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Villa (A) Premier League - 4/10/20 - 19:15


Bjornebye
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9 minutes ago, clockspeed said:

I don't get Klopps ambivalence to the likes of Bobby, 2nd rate goalkeepers etc  being out of form. Slightly arrogant to assume we can keep playing same way when all the cogs aren't functioning. Guess he has earned that. I am a hysterical fanny granted and I am concerned how some of his team's can implode for periods of time at this minute I am discarding this notion. 

 

On another point disappointed in VVD as a captain. I championed him to be ahead of Hendo . What I saw last night was not captaincy material. Imagine souness in his pomp. For one he would have identified grealish as the danger and given him the message then sorted out his own teammates. 

I think Robbo should captain the team after Hendo. Rock solid Scotsman,hard as nails and doesn't give up. Hard to believe but I thought he was easily our best player last night and very little came down his side of the pitch. Looks a leader to me.

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We were a mess yesterday no doubt about it but I think criticism of individual players and the manager (and questioning their ability) is a bit unfair.  This manager and these players are what they have shown us the last 3+ seasons, one match or even one weird season does not change that.  There are freak results everywhere, we are not immune from that, matches are far more open than they have ever been and I said at the start of the season that we would probably suffer more than anyone for the lack of crowd.  Our pressing game feeds off it, whether friend or foe we rise to the occasion when there's a crowd watching and participating so it's no surprise that the players aren't quite as switched on every week.  The players still have the ability they have shown consistently, Klopp needs to find a way to bring it out of them in these weird circumstances but I fully expect there to be more ups and downs and possibly even forfeited points, but I won't be too concerned unless we get to half way and we're off the pace of the top 3.

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48 minutes ago, an tha said:

Ok - fair do's 

 

I remember the dicking they got at Southampton and the grey kit lark.

 

Reason i thought you were talking about different games and dead rubbers was because you got Soton score wrong, it was 6-3 not 5-2...but yeah they lost had lost 5-0 to Newcastle previous week.

 

Still does not change how rare/incredibly jarring such a result as yesterday is...our own worst result for 57 years and first time reigning champions conceded  7 for 67 years - quite incredible.

Yeah I did get the score wrong sorry. The score is quite incredible, I’m still in shock to be honest. I just hope it’s a one of anomaly.

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27 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

I think Robbo should captain the team after Hendo. Rock solid Scotsman,hard as nails and doesn't give up. Hard to believe but I thought he was easily our best player last night and very little came down his side of the pitch. Looks a leader to me.

Yip not immediately obvious but a good call. Would send out a clear message .

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On the brighter side (and yep, there always is one!), Mo looked sharp again and Jota did a lot of good things, especially in the first half. 

 

The insane pressure of an undefeated season is also gone too. Given the current circumstances, merely defending the title would be a fantastic achievement. And as bad as this result was, it was still 'only' 3 points dropped.

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19 minutes ago, angie said:

Yeah I did get the score wrong sorry. The score is quite incredible, I’m still in shock to be honest. I just hope it’s a one of anomaly.

Let's hope so.....i think as much as we'd all hate a loss and one at a team like them especially given how good we have been last two seasons, we'd all probably take it a bit better and shake it off easier whilst still spewing it if it was 2 or even 3-0 for example.

 

It just feels surreal to let in 7 - something probably none of us can remember before.

 

2 bastards weeks to stew as well!

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Having refelcted on the match only Robbo - Salah and Jota (Who put a shift in and tried to make things happen with only a couple of starts behind him) come out with any credit.

Firmino is becoming a problem - he's not doing the level of off the ball work he was last season(to my eye anyway) and his touch and general passing is awful.

 

Fabino looks well off the pace so far this season as well as TAA nowhere near the levels they can both play at.

Im pretty much done with Keita I was so excited when we signed him and am so underwhelmed by the type of player he is. He's just not what I thought we were getting as a midfielder he's timid, lacks authority and drifts through matches just showing glimpses of what he can do - I don't think theres any excuse for him now given how long he's had to settle in. He offered us nothing in midfield yesterday either going forward or defensively.

Im really concerned with Adrian in goal now for an extended period that match yesterday is sending a message out to every other club in the league - shoot onsite and pressure him and you'll score.

 

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4 hours ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

I still find it bizarre we kept playing the same way when it was clearly being exposed again and again. Learn during the game. 

Always felt this was jurgens weak spot. Once a game starts going against us he’s unable to put a stop to it tactically and just let’s the game run it’s course no matter the result. 

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1 hour ago, VladimirIlyich said:

I think Robbo should captain the team after Hendo. Rock solid Scotsman,hard as nails and doesn't give up. Hard to believe but I thought he was easily our best player last night and very little came down his side of the pitch. Looks a leader to me.

I get what you mean, but for me he’s susceptible to the brain fart and is caught out of position more than you would expect from a mature LB. I really like him even if I don’t think he’s quite the finished article from a defensive pov 

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53 minutes ago, A_S said:

Speaking of Robbo, a back pass that bounces up and hits the keeper in the midriff is not a good one. Adrian could have obviously done better with one less touch, but that pass did him no favours at all. 


when Adrian is playing, backpasses to the keeper should be avoided at all costs.

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I still haven't got my head round that performance. Fuck knows how Klopp is dealing with it.

 

I'd genuinely demote a first team player to the U23s off the back of a performance like that, send a message to the rest of the shithouses. The only problem would be picking one. Could make a case for any of Adrian, Trent, Gomez, Fabinho, Keita, Firmino really. Wijnaldum wasn't exactly covering himself in glory either.

