijnders shows how there have been occasions when the distances between Liverpool’s midfielders have been shortened this season.

 

“What is really important if you want to break these teams down is the tempo changes in the passing,” he says. “We decided in pre-season we have to work to have a better movement of the ball and the positioning of our midfielders, plus Roberto [Firmino], Sadio and Mo [Salah].

 

“Focus on speedy attacks and you go fast towards being a successful team, but you have to focus on really good organisation. If you want good counterpressing then having shorter distances between the players is important. So, if you lose the ball to the opposition, you can give a very intense moment to win the ball back.

 

“If the distances in midfield are quite wide, then it is difficult to put pressure on [when you have lost the ball].

 

“If the distances are close [when you are attacking] and they play with each other, then the way the ball moves can create surprise and space for when the opposition reacts. Play inside to create wing attacks, wing attacks are a byproduct of good inside play.

 

“The first way of defending is how you move the ball when you have it. [The key is] how quick you do that so that you make the opposition passive. If they don’t have the ball, they don’t attack, so you don’t have to defend.”

 

This was shown by the impetus Jordan Henderson, in particular, provided along with James Milner when introduced from the substitutes’ bench against Southampton on Friday. The changes proved pivotal in a crucial 3-1 success.

 

Lijnders is adamant that if Klopp had not been open-minded last summer and only looked to solve the issue once it became a problem, perhaps a handful of games into the campaign, that Liverpool would not be top of the Premier League and ensuring Manchester City have no margin for error. But they are and every game now feels the biggest of their careers.

 

Attention may turn to Europe tomorrow, but it is no break given the desire to atone for the defeat against Real Madrid in the Champions League final last May.

 

Time spent on the training pitch will be restricted by the volume of matches, but Lijnders will play an important role in putting together short, intense sessions allowing freshness to be maintained. “This period screams fear and the only way to erase fear is to train really well,” he adds.

 

“If you train like beasts, 100 per cent attitude, and we choose the right way of training then you erase fear. You cannot be afraid because you are prepared.

 

“We will make sure we don’t take the fatigue from one session into another and one exercise into the other. We stimulate freedom of expression of Sadio, Roberto [Firmino] and Mo [Salah], so they need to be very intense in the game and that is only possible if you are 100 per cent fresh.

 

“I want only one thing and that is, at the end of the season, we have our heads up and we knew we gave everything.

 

“Manchester City have their qualities, but they could never beat us in team spirit, in loyalty, in ambition and effort. As long as we do that. I am convinced that we have a big chance.”

 

Champions League state of play

Quarter-finals

Tuesday, 8pm 
Liverpool v Porto, BT Sport 3
Tottenham v Manchester City, BT Sport 2
(second legs April 17)

Wednesday, 8pm
Ajax v Juventus, BT Sport 3
Manchester United v Barcelona, BT Sport 2
(Second legs April 16)

 

Semi-finals
First legs April 30 and May 1, second legs May 7 and 8
Tottenham/Manchester City v Ajax/Juventus
Manchester United/Barcelona v Liverpool/Porto

 

Final
Saturday June 1, 8pm
Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid

[3 Stacks]

Was thinking recently. What kind of tactical changes do people think we'll make in the future? I was thinking about this because we've been conceding loads of goals lately and Klopp himself has said this summer, after the Thiago transfer and at other times, that we're trying to stay unpredictable and that we're thinking of new ways to play.

 

My opinion; with the absolute boulevards of space that Trent offers up on the right side, is it maybe time to think about having more variety at full back? I look at Kimmich at Bayern and I don't think there are two more similar players in the world than Trent and him. Midfielders who became right backs with brilliant techniques.

 

Bayern have defensive full backs such as Hernandez and Pavard and then they have ultra attacking ones, like Kimmich and Davies. So basically, they can stack the middle with creativity by putting Kimmich there and lock down the wings with two defensive full backs, or they can play the likes of Tolisso, who is more conservative and have really offensive wings with Davies and Kimmich. I think it's really versatile and smart.

 

So maybe the future is to buy a physical right back, maybe who can play CB as well and move Trent to midfield. And then we could alternate Trent to right back or midfield, depending on the opponent and other things. Robertson is complete enough that he could play more defensive as well if we had a very creative and attacking midfield. Doing that you also kill two birds with one stone. That right back could maybe also be an option at CB and Trent could make up for Wijnaldum leaving. I don't have a suggestion for who this right back could be, but thoughts?

