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Crazy Dave
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That's a great question. It's not the away fans, because there have been no fans. I can't put the finger on what aspect of our style of play would be negatively affected from the disadvantage of not being at Anfield. I think it might just be that teams play with more intensity against us when they're at home.

 

They win more 50/50's, they press us higher, they don't just let us pen them into their own third. I think there's a misconception that we want teams to attack us so we can counter and that we struggle against "packed defenses". I think it's actually the opposite, we're generally wasteful on the counter, but quite efficient at creating chances in the final third. So when teams are more on the front foot, spurred on by being at home, we have more difficulty. 

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When you are the best at what you do, your opponents know they have to use everything they can to gain an advantage. Home venue, pitch conditioning and size, familiar surroundings etc. 

 

VAR / refs are not doing us any favours either. Late penalty against Brighton. Fouls against Wijnaldum and Salah in the build up to their goal yesterday. But most importantly it seems all the front players seem to have hit a dry spell for goals. The header chance for Mane first half alongside Salah turn and shot wide. Most tellingly Curtis Jones run and low shot towards the end. I thought he was going to place it in one of the corners like Wijnaldum previous match. 

 

Injuries to squad options are making life away from home harder too. 

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In the League, we've played 6 and won 1, lost 1 freaky one and drawn 4 away from home.  Two of those draws were, basically, wins that the cunts in Stockley Part stole at the end; another was away at City, where a draw isn’t bad.  Given the injuries and the quality of some of the opponents, P6, W1, D4, L1 isn't bad; the P6, W3, D2, L1 we should have is actually quite good. 

 

In the Champions League, we won two away games before drawing a meaningless dead rubber.

 

In the League Cup, we played 1 and won it away from home.

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I think the reason they always say it's harder to retain a title than win one, is the combination of you being a scalp for every opponent, and complacency setting in. Our team are good pros but it's human nature when you've pulverized world football to think you can play against someone like Fulham with your feet up, and before you know it you're chasing the game. This is where you need your tough characters in the dressing room. In years gone by it would have been people like Souness and Keane who've kept their sides playing with intensity, Henderson does that for us, and Robbo too I think to a lesser extent. 

 

One weird thing about this side though is the gulf in quality between its best and worst performances, I've never seen a gap like it in a top class side. When we're at our best we're better than most top sides in the last 20/30 years, I'd pit us against anyone from  that era and fancy us, late 90s Juve/Mancs etc, anyone. 

 

When we're bad though we're Roy Evans UEFA cup first leg bad, proper rotten. I don't know why. Possibly it was because our winning play depends on us to be able to maintain high intensity play, which you can't always do, and when we can't we're vulnerable. Maybe that's why we bought Thiago, so we could take a step back and pick locks instead when we had to - but that went to shit early on. 

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6 hours ago, 3 Stacks said:

That's a great question. It's not the away fans, because there have been no fans. I can't put the finger on what aspect of our style of play would be negatively affected from the disadvantage of not being at Anfield. I think it might just be that teams play with more intensity against us when they're at home.

 

They win more 50/50's, they press us higher, they don't just let us pen them into their own third. I think there's a misconception that we want teams to attack us so we can counter and that we struggle against "packed defenses". I think it's actually the opposite, we're generally wasteful on the counter, but quite efficient at creating chances in the final third. So when teams are more on the front foot, spurred on by being at home, we have more difficulty. 

Why would it be the away fans? 

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Yes we've had to deal with injuries and so on, but in the calendar year 2020 we've often lacked the patience and composure required to impose ourselves on our opponents and finish off chances in away games. Leicester away last season was the last great away performance, and that was in 2019. Since then, we've played:

 

2019/20

Jan 11...Tottenham 0-1 Liverpool (Bobby)

Not brilliant going forward, but Spurs simply wanted to sit and counter, and we didn't really let them

 

Jan 23...Wolves 1-2 Liverpool (Hendo, Bobby)

Wolves gave it a real go in the second half, but we had enough about us to grab the win anyway

 

Jan 29...West Ham 0-2 Liverpool (Mo pen, Ox)

Average display but well on top against Moyes' boys

 

Feb 15...Norwich 0-1 Liverpool (Sadio)

A hard slog where we had to dig in for the result

 

Feb 29...Watford 3-0 Liverpool

A real shambles where nobody was on it on the day

 

