Thiago Alcantara

[Barrington Womble]

42 minutes ago, elvis said:

The reasons we are so poor at the moment .

1. injuries to our defence meaning we have to steal from midfield . 

2. lack of confidence 

3 . no crowds . We miss the fans more than anyone - no one lifts the team like our fans . Football bid barely fucking watchable without fans , sticking the knife in right now is not behaviour befitting a real fan .

Wake me up at the end of August

We had injuries and were top of the league at Christmas. The same is true of no crowds. I agree we lack confidence. I kind of agree not having Henderson and fabinho in midfield is hurting us, but then that's because as I've been pointing out for weeks in this thread, thiago is a replacement and he's not playing our football. So 100% if he wasn't playing and fabinho or Henderson were, we'd be better. I also think we look like we're feeling sorry for ourselves. But the most important piece of it all is the football we're playing and it's slow, predictable crap that's easy to defend against. 

[VladimirIlyich]

23 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

I don't recall is losing 4 games on the bounce under either of them. I'm happy to be corrected, but did we lose 6 in 9 under them? Did we go 5 games at anfield without scoring a goal from open play? 

We finished 8th and were an utter disgrace. Our manager also gave an interview to the Scum rag. Klopp is way above that behaviour and has won everything that matters for us in the last few seasons. Souness is a cunt and Klopp is a world class manager.

[Barrington Womble]

20 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

We finished 8th and were an utter disgrace. Our manager also gave an interview to the Scum rag. Klopp is way above that behaviour and has won everything that matters for us in the last few seasons. Souness is a cunt and Klopp is a world class manager.

We're not discussing that though are we. What souness did off the pitch has no relation to anything we do on the pitch now or then. Nobody is going to argue klopp is both a better manager and a better human than souness. 

 

We are talking about thiago's influence on this team. Since he's come in we've had our worst home run for in 100 years - in whichever way you try to cut the stats, goals, wins, losses. We've thrown away the 2nd longest unbeaten home run in English footballing history and lost every match since. We've lost more games in less than 2 months than we have the previous 2 years and in those games he's been back in the side, we're going along in relegation form at less than a point per game (0.8 pts per game and 0.8 goals per game, which translates to a 30 point season)

 

Record without thiago

P13 W8 D4 L1 Pts 28

 

Record with thiago

P12 W3 D3 L6 Pts 12

 

 

[Ronnie Whelan]

Thiago is our Veron. A world class player who hasn't settled in. I feel a bit for him.

 

A lot of it is out of his hands. Some of the blame is on Jurgen. However, he has been sub standard and sometimes you just think how can a player that was considered one of the top 3 or 4 midfielders in the world be so poor. I mean Millie is 35 and he has been better. Curtis Jones is a very talented kid and he has been better. He looks a million miles from the player that ran the show in a great Bayern team.

 

I still think (maybe hope) he turns it around but if the opportunity presents itself to sell him and put it towards Maddison or Grealish, I would take it. He wouldn't be the first top player to bomb in this league and sometimes you have to cut your losses.

[El Rojo]

4 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

We're not discussing that though are we. What souness did off the pitch has no relation to anything we do on the pitch now or then. Nobody is going to argue klopp is both a better manager and a better human than souness. 

 

We are talking about thiago's influence on this team. Since he's come in we've had our worst home run for in 100 years - in whichever way you try to cut the stats, goals, wins, losses. We've thrown away the 2nd longest unbeaten home run in English footballing history and lost every match since. We've lost more games in less than 2 months than we have the previous 2 years and in those games he's been back in the side, we're going along in relegation form at less than a point per game (0.8 pts per game and 0.8 goals per game, which translates to a 30 point season)

 

Record without thiago

P13 W8 D4 L1 Pts 28

 

Record with thiago

P12 W3 D3 L6 Pts 12

 

 

Not sure how scientific that is. 
 

You could rephrase both headings to ‘Record with recognised centre halves’ and ‘Record without recognised centre halves’.  

[Halcyon Days]

39 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

And the simplest answer is usually the correct one. Smashing, let's say lots of pointless phrases when instead you can see he's just been utter crap and ripped the momentum out of the way this team plays. People don't like to admit it, but we are a long ball team and have been all the time under klopp. Not a long ball team in traditional English way, but we are a team that likes to hit it long quickly and play percentage football going for 2nd balls if it doesn't stick with our forwards. Litterally overnight we've stopped doing that.  

From a midfield of destroyers to hapless creators but the way injuries have hit us it’s hardly surprising really. Klopp wants to tweak us again this time into a more controlled footballing outfit, Thiago with our true spine of players around him cans still help towards this. How many times was the phrase ‘missing someone like Coutinho’ bandied round before last season? We just have to suck up this years shitshow hope we don’t tailspin for much longer and come out of this with Klopp ready to take on the world again. That last bits the most important in my eyes.

