Thiago Alcantara

[TheDrowningMan]

4 minutes ago, dockers_strike said:

So you're saying he can only play in one team formation?

I’m saying, in response to critiques of his lack of pace, that he was bought to play alongside both and at worst one of Henderson and / or Fabinho. It certainly wasn’t being flagged as an issue against Chelsea and Everton.

[El Rojo]

Himself and Firmino were on completely different wavelengths which cost us possession and broke down a few moves in the first half. 

 

Reasonable to assume things will improve the more he trains with us. 

 

His success here isn't a given, though, as he's a completely different style of midfielder to our hard-pressing regulars (two of them now stuck in defence) who drove us on to a European Cup and a league title. 

 

We still really miss Van Dijk's distribution. Maybe Thaigo can take the ball deep for us and spread it around like Virgil used to. 

[LFC 6 Times]

Thiago is fucking boss, his technique and passing of the ball is absolutely sublime and he’s unbelievably tenacious without the ball. How is he getting criticism?

[Barrington Womble]

2 hours ago, aws said:

I like the look of him so far and think he offers us something different -a bit of finesse which should prove invaluable in those games we dominate but can't break down the ten man defence. He should also get better as he regains full match fitness and gets more used to our system and the service the forwards prefer. 

But he is a bit slow and we need to be playing two hard-pressing midfielders alongside him. Henderson and Fab preferably.  

Newcastle, Southamton, Man United were all teams that sat back and let us have the ball. It didn't aid us at all. 

 

I am not saying he can't succeed here, but right now I don't believe he is improving us, far from it in fact. I'd have Fabinho, Gini and Henderson back in the midfield in a heartbeat and try and get back to what we are good at and let thiago come off the bench while he learns what our forwards do and how we press. If he can't press in this league, we need to completely rebuild the way we play, because a few no look passes don't fix the intensity we're lacking right now. We've heard countless times how it takes some players many months to learn the way we play - right now I think Thiago looks like one of them. For me of the little we've seen of Thiago, he seems style over substance in our system and very much reminds me of the impact Morientes made. 

[aws]

Early days for Thiago though. In normal circumstances we'd be bedding him in for the first couple of months rather than throwing him in at the deep end and expecting him to be doing tumble turns.  But we're a bit desperate for inspiration at the moment. 

[Barrington Womble]

9 minutes ago, aws said:

Early days for Thiago though. In normal circumstances we'd be bedding him in for the first couple of months rather than throwing him in at the deep end and expecting him to be doing tumble turns.  But we're a bit desperate for inspiration at the moment. 

yeah, I agree. But that is solved dead easy by getting a centre back in and another on loan and getting fabinho and henderson back into midfield. 

[aws]

51 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

yeah, I agree. But that is solved dead easy by getting a centre back in and another on loan and getting fabinho and henderson back into midfield. 

It'll be interesting to see if we play Matip and Phillips against Burnley and revert to a more normal midfield and game system. It would be nice to think that would spur our strikers back into action. 

[Barrington Womble]

3 minutes ago, aws said:

It'll be interesting to see if we play Matip and Phillips against Burnley and revert to a more normal midfield and game system. It would be nice to think that would spur our strikers back into action. 

Is matip going to be ready? I assumed he had a set back or was never even close and we just put it out there as a distraction to OGS. I think Phillips could probably do a job against Burnley's front line. It would be great to have a game with Henderson and fabinho in midfield. 

[3 Stacks]

He was excellent yesterday. People are doing this thing now where because he had a lot of hype but the team isn't doing well, it means he's been overrated. There's a small lack of sharpness to his game right now which is normal, but his quality has been evident.

[Guest]

On 23/11/2020 at 23:06, TheHowieLama said:

Lots of players deserve stick after the last few games. Thiago isn't one of them. 

[Scott_M]

Like Shaq, his influence faded as the game progressed yesterday.

 

[Joey8FrogsLegs]

7 hours ago, Grinch said:

So he hit it right at de gea once, resulting in a easy camera save.  Did fuck all else and that's all you can expect? 

 

He'd need to get a whole lot better than not or he's never gonna justify even half the hype. 

 

Not putting the ball out of ball by a mile when an easy pass would have had Salah one on one would have been a nice start. 

Well, there is a post I 100% disagree with.

Fair enough.

