Watford 3 Liverpool 0 (Dec 20 2015)

[Russ Atmosphere]

This defeat in particular was down to the lineup and formation for me. Firmino up front on his own needs to stop, now. As does the 1 man up front in general. The press that worked so well against Man City is going to be useless against sides like this and I hope Klopp realises it sooner rather than later. They will just go long and if they have 2 decent forwards like Watford have its the perfect answer to Klopps tactics. They will just defend with 2 banks because they know we've got no wide players when Ibe isn't playing and Firmino is the worst cf in the league. Honestly Klopp has been a breath of fresh air but some of his selections and lack of urgency in subs are grating a little.

2 strikers with a diamond then? Who are the players? I'm a bit concerned he's not making very effective substitutions that are helping us in games but this was his bench on Sunday, my eyes.

 

04 K Touré

09 Benteke

24 Allen

27 Origi

33 Ibe

39 Fulton

56 Randall

[easytoslip]

I agree with Paul about our defensive frailties which have been an issue for many years now , Crystal Palace semi, as said before surely there is players that can do a job at the back in the lower divisions. How hard is it to keep an eye on someone ,tackle and stop him,ok sometimes you cant stop a bit of class but having to worry each time we are on the backfoot is shit and needs to be addressed, our goals against is dire and that wont win fuck all

[Reckoner]

Something sycophantic about Dave and some hysterical fanny flapping about the club.

[Dr. J]

Utter lack of character, a squad left comfortably numb by high wages, low expectations and YNWA.

 

One trophy in 10 years, no league title in 25 and a complete lack of urgency. Who gives a fuck? Klopp does, but I see nothing from these players - they didn't even try.

[El Rojo]

I had more confidence in Johnson with the ball at his feet, despite his propensity to run down blind alleys

 

I've more confidence in my johnson and the balls that hang to my feet, despite their prospensity....ah fuck it, whatever.

[Dave D]

Sometimes whats required is to sign somebody so sodding brilliant he lifts/demands those around him to his level. 

 

We seem happy to frequently spend 30m+ on carthorse centre forwards- maybe try throwing that kind of cash at a brilliant midfileder.

[kemskem]

We're lacking an aggression in attack that in the past a younger Gerrard and Suarez have given us. It's as much of a problem as our weakness at the back. Players who want to win and never say die (Coutinho has it occasionally) is always more important than being water tight at the back, as was shown under Rodgers.

[stringvest]

We're lacking an aggression in attack that in the past a younger Gerrard and Suarez have given us. It's as much of a problem as our weakness at the back. Players who want to win and never say die (Coutinho has it occasionally) is always more important than being water tight at the back, as was shown under Rodgers.

 

We're lacking it all over the pitch.  If Coutinho has it, then Lallana is Ron Harris reincarnate.

[The Guest]

2 strikers with a diamond then? Who are the players? I'm a bit concerned he's not making very effective substitutions that are helping us in games but this was his bench on Sunday, my eyes.

 

04 K Touré

09 Benteke

24 Allen

27 Origi

33 Ibe

39 Fulton

56 Randall

I liked what he did with Origi on for Skrtel rather than waste an attacking sub on changing a defender. Ibe and Benteke should have been on at half time though if not started. I'd play a flat 442. We've got the energy in cm to get up and down. We've also got a partnership in Ibe and Clyne just waiting to happen. All of our forwards are struggling up top on their own and they were before Klopp arrived. We've been crying out for 2 up top for over a season now. My biggest worry with Klopp was that he wasn't going to be aware of this and his preferred formation is 1 forward. I just hope he's flexible enough to change it. Coutinho would still be effective from the left and I wouldn't be expecting him to stay out there constantly. Benteke and Origi is another combination waiting to happen as well.

 

I get what he is probably trying to do though. This is the way he wants to play and he is just going to stick with it in a similar way that Rodgers forced us to play from the back and the teething problems that caused. Hopefully if he persists with 1 forward he finds a way for it to work. I'm just struggling to see it at the moment the way sides are setting up against us.

[Ben Sherman]

Firmino must really hate it in England. A Brazilian international can't be this shit. I assume Klopp gave them a bollocking at half time but he comes out and straight from the kick off, puts a straight forward pass out of play.