[Barrington Womble]

54 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

Not sure how scientific that is. 
 

You could rephrase both headings to ‘Record with recognised centre halves’ and ‘Record without recognised centre halves’.  

You couldn't though because we've been playing fabinho at centre back since about the 2nd game of the season. I'm not saying no centre backs is not playing a part, but we were doing quite nicely without them until thiago came into midfield. 

[Barrington Womble]

2 hours ago, Halcyon Days said:

From a midfield of destroyers to hapless creators but the way injuries have hit us it’s hardly surprising really. Klopp wants to tweak us again this time into a more controlled footballing outfit, Thiago with our true spine of players around him cans still help towards this. How many times was the phrase ‘missing someone like Coutinho’ bandied round before last season? We just have to suck up this years shitshow hope we don’t tailspin for much longer and come out of this with Klopp ready to take on the world again. That last bits the most important in my eyes.

I've said earlier in the thread, perhaps it's all a different story if he joins and spends 6 months coming off the bench. But let's be honest, he's not a 20 year old prospect. When you buy a supposed world class elite footballer, you expect him to be able to get on and play - in fact you expect in adversity for him to be one of the main men, for me that is part of what separates good footballers from great ones. It's not like the entire side is decimated. That starting team yesterday is 8 of our CL & PL best XI, plus thiago, Jones and kabak. We're destroyed at centre back, but our midfield that started yesterday was someone who won last year's champions League, someone who won the previous one and last season's premier league and a young lad who's our most talented academy graduate since Trent broke through 4 and a half years ago. 

 

Sometimes great footballers turn up at clubs and are just utter shit and the wrong fit. Juan Sebastian Veron was an example of that. Sometimes they come to the league at just the wrong point in the career. Fernando Morientes is an example of that. It doesn't alter either of those players had been world class performers before they came to England, they were just shite once they arrived. Personally I think he has the look of morientes. 

[Megadrive Man]

I was delighted when we signed Thiago. I can't remember the last time we signed a world class player that was the finished article and felt that he could bring something very different to the midfield.

 

My one concern was that he could be our 'Veron' and it is starting to look like that could be the case.

 

I do think the criticism of him has been way over the top though. In the second half of the season a number of players have performed badly, Allison, Mane, Firmino, and Trent plus the constant injuries and changing of Centre backs has really fucked us. I think he is being a bit unfairly scapegoated and taking too much blame for our worst run in a long time.

[stringvest]

8 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

Thiago kills the pace off the ball all the time. When he first came in the team he was playing a fair few fast, vertical passes over short distances. But even they seem to have stopped. You've mentioned there our forwards and robbo are not on his wavelength. There's a common denominator there. And that's 4 of the 6 players who are likely to be in front him - is it really what you want out of your play maker he can't play with two thirds of his team mates? Or they need to adapt to him rather than the other way round? He's providing the level of contribution we got from Alberto aquilani years ago. I find it astonishing how a team that's had no issues in scoring for 5 years, including this season with the injuries and he comes in and every match looks like a training session and the goals have dried up and people seem not to want to see the correlation. He's not our only problem, but he's an absolute major part of it. As soon as milner is back, I'd be benching him. Same with Jota and firmino. They both look like washed up players. 

I hear what you're saying, I just don't agree with it.  I think we get a much higher contribution than we ever saw from Aquilani - I wouldn't be surprised to see him have more of the ball and win more of the ball than any of our other mfs over the last half dozen games.   And if you think we're slower in midfield because of him, then I think you've forgotten how Henderson and Fabinho play in there. At least he's looking to play forward occasionally. 

 

I think Robbo's a bit brain dead football wise frankly, so I'm not sure he'll ever get it, but I think Thiago will link up the play with the forwards pretty effectively once he's not having to play midfield largely on his own.   

 

And Jota - I think he'll be fine once he's back in the team.

[Barrington Womble]

19 minutes ago, stringvest said:

I hear what you're saying, I just don't agree with it.  I think we get a much higher contribution than we ever saw from Aquilani - I wouldn't be surprised to see him have more of the ball and win more of the ball than any of our other mfs over the last half dozen games.   And if you think we're slower in midfield because of him, then I think you've forgotten how Henderson and Fabinho play in there. At least he's looking to play forward occasionally. 

 

I think Robbo's a bit brain dead football wise frankly, so I'm not sure he'll ever get it, but I think Thiago will link up the play with the forwards pretty effectively once he's not having to play midfield largely on his own.   

 

And Jota - I think he'll be fine once he's back in the team.

