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Sevilla (a) CL - Match Thread


Bjornebye
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Dont want to single him out but did Karius actually make a meaningful attempt to save any? I cant believe we have a reserve keeper playing CL football. Ming isnt ideal, but at least the defenders are used to him....

 

He had a very good game.  Did you watch the whole 90?  What about his save that made the ball rebound off the post to keep it at 1-0.....  How can you not remember that?

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Nothing surer than a player having a stinker right after Dave goes and bigs them up on this site. Also, nothing surer than the referee Felix Brych falling for all the hystrionics by the Sevilla lot (at least 2 of our players should never have been booked). Also, nothing surer than the delivery from a stoppage time corner against us not getting cleared leading to mayhem.

 

We should have seen that game out comfortably from a position of being 3-0 up at half time. Sure, Sevilla had had chances of their own but we looked like scoring almost every time we won the ball off them and ran at their defence. They just could not handle our front three.

 

We went 2-0 up through almost identical circumstances, winning the first ball at a corner and getting a man round the back to attack the loose ball. Good finish by Firmino, great finish by Mane. Firmino getting his second was just reward for the problems he and the team were causing Sevilla.

 

Then the second half more or less went like the Europa League final. We started really sloppily. Moreno had some major culpability for Sevilla's equaliser in that final, and here he started the second half as though he was playing for them, not us. Wayward headers into dangerous areas, sleeping at crossfield balls only to be bailed out by fortunately finding the attacker in an offside position, conceding needless free kicks and then exacerbating his problems by giving away a penalty after his own mis-control. He wasn't finishing that game, because if he wasn't hooked, he was getting sent off. His first half booking was one of those where Brych allowed himself to be conned by hystrionics, but Moreno would in all likelihood have got himself booked again anyway.

 

Mercifully, Klopp hauled Moreno off, as well as the AWOL Coutinho, who disappeared in that second half just as he had in Basel.

 

It's strange that we're talking about that performance and castigating the defence because, Moreno apart, I didn't think any of the other 4 had had a bad game. And yet...

 

Which brings me onto game management. Is the penny ever going to drop with Henderson? He needs to be at the forefront of taking the sting out of the opposition when we find ourselves under the cosh by slowing play down, making sure teammates get goal-side, and buying cheap free kicks. Basically do what Hamann and Alonso used to do. But no, he keeps the ball alive in dangerous areas and puts teammates into trouble. Then the opponents get free kicks and corners and we remain under the cosh. I think it was in the lead-up to Sevilla's second goal, we ended up conceding a corner when moments earlier, Henderson intercepted a pass and should have stood still over the ball and waited for the inevitable contact before hitting the deck. Free kick to us and more frustration for a desperate Sevilla side. Henderson controlled the ball, shit himself and put Moreno into trouble. Sevilla won it back, played a cross in and Lovren or Klavan had to put the ball out for a corner.

 

If I'm unfairly singling out Henderson when the likes of Wijnaldum didn't wrestle control back either, it's because this has been a theme ever since Henderson arrived at the club. It's a bigger problem when he's the one mainly tasked with sitting and screening the defence. He's perfectly happy to follow his coach's instructions to the letter but if the game required something slightly different from him, he either does not or cannot adapt.

 

We could and should have wrapped up the win and a place in the knockout stage but we wasted a couple of good opportunities of our own. Salah took an age to get a shot away, Can had a square ball blocked by a last-ditch challenge, Mane blasted high and wide, and then Milner sent a missile of a pass across the 6-yard box when no-one was running in for a square pass.

 

We now have to make sure we don't lose to Spartak because that would put them level on points with us. The first tie-breaker in the group stage is head-to-head results, followed by goal difference in those head-to-head results. A defeat would put them above us. Sevilla play a Maribor side in their final game who won't be arsed so we have to assume the Spaniards will win that one.

 

I blame Dave for this one!

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If you want to be so blinkered in what I'm saying, then knock yourself out, but if you think the defence was the sole issue, when we lost as a team tonight, with no help from the other 6 players, then you're not paying attention. 

