Jump to content
  • Sign up for free and receive a month's subscription

    You are viewing this page as a guest. That means you are either a member who has not logged in, or you have not yet registered with us. Signing up for an account only takes a minute and it means you will no longer see this annoying box! It will also allow you to get involved with our friendly(ish!) community and take part in the discussions on our forums. And because we're feeling generous, if you sign up for a free account we will give you a month's free trial access to our subscriber only content with no obligation to commit. Register an account and then send a private message to @dave u and he'll hook you up with a subscription.

Norwich City 0 Liverpool 1 (Feb 15 2020)


tlw content
 Share

Recommended Posts

 

 
dave_usher.jpg
 
Report by
Dave Usher

 

Not the most convincing of scorelines but at no point did I ever feel that this result was in doubt. It always felt like just a matter of time before we eventually broke through their eleven man defence and it never looked like they were going to score.

 

It was top versus bottom and the it was the biggest points difference ever at this stage. That says more about how great we are than it does about Norwich being weak in my opinion. They’re probably the best bottom placed club I can remember in years. They deserve credit for making us have to work for the result but I was a little surprised at how they played. 

 

I’ve enjoyed watching them this season and I thought they were boss at Anfield. They got hammered though so presumably Daniel Farke decided that all out defence was the way forward this time. They only lost 1-0 so I guess he’ll view that as being worth it. I did think they might have seen this as a free swing and thrown everything they had at us, but it was clear from the first minute that wasn’t going to be the case.

 

It’s not like that approach works against us anyway, but defending doesn’t work either. It’s a case of pick your poison I suppose. If they’d attacked us it wouldn’t have ended well either, but that’s how they play and I expected them to play their football and go down swinging, like Southampton a couple of weeks ago.

 

It was a good time for them to play us though as it feels as though we’re never any good when we come back from a break. I don’t have the stats to back that up and it might not be true, but the impression I have is that we’re always lacking sharpness when we’ve had a week off. The performance against Norwich was fine for the most part, but there was a distinct lack of sharpness in the final third.

 

We dominated the game, looked strong at the back, passed it around well, but the clinical edge just wasn’t there until Sadio came on and transformed the game. The first half wasn’t that good as I don’t think we adjusted well enough to the weather conditions. You can’t hit those long passes over the top of defenders when the wind is as strong as that, but we kept trying it anyway.

 

Klopp said the problem was that the midfielders weren’t expecting the defenders to hit it long and as a result they couldn’t get in position for the second ball. That changed after the break and we looked much more cohesive as a result. 

 

I’ve said before that’s one of the least talked about impressive things about us. The ability to analyse what isn’t working and how to fix it during the game is massive. It literally is a huge game changer because it’s changed countless games. We always seem to play better in the second half of games and this is a big reason why. It’s also because we just wear teams down. It’s hard to keep us at bay for ninety minutes as eventually the tiredness keeps in and the pressure we exert usually pays off.

 

 

This is just a teaser, click to view the full article

 

Please note that Match Reports are only available to website subscribers. Subscriptions cost just £2 a month (you need to register first) and can be purchased here. 

  • Upvote 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • dave u pinned this topic

Loved it when Daniel Farke said "we were up against the best team in the world" Don't think I'll ever tire of hearing that.

The BBC highlights as usual were shocking Jonathan Coleman kept banging on about the possibility of a foul by Mane (both Norwich centre-half's went down like they'd been shot whenever anyone went near them all game) but when van Dijk was manhandled by two of their players and dragged down he just shrugged it off as if it was nothing.

 

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Leading into this round of games (so it's almost certainly changed a little since), the bottom 6 teams were averaging 0.92 points per game which, if maintained, would be the highest collective points tally from that portion of the table in all but 1 of the last 10 years. 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great stuff dave lad. Cantwell is a snidy girly gender fluid cunt, can't be having him. 

Naby has been threading those passes all the time in he's former club and I could see him doing great work feeding our forwards, he just needs gametime. He'll come good as he's a quality player. 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Felt Norwich were fairly negative in the first half but actively looking to break,  whereas second half they just parked the bus & I became more and more confident as playing 45 minutes of  'attacking-defence' against us only ends one way.

 

Not getting too worried about all of the spurious reasons being dug up to try to demean our title procession, as it just seems to be an expansion of what Everton fans have been doing around derby matches for years.

 

a) They are on the rise , they will beat us

b) We thump them

c) Find some insignificant detail to moan on and on about to avoid facing reality.

d) Rinse and repeat

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spot on re Cantwell. I thought he looked a decent talent in previous games, but his attitude on Saturday stank. Five free-kicks given in his favour, only one was a clear foul. He's also developed a Danny Rose-style scream to go along with the sack-of-spuds impression. The crowd was reff'ing this game from an early stage.

 

Though Naby was a bit hit and miss, but what I liked was how hard he worked to get the ball back whenever he did mess up.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We don't need to buy any of those attacking midfielder / front three hybrid players, because we've got Curtis Jones.

 

If we had to buy one though, I'd want Grealish because he's miles better than any of the other players of his type. If we were to sign that Cantwell twat then I'd have to bring back the asterisk.

 

C*ntwell.

 

Plus his name is Todd. What the fuck? No disrespect to anyone named Todd, but who the fuck names their kid Todd?

 

The only famous non-American Todd I can think of is Tucker in Grange Hill.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • dave u unpinned this topic

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...