I don't think fabinho and Henderson got involved in the build up play too much, which is part of my point. We used to come out of defence and hit it long down the wings bypassing the midfield. Or maybe we'd go directly out to the full backs who were both great at bombing forward or even hitting booming cross field passes to the other wing. Henderson and fabinho did their best work playing on 2nd balls or pressing in that context. Our pressure when we had teams pinned in was then in the last 30 yards. We now seem to play through thiago which we would never have done with Henderson and fabinho, we'd have bypassed them, I'm sure he must make as many touches in a game as Henderson and fabinho would combined - absolutely certainly in deeper positions. And then when the ball comes through thiago, it's still mostly not direct enough and it's rarely in front of the player to encourage him to go forward, it's nearly always to feet to encourage sterile possession. So now we have loads of possession, but it's tending to be 10 yards or so deeper than it used to be. For me thiago has pretty much come in and stopped the machine, which is what we were. 

[Daisy]

It's hard not to be concerned with him. Everything he does looks nice on the eye apart from the rash challenges, but there's no end product. 

 

Hes not creating chances, he's not scoring and we as a team are shit with him in it. 

[Joey8FrogsLegs]

40 minutes ago, stringvest said:

I hear what you're saying, I just don't agree with it.  I think we get a much higher contribution than we ever saw from Aquilani - I wouldn't be surprised to see him have more of the ball and win more of the ball than any of our other mfs over the last half dozen games.   And if you think we're slower in midfield because of him, then I think you've forgotten how Henderson and Fabinho play in there. At least he's looking to play forward occasionally. 

 

I think Robbo's a bit brain dead football wise frankly, so I'm not sure he'll ever get it, but I think Thiago will link up the play with the forwards pretty effectively once he's not having to play midfield largely on his own.   

 

And Jota - I think he'll be fine once he's back in the team.

Good post. And regarding the contribution of Henderson and Fabinho in midfield, I at least half agree. Only half because I think Fabinho plays far more forward passes than Henderson. A while after Fabinho arrived I read somewhere that Henderson played around 15-20% of his passes to one of our three attackers, while the same figure for Fabinho was around 60%.

I’m pretty sure this is more balanced now, I would guess that Henderson plays it less sideways and backwards now than only 2-3 years ago. Still I think Fabinho is better than Henderson at that part, and therefore at least as much of a loss to our midfield. Even if I acknowledge Henderson has other qualities where partly making up for it.

 

[3 Stacks]

1 hour ago, Barrington Womble said:

I don't think fabinho and Henderson got involved in the build up play too much, which is part of my point. We used to come out of defence and hit it long down the wings bypassing the midfield. Or maybe we'd go directly out to the full backs who were both great at bombing forward or even hitting booming cross field passes to the other wing. Henderson and fabinho did their best work playing on 2nd balls or pressing in that context. Our pressure when we had teams pinned in was then in the last 30 yards. We now seem to play through thiago which we would never have done with Henderson and fabinho, we'd have bypassed them, I'm sure he must make as many touches in a game as Henderson and fabinho would combined - absolutely certainly in deeper positions. And then when the ball comes through thiago, it's still mostly not direct enough and it's rarely in front of the player to encourage him to go forward, it's nearly always to feet to encourage sterile possession. So now we have loads of possession, but it's tending to be 10 yards or so deeper than it used to be. For me thiago has pretty much come in and stopped the machine, which is what we were. 

This isn't true and is far too simplistic. Thiago is hovering around the 100 touch mark. When we were shite against Burnley, he had 85 touches, which isn't much, especially against a side like Burnley. 

 

You can take games at random last season when were winning every game and you'll find plenty of games where Henderson and Fabinho are around the 95 touch mark. In the 4-0 against Palace that clinched the title, Fabinho has 109 touches. In an 0-2 win against West Ham, Henderson has 157 touches. He has 140 in a 2-0 win against Sheff U. 

 

Now if you look at the touches stats like I did, you'll find also some games where we're bypassing the midfield. You'll have Henderson and Fabinho in the 80 touch range and the majority of touches are from Virgil and the full backs. But it's just not accurate to say as a rule that we bypass the midfield, or that Thiago is somehow monopolizing the ball. 

 

I suspect the real difference and problem is that with the centre backs being crocked and having the play backups, we miss the passing range of van Dijk and the quality of Gomez and Matip, which takes away the option of having an effective direct game plan. Henderson has at times shown his quality with the long ball from the back and it's helped, but the general lack of that option and those qualities have been really hurtful. And it's one of the reasons that to me, the obvious position for Thiago in the team is deeper because he can use his quality and passing range to hit diagonals and be direct from a holding position. But of course, because we have no quality at centre back, we're exposed defensively if we do that.

 

 

[Chris]

On 21/02/2021 at 11:06, Ronnie Whelan said:

Thiago is our Veron. A world class player who hasn't settled in. I feel a bit for him.