 

When the attack scores 3 (again), and the defence concedes 3 (again), I'd say the defence is a pretty glaring issue. You can whimper on about 'character', 'steel', 'balls' and any other intangible adjective while Peps team of physical midgets march forward with 17 wins down the road. It comes down to ability -- and it is a lack of ability why we've conceded 12 in our 3 tough away games this season, and a lack of ability is why our players in those positions generally cost a few million £ each (if that).

Attack is pretty fucking sensational though (City are flipping the scales this season .. but any normal year and we're right there at the top on that front), so who knows what's possible. Quarter final birth would be my bet.

 

One end of the pitch has a probable value of £200-250 million. The other MAYBE £30-40 million depending on who we trot out. Anything but a team game for us. It is incredibly, incredibly lopsided.

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Ignoring the usual issues , the other thing that baffles me is how many times we take ridiculous risks with 1/2's or blind passes in extremely dangerous parts of the pitch where the risk-reward is not in our favour.

 

Also , my old favourite , game-management , raised its head again. We have steadied quite well for 20 minutes, got to injury time with them struggling to hurt us , got the ball with Can & Mane in our half - just get the ball up the pitch , it's not rocket science.

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That was a ridiculous result, they were almost as bad as Maribor, in fact they've drawn twice with them. They were cramping after 60 mins and had around 25% possession. We will destroy them in Anfield.

 

That would be the smart bet but in any game that really matters we absolutely shit ourselves. If they get an early goal lumping it up to the big man it'll be panic stations heads all over the place again.

 

To be honest I wouldn't be confident if we were playing Accrington Stanley at home in the last game, never mind Spartak.

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I miss seeing Carragher going apeshit at the defence whenever we'd concede or have a near miss.

 

I can't remember the last time I seen Henderson even give one of our players a stern look.

 

It's what we need at the moment, if moreno got an earful for conceding the free kick then he might not have been such a mong in the following 15 minutes.

 

If firminho and mane got a telling off for messing about with step overs and back heels at 3-2 then the last goal doesn't happen.

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The way the other groups are panning out we'd be better drawing and coming second as if we win it you just know we'll get Madrid and that game should carry a health warning .

 

At the minute if we win our group we could play either -

 

FC Basel

Bayern Munich

Juventus

Shakhtar Donetsk

FC Porto

Real Madrid

 

​Come second in our group - 

 

​PSG

Roma

​Barcelona

Besiktas

 

​Think I'd rather win the group.  Three very winnable ties for us in the part of the draw.  

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There was a point when we were 0-3 up when the broadcast showed the passes completed stat and Sevilla had about 300. We didn't even reach 100. They were creating lots of chances too, not just passing it sideways.

 

Blame the players, sure, but this was a designed tactic. In the end, we played like a small club and got rightfully punished for it. 

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There was a point when we were 0-3 up when the broadcast showed the passes completed stat and Sevilla had about 300. We didn't even reach 100. They were creating lots of chances too, not just passing it sideways.

 

Blame the players, sure, but this was a designed tactic. In the end, we played like a small club and got rightfully punished for it. 

 

This was down to our midfield or lack of.

 

Midfield controls the game. Banega has free reign of the middle of the pitch to do whatever he wanted.

 

I had sympathy for all our forwards as they got fuck all support from the 3 players behind them.

 

Nothing has changed for me since the Spurs game. I personally don't think we've been playing that great. All that's changed is Salah has been banging them in at the right times. We've been playing shit teams like Huddersfield, West Ham and Southampton who've not really tested our defence. Even Utd never tested us defensively as their tactics were so negative.

 

Chelsea will be a big test on Sunday for these players.

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He had a very good game.  Did you watch the whole 90?  What about his save that made the ball rebound off the post to keep it at 1-0.....  How can you not remember that?

 

Yep. Watched it live, then now highlights here and he looks like a Fifa 98 buggy goalkeeper running after the ball for the first one.

 

Then went the wrong way twice for the penalty (granted those are pot luck).

 

3-3 just he just bounced off the floor. Like I say I dont like to single him out, I hope he makes it, I just think the back 4 need some consistency with the keeper and him not playing week in week out doesnt give them that confidence.

 

Perhaps.. just surmising! No expert, just novice observation!

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This was down to our midfield or lack of.