 

[Kevin D]

20 minutes ago, 3 Stacks said:

Was thinking recently. What kind of tactical changes do people think we'll make in the future? I was thinking about this because we've been conceding loads of goals lately and Klopp himself has said this summer, after the Thiago transfer and at other times, that we're trying to stay unpredictable and that we're thinking of new ways to play.

 

My opinion; with the absolute boulevards of space that Trent offers up on the right side, is it maybe time to think about having more variety at full back? I look at Kimmich at Bayern and I don't think there are two more similar players in the world than Trent and him. Midfielders who became right backs with brilliant techniques.

 

Bayern have defensive full backs such as Hernandez and Pavard and then they have ultra attacking ones, like Kimmich and Davies. So basically, they can stack the middle with creativity by putting Kimmich there and lock down the wings with two defensive full backs, or they can play the likes of Tolisso, who is more conservative and have really offensive wings with Davies and Kimmich. I think it's really versatile and smart.

 

So maybe the future is to buy a physical right back, maybe who can play CB as well and move Trent to midfield. And then we could alternate Trent to right back or midfield, depending on the opponent and other things. Robertson is complete enough that he could play more defensive as well if we had a very creative and attacking midfield. Doing that you also kill two birds with one stone. That right back could maybe also be an option at CB and Trent could make up for Wijnaldum leaving. I don't have a suggestion for who this right back could be, but thoughts?

 

 

This is shit idea and you are a twat.

[3 Stacks]

2 minutes ago, Kevin D said:

 

This is shit idea and you are a twat.

Thanks, mate. Thought about that over lunch in my car at my shit job.

[Scott_M]

I think there will be further refinement of what we do now. 
 

The poor goals against record will be stopped fairly quickly, I reckon (hope). 

[TheHowieLama]

9 minutes ago, Kevin D said:

 

This is shit idea and you are a twat.

Joe Gomez liked this.

[Bjornebye]

I haven't read any posts back but if anyone is calling Klopp tactics into question they can get in the fucking drink with burst armbands on. 

[No2]

We will use the same tactics as before only we will do it properly this time. Even with Adrian we will only concede 3 goals in the next 8 games.

[Creator Supreme]

3 minutes ago, No2 said:

We will use the same tactics as before only we will do it properly this time. Even with Adrian we will only concede 8 goals in each of the next 3 games.

Fixed!

[Creator Supreme]

3 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

I haven't read any posts back but if anyone is calling Klopp tactics into question they can get in the fucking drink with burst armbands on. 

Even if he plays a high line against Everton with that Spanish gobshite in goal?

[dockers_strike]

The number of drama queens seems to grow exponentially with a defeat but equally reduces again with a win!

[magicrat]

1 hour ago, dockers_strike said:

The number of drama queens seems to grow exponentially with a defeat but equally reduces again with a win!

Newtons 4th law of footie 

[Captain Howdy]

1 hour ago, dockers_strike said:

The number of drama queens seems to grow exponentially with a defeat but equally reduces again with a win!

Maybe so, but I can’t stand this “ must not be questioned” stance so many take, it’s a game of footy, let people express opinions, who gives a fuck really ?

[Bjornebye]

On 27/09/2017 at 03:47, 3 Stacks said:

This isn't a reaction to our poor run of results, but I think he's proving himself to be very inflexible tactically.

 

-It seems like he only wants to play one way, this 4-3-3 with a false 9 and inside forwards.

 

-A 2 man midfield seems out of the question, presumably because we have no midfielders who are solid enough defensively.

 

-We don't have a credible alternative to Firmino at the striker position, so we can't play two up front or give teams a different look.

 

-We can't play 3 at the back because we simply don't have the numbers or quality at centre back.

 

If we have success this season it will be because the players perfect this system. I don't see how the squad or Klopp is flexible enough to change anything. 

Well there’s a fucking surprise 

[3 Stacks]

3 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Well there’s a fucking surprise 

Wow, you got me. That's not even unfair criticism and it holds true to this day. We basically only play 4-3-3 and the players have become experts in that formation. How did you think this was a gotcha? You're actually an idiot. 

 

I have a post in that thread where I say our tactics at a particular moment is just running around. That looks way worse for me than that post, but you were too dumb to post it.