I think Lallana and Lucas for example are trying but are just shit. Lallana's shit for England as well as us. He'd probably look ok in a really good team but we haven't got that. Lucas has never been a good DM. It sums up Liverpool's transfer policy that he's still getting playing time.

Does anyone know where Texeria is? He'd be a far better option than Firmino at present.

[kemskem]

We're lacking it all over the pitch. If Coutinho has it, then Lallana is Ron Harris reincarnate.

How many times has Lallana pulled a rabbit out of the hat compared to Phil, or attempted it?

[Lurtz]

Bar the wins against citeh, who are inconsistent anyway, and Chelsea, who everyone has beaten so it's no great shakes, I'm yet to see an improvement under Jurgen. I didn't expect overnight miracles but I expected more effective lineups, subs and football. It's not happening yet.

[Jairzinho]

How many times has Lallana pulled a rabbit out of the hat compared to Phil, or attempted it?

 

I think he meant Ron Weasley.

[Russ Atmosphere]

Bar the wins against citeh, who are inconsistent anyway, and Chelsea, who everyone has beaten so it's no great shakes, I'm yet to see an improvement under Jurgen. I didn't expect overnight miracles but I expected more effective lineups, subs and football. It's not happening yet.

I know what you're saying but he's only had nine games so if you take the wins away... slightly unfair no? Progression in the cup/s wasn't a formality away at Southampton. I don't think he's getting the best out of the squad yet but that's only going to see us sixth, maybe seventh in all likelihood.

[stringvest]

How many times has Lallana pulled a rabbit out of the hat compared to Phil, or attempted it?

 

 

He can usually put a tackle in and doesn't hide.  And he provides goalscoring opportunities and works hard for the team.  

 

I am aware that none of this applies to Sunday though.  

[an tha]

The fact that our players aren't seemimgly any more up for it or performing any better under Klopp than they did under Rodgers says it all about them.

 

He must be fucking fuming that he has a collection of such spineless, characterless players.

 

Where is the 'heavy metal football'?

 

Where is the out fighting and out runnning

the opposition - the winning the ball back quickly...

 

Where is the high tempo?

 

These players simply haven't got it in them - they are passive and weak.

 

I'd like to think there will be a reaction on Boxing Day - I am resigned to there not being one from a side who have little quality, no leaders, no fighters and frankly no bollocks.

 

I don't see any hurt or anger when they lose or any fists shaking and rallying when they fuck up - just heads down and trudge back after goals - just lay down when kicked down or pushed down rather than bounce up and want it.

 

The weakest collection of men this football club has seen in my lifetime.

[GJM]

If by character we mean the mental strength to overcome setbacks, find solutions and determination to put things right, then I agree that we have a problem. I don’t think it is lack of effort, I think, if anything, it is players overthinking things and being far too burdened by the desire to do well and the frustration that it causes when it doesn’t happen immediately or when things go wrong.

 

Sunday, for me, was all about two things: the first two minutes of the game and our inability to mentally recover from an obvious and self-inflicted setback, and the style of football that we tried to play, which, as Klopp acknowledged by changing things at half-time, played into the opposition’s hands.

 

From the start, we had a lack of numbers for the midfield fight – Can and Henderson were playing so far wide of Lucas that he needed binoculars and a map to find them – and we had a front three so narrow and devoid of strikerly instinct that they were easy to contain, and even easier to catch offside. It was almost as if we had no strikers on the pitch….oh hang on.

 

It worked against City and Chelsea because they are good enough, or think they are good enough, to just play their own game, particularly at home, and not worry so much about us. They were happy to sit on the ball in their own half and try to build the play, they were happy to play a back four rather than a back 8 or 9, and they trusted the quality of their players to find solutions for them up front. They were misguided in that, but it was a method that played to our strengths.

 

Watford, as per Newcastle, Palace, West Ham and West Brom before them, and as will be the case for Leicester, Sunderland etc to come, do not do this. They do not want the ball for very long in their half. They would rather that we have it and, when they do get it, hit it forward very quickly to forwards who they know have a decent chance of out running and out muscling our defenders. Not because our defenders are particularly poor, but because they have strikers who are quite fast and quite strong, and quite fast and strong strikers have a pretty good record in this league of doing this.