 

I've watched back a few of the goals, and it seemed like our midfield was absolutely nowhere fucking near any of the Villa players whenever the ball broke to them.

 

https://streamja.com/ak7EW

 

This is the second goal. Comedy of fucking errors here. Trent lets Watkins run off the back of him, Wijnaldum seems to be between the centre backs so Grealish is pressed by Fabinho, but he's nowhere near strong enough to put any pressure on the ball. Grealish barely even notices he's there and chips a nice little ball into the channel. There's a channel becase Trent is literally stood still there waiting for an interception, and Gomez is easily beaten for pace by Watkins chasing the ball. Wijnaldum's meant to covering for Fabinho, but instead of tracking back with the defenders to be in a position to block a shot if Watkins cuts inside, he just jogs back really slowly meaning there's a massive gap in the box for Watkins to move into and get his shot off. It's a good finish to be fair to him but he shouldn't be given the chance to make it.

 

There isn't enough on that replay to figure out why Fab and Wij swapped positions, but once they have they should know what fucking jobs they have to do. Wij has played DM before and Fab isn't exactly a stranger to flying into tackles usually. I don't know if Gomez is not quite fully fit, he's usually rapid, but he gets absolutely wrecked in a foot race here by Watkins, and he's dropped off anticipating the ball into the channel as well, so it's not like he's got wrong footed and lost a yard. Meanwhile, Van Dijk is expecting to push up to play offside, Trent is no man's land and stood still anyway, and Wijnaldum (who should be covering between Gomez and Van Dijk) has completely stopped running at this point as well. I mean even with more pressure on the ball carrier here than what we offered, we cannot play a high line when all the defenders in that line are doing different things. It has to be a line, it has to push up and drop off at the same time, and the midfielders that aren't pressing have to follow them.

 

On the other goals, three of them were deflected, one was a gift from Adrian, and I can't find a decent angle of the free kick goal to say whether it should have stood or not. On the last goal, McGinn I think it is gets the freedom of Villa Park to knock a ball in behind for Grealish, but by then the game was so far gone I'm not sure it's worth analysing.

 

 

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1 hour ago, A_S said:

Speaking of Robbo, a back pass that bounces up and hits the keeper in the midriff is not a good one. Adrian could have obviously done better with one less touch, but that pass did him no favours at all. 

He had an absolute age to deal with that and to be fair he dealt with the bounce.  He just decided to pass to a Villa player.

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I've seen people say "freak result" pretty much everywhere and it needs to be said that it 100% wasn't. Sure, we don't ever lose 7-2 and some of the goals were deflected, but it's absolutely logical that Villa scored that many. Nothing freak about it. Our defensive record has been a shambles for a while, we've had a bunch of warnings, and then yesterday the chickens came home to roost. Something will have to be done. Can't just toss that result aside and say "oh it's Covid football, weird stuff has happened". 

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14 minutes ago, 3 Stacks said:

I've seen people say "freak result" pretty much everywhere and it needs to be said that it 100% wasn't. Sure, we don't ever lose 7-2 and some of the goals were deflected, but it's absolutely logical that Villa scored that many. Nothing freak about it. Our defensive record has been a shambles for a while, we've had a bunch of warnings, and then yesterday the chickens came home to roost. Something will have to be done. Can't just toss that result aside and say "oh it's Covid football, weird stuff has happened". 

Agreed. I think it was freakish in the sense that there probably wouldn’t have been as many goals in 'normal' football, but while exploiting our defensive tactics might be easier said than done, if nothing changes and teams decide to think “fuck it” and give it a go on the basis that if we don’t smash them they’ll smash us, we'll end up losing 10+ games and looking to CL qualification as the measure of successful season.

 

 

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30 minutes ago, joe_fishfish said:

Tell you what though, if anyone can get this squad firing again in time for the derby, it's Klopp.

If most of them were at melwood all week totally agree....not so easy with them all over place and some barely back before game at the pit

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2 hours ago, Herp McDerp said:

 

Bears repeating more than once

I think it was something like how this Liverpool team is so much better than every other team. It was masterful timing. 

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1 hour ago, Colonel Kurtz said:

There's a good PHD to be written on the impact of crowds on sportsmen. My personal theory is that some very good players are inhibited by them so this season, those players like the Villa team are showing how good they actually are technically. Maybe the LFC players aren't that much better than their peers, they just handle the pressure of the crowd better so without crowds, the difference is less pronounced.  We were still shit though. 

I think generally we are seeing more goals because the lack of a crowd has a different impact on defenders and forwards.

 

Forwards feel less pressure without a crowd. No-one gets on their back after a miss or two. While the effect on defenders seems to be that the lack of pressure is leading to a lack of concentration. 

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Very slightly off topic as it's absolutely not an excuse for conceding seven goals to Aston fucking Villa but I hate seeing us in black kits as we're often shite in them.  I'd much rather see us in some fluorescent monstrosity that the players can easily pick each other out in than something that's hard to pick out (especially with a slither of red on) just because it makes a nice fashion statement.

 

Our record in them over the years must be terrible.  I can remember Marseille away being a good performance in one season but very little else even when we've won.  A few notable bad ones I remember:

 

6-1 v Stoke

The beach ball game

2-1 at Sunderland when they won about 2 games all season

Getting knocked out of Europe by Braga

Losing at Blackpool in Kenny's first game

Atletico away last season.

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