 

Midfield controls the game. Banega has free reign of the middle of the pitch to do whatever he wanted.

 

I had sympathy for all our forwards as they got fuck all support from the 3 players behind them.

 

I don't think you can blame one area of the team. We tried to play like Leicester of 2 years ago, but failed miserably.

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At the minute if we win our group we could play either -

 

FC Basel

Bayern Munich

Juventus

Shakhtar Donetsk

FC Porto

Real Madrid

 

​Come second in our group - 

 

​PSG

Roma

​Barcelona

Besiktas

 

​Think I'd rather win the group.  Three very winnable ties for us in the part of the draw.  

 

It's hard to get too bothered when we're clearly going to get bummed by the first good side we play anyway. If we did get through to the QF, we'll likely draw someone good and we'll be out. You can't defend like that and have this flaky mentality and expect to get through high pressure games against quality, experienced sides. 

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Yep. Watched it live, then now highlights here and he looks like a Fifa 98 buggy goalkeeper running after the ball for the first one.

 

Then went the wrong way twice for the penalty (granted those are pot luck).

 

3-3 just he just bounced off the floor. Like I say I dont like to single him out, I hope he makes it, I just think the back 4 need some consistency with the keeper and him not playing week in week out doesnt give them that confidence.

 

Perhaps.. just surmising! No expert, just novice observation!

 

Can't blame him for the penalties.  Striker is always favourite for those..  And for the 3rd he couldn't see the ball as an offside player was in his way.

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Dissapointed we could not hold onto our first half lead, but to be honest if you had offered me a 3-3 draw away to a spanish side with the european home record they have i would have taken it before kick off.

Still top of the group and in charge of our own destiny. Given the limitations of our some of our squad, I'll take that.

Nope we're Liverpool and should have 15 points.

 

Being raped by American parasites for a decade doesn't change that.

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Agreed. We were sitting far too deep and the players had zero space to make anything happen on the counter. The popular view will be that a few players cost us the game, but the problem was much bigger than that. Sevilla were bumming us going forward all game long.

 

Yep, got to agree with that too. Even before the individual mistakes happened, they were finding plenty of spaces to put us under pressure.

 

It was pretty obvious what they did coming into the second half. They switched to a 4-2-4 straightaway, and maximise the width of the play by having their two wingers hugging the touchline. In addition, their two central midfielders were happy to receive the ball playing back to goal in order to trigger a pressing motion from our own midfielders. This then created huge spaces between the lines which their strikers could drop into, while our centre-backs could not really follow them because of the one-to-one equivalency their front four created. They even switched to a what looked like a 3-2-5 at the end.

 

It was a very smart tactical switch from Berizzo, but Jurgen's reaction was very disappointing. I personally thought it was plain obvious our only option was to move to a back five, which would have enable us to cover the width of the pitch while also allowing our centre-backs to follow their strikers' dropping movements because of the additional defender. Jurgen only making a personnel change was very deflating. An uncomfortable admission it might be, but I thought Klopp got schooled by Berizzo in that second half. Moreno might have needed hooking, but we also needed a tactical change to go with it.

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Don't forget we were on the ropes at 0-1. Sevilla should have scored twice in the 5 minute spell. Moreno also went AWOL on that 2nd chance for them.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I kind of agree.

 

You can't complain being 3-0 up. But, even at that stage it was hot potato stuff with the ball at times.

 

No cleverness. No guile. No little bit of intelligence in trying to slow the game down a bit and keep the ball.

 

It was get it, look to get the ball over the top or into the gaps in the channels as quickly as possible. It worked a few times and we created chances out of it. But, when it stopped working, there seemed to be no plan to do anything else, nor an individual ability, to stop the ball coming straight back at us.

 

We were keeping the ball for all of 5 to 6 seconds at times. Given our defensive frailties and tendency to make individual errors, it was risky to manage the ball so poorly.

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He had a very good game.  Did you watch the whole 90?  What about his save that made the ball rebound off the post to keep it at 1-0.....  How can you not remember that?

 

I am no fan of Karius but he was not to blame tonight, Arguably would have lost if not for him.

We rode our luck in the first half and Moreno cost us the win in the second, 

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