 

Who have our best performances been against this season? City, Chelsea, Southampton (cup), Arsenal, Tottenham, Stoke. That would be my list. What do all of those teams have in common? They try to 'play football'. They don’t defend with 9 players, and they are not afraid to have the ball in their own half. Perfect for the way we want to play. But it should be obvious by now to Klopp that most teams that he is up against in this league are not going to play like that, particularly when they see what we do to teams that do. They are going to do a version of what Watford and West Ham and Crystal Palace have done so effectively.

 

The solution is partly tactical; the slight improvement in the second half against Watford was not because the team had a bollocking at half-time, it was because we changed the way we played and went toe to toe with the opposition, stretching the game with a pacey, if wayward, striker, and playing forward balls much earlier. The only way we are going to do change these results is through tactical changes and through players that are better suited to our having to come up with different solutions.

 

You have to earn the right to play good football and we don’t ever seem to be set up to do that. Sometimes it is a scrap, and you have to find solutions that do not involve 25 pass moves and killer final balls. It will be early balls forward, strikers that run the channels, scrap for those balls and put the shits up defenders, wingers who can stretch the play, beat their opponent and make things happen, despite the 9 man defense. It’s midfielders that puff an pant for a loose ball in the box, and well executed set pieces. If teams that cost a fraction of Liverpool to assemble can manage do this so well - and just look at top half of the table, there are lots of them - there is no reason at all that Liverpool cannot also. None, only perhaps foolish pride and misguided belief that we are better than that.

 

We are a psychologically weak and fragile team, no doubt, but we are also a team that should have better tactical brains than we are showing right now. There is no reason why that can’t be fixed. No reason at all.

 

And yes, there is a third reason that we lost and that is because Adam Bogdan – Bolton’s reserve goalkeeper until this season– is not good enough to be our #1, and Martin Skrtel is not good enough to play center-half for us. Those first two goals that sapped all life out of us before we even got started, were purely and simply down to those individual players, and nothing else. Bogdan should catch the fucking ball, and Skrtel should easily be able to defend the through ball to the strker. He fucked up massively, and not for the first time.  Other players had terrible terrible games – step forward Sakho, Lucas, Lallana, Firmino (who I honestly do not remember touching the ball at all during the entire match), Coutinho – but they did not lose us the game. Bogdan and Skrtel did. The rest were guilty of being psychologically weak, but quality and clever tactics count for more than character, in my view.

[Josef Svejk]

[Dr. J]

 

If by character we mean the mental strength to overcome setbacks, find solutions and determination to put things right, then I agree that we have a problem. I don’t think it is lack of effort, I think, if anything, it is players overthinking things and being far too burdened by the desire to do well and the frustration that it causes when it doesn’t happen immediately or when things go wrong.

 

Well, were we outworked by Watford, or not?

[Russ Atmosphere]

Can anyone sum this up for me?

[Hades]

Can anyone sum this up for me?

When we win, it's because we have great technical ability. When we lose, it's because of a lack of mental strength.

[Ipplfc]

It can only come down to two things,1,the last three teams faced,Newcastle,west brom,Watford have better players than us or 2,they are just putting in a lot more effort,if it's the former it will take kloppo more than a couple of transfer windows to sort this out,if it's the latter we are in trouble

[jimmycase]

just as there was a massive over reaction to the good performances since Klopp arrived, particularly city, chelsea and southampton, I think there's a massive over reaction to this result.

 

Suggestions that skrtel wasnt injured and went off because he didnt fancy it are a bit of a joke. Yes the performance was a massive let down and yes, some players arent good enough to make us top 4 never mind title challengers.

 

klopp's still working with the players he inherited and it'll take him at least 3 windows before he has the players he wants But even then pep might be at city, chelsea or manchester united with the last two bringing in a big name manager if they do miss out on him.

 

Klopp's not going to make us title winners anytime soon. Its a bitter pill and there's no sugar coating.

[Jairzinho]

The trouble with the Skrtel thing is that he wasn't injured. No way. In my book it is worse, infinitely worse, to bottle out, than to stand up and be counted. You can shave your head but it doesn't make you a hardknock. You can bleach your hair but it doesn't make you a big hom... oh, hang on, that's not right.

 

Out for six weeks. 

 

He's taking this pretend injury a bit far, in my opinion.

[ben48]

Out for six weeks.

 

He's taking this pretend injury a bit far, in my opinion.

Maybe he's been getting lessons off Sturridge.