[aws]

2 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

Is matip going to be ready? I assumed he had a set back or was never even close and we just put it out there as a distraction to OGS. I think Phillips could probably do a job against Burnley's front line. It would be great to have a game with Henderson and fabinho in midfield. 

I believe Jurgen said he's back in full training today after only partial training before the Manc game. 

[Barrington Womble]

29 minutes ago, aws said:

I believe Jurgen said he's back in full training today after only partial training before the Manc game. 

fingers crossed then. i would be bold if he went with him and phillips, but i would be made up if he did. 

[Megadrive Man]

4 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

I am not saying he can't succeed here, but right now I don't believe he is improving us, far from it in fact. I'd have Fabinho, Gini and Henderson back in the midfield in a heartbeat and try and get back to what we are good at and let thiago come off the bench while he learns what our forwards do and how we press. 

 

The issue isn't so much the midfield but its the lack of pace we have at the back. If we played Matip with Phillips/Williams we would still have to defend far deeper as we don't the recovery pace that VVD and Gomez have.

 

Thiago is not the main issue. If we had a midfield of Henderson, Fabinho and Gini in our last few games we wouldn't have been any better creativity wise because that's not where our creativity normally comes from. 

 

Thiago is clearly not at full match fitness yet, but his dribbling and passing are better than any of our other midfielders. He was signed as a first choice player because he's one of the best in the world at what he does.  The injury and Covid and the lack of training sessions due to the amount of matches played haven't helped at all, but I can't see him not starting most of the time when he is fit. I think its unlikely that we will see Fabinho back in midfield again this season.  

[TheHowieLama]

9 minutes ago, MegadriveMan said:

 

I think its unlikely that we will see Fabinho back in midfield 

 

[3 Stacks]

There were a couple times in the game when he was 1v1 on the edge of the box with United defending in a low block and he just skipped past the defender easily. You can count the midfielders who can do that consistently on one hand. He's also been very present winning headers, second balls and winning the ball cleanly sliding in.

 

Again, other than being a little sharper with the passing at times, which will come because he has the clear ability, what else do people want? Being mediocre as a collective when he's played doesn't make him mediocre by proxy.

[KevieG]

People must be blind if they can't see how good this guy is. 

 

I actually didn't realize he had a step in him to beat someone or can spring 3 feet in the air to win most headers he goes for. 

 

The team is playing fucking shite. We'd make Maradona look bad at the moment

[Mathewbet1]

Think he would benefit by having henderson in midfield with him, just ahead on the right doing the early press chasing down. Thiago has shown he quite capable of tackling  back, just think we loose a lot of energy from MF when henderson is in defence.

[Tj hooker]

Talking to a Utd fan in work today he reckons Thiago pisses all over that show pony Fernandes his words not mine , a proper world class midfielder I'd wish we had signed him he added 

[Barrington Womble]

34 minutes ago, Mathewbet1 said:

Think he would benefit by having henderson in midfield with him, just ahead on the right doing the early press chasing down. Thiago has shown he quite capable of tackling  back, just think we loose a lot of energy from MF when henderson is in defence.

So here's a thing. Lots of people who've seen more of thiago than me before he joined us are saying we should try and play him further forward. So as Bobby plays so deep and he's so out of form, is thiago capable of playing the false 9 we play and we could still have 3 players in midfield in behind? 

[torahboy]

Some of the posters on this thread should show that Thiago how to play football.

[3 Stacks]

53 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

So here's a thing. Lots of people who've seen more of thiago than me before he joined us are saying we should try and play him further forward. So as Bobby plays so deep and he's so out of form, is thiago capable of playing the false 9 we play and we could still have 3 players in midfield in behind? 

Opinions differ, but at this point in his career, he's probably more holding midfielder than attacking midfielder. To me, he's best as someone who picks it up deeper, in between centre backs and starts attacks, evades the press, etc...

 

In theory though, he certainly has the technical ability to play further forward.

[Barrington Womble]

7 minutes ago, 3 Stacks said:

Opinions differ, but at this point in his career, he's probably more holding midfielder than attacking midfielder. To me, he's best as someone who picks it up deeper, in between centre backs and starts attacks, evades the press, etc...

 

In theory though, he certainly has the technical ability to play further forward.

Not sure one of them really suits us, we normally bypass the midfield when the ball is at the back and the midfield gets involved backing up the forwards from there. 

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

We’re going to play him in midfield and change our style. Play Minamino and go Thiago-Taki.