Jun 21...Everton 0-0 Liverpool

The first game back post lockdown, and everyone looked rusty

 

Jul 2...Man City 4-0 Liverpool

We'd already clinched the title the previous week, and several of our lot still looked drunk from the celebrations

 

Jul 8...Brighton 1-3 Liverpool (Mo 2, Hendo)

We looked much more like the team of 2019 in this one

 

Jul 15...Arsenal 2-1 Liverpool (Sadio)

Too many defensive errors were creeping into our game, and we weren't offering enough in attack. This was the game that cost us the chance of breaking the 100-point barrier

 

Jul 26...Newcastle 1-3 Liverpool (Big Virg, Big Div, Sadio)

We started really badly, but then grabbed a hold of the game and, despite starting with a number of squad players, we looked more like the 2019 team

 

2020/21

Sep 20...Chelsea 0-2 Liverpool (Sadio 2)

We dominated Chelsea, Thiago had a great second half cameo, and it was our best away display since the Leicester game

 

Oct 4...Aston Villa 7-2 Liverpool (Mo 2)

An absolute shambles from us, and practically everything bounced in Villa's favour to help them register this freak result

 

Oct 17...Everton 2-2 Liverpool (Sadio, Mo)

A game ruined by Everton's physicality and David Coote going rogue in the VAR booth, leading to two serious injuries for our players and a legit goal ruled out for Hendo at the end

 

Nov 8...Man City 1-1 Liverpool (Mo pen)

Cagey from both teams, and again VAR gave our opponents something which they didn't take advantage of as De Bruyne fired the penalty wide

 

Nov 28...Brighton 1-1 Liverpool (Jota)

Not a great performance, having 2 goals ruled out for offside (the first is so tight, just like at Goodison) and then VAR gave Brighton a stoppage-time lifeline for the kind of thing that routinely gets ruled out for us

 

Dec 13...Fulham 1-1 Liverpool (Mo pen)

Lesser shoves than the one on Mo in the build-up to Fulham's goal have seen penalties being awarded by VAR this season. Not a good performance by the players

 

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Fluter in Dakota said:

When you are the best at what you do, your opponents know they have to use everything they can to gain an advantage. Home venue, pitch conditioning and size, familiar surroundings etc. 

 

VAR / refs are not doing us any favours either. Late penalty against Brighton. Fouls against Wijnaldum and Salah in the build up to their goal yesterday. But most importantly it seems all the front players seem to have hit a dry spell for goals. The header chance for Mane first half alongside Salah turn and shot wide. Most tellingly Curtis Jones run and low shot towards the end. I thought he was going to place it in one of the corners like Wijnaldum previous match. 

 

Injuries to squad options are making life away from home harder too. 

A foul on Salah yesterday? Not having that. 

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We're not taking our chances in the way we were. We should have scored three second half yesterday. We used to be ruthless on the break and seemed to score at least half the times we broke free -now we don't look more any more dangerous on the break than anyone else, 

At Anfield, we have so much control and possession that we create lots of chances. Away not so much. 

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1 hour ago, VladimirIlyich said:

A foul on Salah yesterday? Not having that. 

Hands on back to push him forward? If that's not a foul it should be allowed in the box by strikers on keepers and defenders. 

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2 hours ago, VladimirIlyich said:

A foul on Salah yesterday? Not having that. 

Agree. I thought it was a soft 'foul' if Im honest. Football's a contact sport and players should be able to stand their ground and not be knocked off balance so easily when standing.

 

Did our players turn up like billy big bollocks yesterday? I dont think so. I just think the oppos yet again had a full week to prepare while we're playing 2 games a week. It was still a disappointing performance though.

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4 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

In the League, we've played 6 and won 1, lost 1 freaky one and drawn 4 away from home.  Two of those draws were, basically, wins that the cunts in Stockley Part stole at the end; another was away at City, where a draw isn’t bad.  Given the injuries and the quality of some of the opponents, P6, W1, D4, L1 isn't bad; the P6, W3, D2, L1 we should have is actually quite good. 

 

In the Champions League, we won two away games before drawing a meaningless dead rubber.

 

In the League Cup, we played 1 and won it away from home.

This is my take too, we’ve been done out of 3 points twice in virtually the last seconds of both games. 
 