 

A lot of it is out of his hands. Some of the blame is on Jurgen. However, he has been sub standard and sometimes you just think how can a player that was considered one of the top 3 or 4 midfielders in the world be so poor. I mean Millie is 35 and he has been better. Curtis Jones is a very talented kid and he has been better. He looks a million miles from the player that ran the show in a great Bayern team.

 

I still think (maybe hope) he turns it around but if the opportunity presents itself to sell him and put it towards Maddison or Grealish, I would take it. He wouldn't be the first top player to bomb in this league and sometimes you have to cut your losses.

 

That's my take also. You look at all the plaudits he receives; FIFA Team of the Year etc. and then it just doesn't pass the eye test. Take any mitigating circumstances out of it and there's just no way this lad is the best in the world in his position. Not in Europe, not in the Premier League, not even close to being the best centre midfielder at Liverpool. I'd be moving him along swiftly if we get the opportunity. He's probably on about 250k a week. 

 

Strutting around at Bayern in what is clearly the best team in Europe by a mile has totally flattered him. 

 

Pure Faustino Asprilla signing from us. An absolute disaster. Which, you know, I'm ok with because 90% of our signings under Klopp have been spot on. It's only really Keita who's been a total failure. 

[Jennings]

21 minutes ago, Chris said:

...

 

Pure Faustino Asprilla signing from us. An absolute disaster. Which, you know, I'm ok with because 90% of our signings under Klopp have been spot on. It's only really Keita who's been a total failure. 

Which is worse "absolute disaster" or "total failure"?

 

 

[Chris]

4 minutes ago, Jennings said:

Which is worse "absolute disaster" or "total failure"?

 

 

Well we didn't lose every other game with Keita in the side and his failure was as much down to his inability to function as a professional athlete, so I'd say "absolute disaster" is worse. 

 

[joe_fishfish]

I sometimes wonder what planet people are on when they say things like "doesn't pass the eye test" about Thiago. I've lost count of the amount of times he's drawn in an opponent, passed the ball off and moved for the return, only to never get it back, because whoever he's passed it to has turned the wrong way, taken four touches and passed it back to the defence. (Wijnaldum mainly, but Jones does this a lot too.)

 

Been plenty of times he's threaded a ball through the lines into a team mate who's immediately fucking lost it as well. (Firmino does this at least three times a game.)

 

If you thought he was going to come in and be peak Gerrard and Xavi rolled into one, then yeah, I can see why you'd be disappointed.

[Halcyon Days]

Can we at least reserve judgement until we have something halfway resembling our first 11?

[Jennings]

25 minutes ago, Chris said:

Well we didn't lose every other game with Keita in the side and his failure was as much down to his inability to function as a professional athlete, so I'd say "absolute disaster" is worse. 

 

Thiago is neither of them by the way.

[Bjornebye]

2 hours ago, Chris said:

 

That's my take also. You look at all the plaudits he receives; FIFA Team of the Year etc. and then it just doesn't pass the eye test. Take any mitigating circumstances out of it and there's just no way this lad is the best in the world in his position. Not in Europe, not in the Premier League, not even close to being the best centre midfielder at Liverpool. I'd be moving him along swiftly if we get the opportunity. He's probably on about 250k a week. 

 

Strutting around at Bayern in what is clearly the best team in Europe by a mile has totally flattered him. 

 

Pure Faustino Asprilla signing from us. An absolute disaster. Which, you know, I'm ok with because 90% of our signings under Klopp have been spot on. It's only really Keita who's been a total failure. 

Rubbish. He will come good just you wait. 

[Chris]

1 minute ago, Bjornebye said:

Rubbish. He will come good just you wait. 

 

I'd love nothing more, because we'd be back in business if it all comes together. I don't see it though. The guy hasn't got the legs for our team, regardless of whether we get Hendo and Fabinho next to him.

 

I'm also conscious of the fact I'm a little more partial to blaming and criticising because he has zero credit in the bank compared to everyone else in the squad.

[Joey8FrogsLegs]

1 hour ago, joe_fishfish said:

I sometimes wonder what planet people are on when they say things like "doesn't pass the eye test" about Thiago. I've lost count of the amount of times he's drawn in an opponent, passed the ball off and moved for the return, only to never get it back, because whoever he's passed it to has turned the wrong way, taken four touches and passed it back to the defence. (Wijnaldum mainly, but Jones does this a lot too.)

 

Been plenty of times he's threaded a ball through the lines into a team mate who's immediately fucking lost it as well. (Firmino does this at least three times a game.)

 

If you thought he was going to come in and be peak Gerrard and Xavi rolled into one, then yeah, I can see why you'd be disappointed.

This. 

[magicrat]

I think Thiago will play a major part in the CL if we can progress. 

[Rick Sanchez C-137]

16 minutes ago, magicrat said:

I think Thiago will play a major part in the CL if we can progress. 

 

More yellows than any player ever?