Given the injuries and the knock on effects they’ve had then all things considered we’re in decent shape but I can’t help thinking we really cant afford anyone else to drop for any amount of time now. 

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VAR, referees, decisions and everything else aside, we were shite against Brighton and Fulham, and fucking disgraceful against Aston Villa. Two points from what should have been a definite nine, and if it had been nine, we'd be miles ahead at the top.

 

The best way of winning a league like this is to batter all the shit teams into submission, takes some of the pressure off games when you play other top six teams. It's what Ferguson's United and Wenger's (good) Arsenal sides did - the teams they played who were sitting midtable and lower were often beaten before they even stepped onto the pitch. We want to be the team who are so good that our opponents just write the game off as a loss, and do shit like resting first team players in league games against us because they know they can't win anyway.

 

We were basically at that level last time around with the amazing run of form up to Watford away. The injury list isn't helping, but it's a definite cause for concern that the players aren't playing with the right intensity against smaller sides this season.

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I think the injuries are playing a massive part as it's not giving certain players a breather, which in turn adds pressure with the constant three games a week and international football as well. Throw in as was said earlier you're a scalp now for other clubs and also complacency unfortunately creeps in

Having said that if we are going to suffer a massive injury crisis then better this season as if it had happened last season or the one before we wouldn't have number 6 and we'd be going into the 31st year without a title     

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But for 2 diabolical VAR decisions, we'd be sitting 4 points clear of spurs right now. People can point to the VAR decisions in the Fulham game, not giving a pen by Fab, not giving the shove on Mo, what I thought was a pen for Sadio and the pen we got for arm up.

 

What should have been victories away at everton and Brighton but for VAR and you wonder if people questioning our away form would be questioning it if we were 4 points clear?

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The reality is that our results so far this season are roughly in line with what you would expect the sides we have been able to put out to get....

 

The kicker for us will be if we can consistently put out stronger teams who will get results or if we can't then somehow over achieve for extended periods.

 

The good news is even with our very obvious problems we are still right up there as one of the best outfits in the land....just don't expect us to get the results we did over last two seasons.....

 

Further good news is we won't need to be at that mad level to win league, we may however have to accept we will be in a dogfight to win it and it could just as easily end in failure as it could glory this year......I reckon we'd walk it if hadn't been so badly hit by injuries.

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I can't be the only one who was thinking, on Sunday afternoon after fortuitously getting back on even terms, a title winning side will go on to win this? I thought the attitude looked poor first half when only Ali and Hendo turned up but much better second when the management had got stuck into them.

 

Gotta be better tonight and I'm sure it will be. Then carry that over to Palace and we're away.

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1 minute ago, Barnesey said:

I can't be the only one who was thinking, on Sunday afternoon after fortuitously getting back on even terms, a title winning side will go on to win this? I thought the attitude looked poor first half when only Ali and Hendo turned up but much better second when the management had got stuck into them.

 

Gotta be better tonight and I'm sure it will be. Then carry that over to Palace and we're away.

Really? I was hoping VAR wouldnt give another match defining dubious decision for them \ against us. We were clearly out of sorts for whatever reason. Maybe if the elite players had of played midweek, we wouldnt have been so poor on Sunday? Yeah an extra game for the players but disruption of playing then not playing doesnt help.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Barnesey said:

I can't be the only one who was thinking, on Sunday afternoon after fortuitously getting back on even terms, a title winning side will go on to win this? I thought the attitude looked poor first half when only Ali and Hendo turned up but much better second when the management had got stuck into them.

 

Gotta be better tonight and I'm sure it will be. Then carry that over to Palace and we're away.

There were away games last season where we were out of sorts, but we seemed to always find a goal right at the end to sneak over the line. Thinking Villa, Palace, Wolves etc. 

 

The main issue as I see it is how we begin these games. We're generally out of sorts in the first-half and it takes the half-time break to get going. I don't know if the players have instructions to just try and slow down the game and generally not look to make much happen before pushing on in the second, but against Brighton and Fulham we could easily have been dead and buried by half-time because the opposition smelt blood. 

 

I wonder if the VAR controversies and the constant injuries are beginning to take a mental impact? Klopp talks about them as mentality monsters, and they are, but they're still only human. It's hard to keep pushing when you're feeling constantly fucked over. 

 

 

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