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We can’t carry on like this.


Crazy Dave
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Seeing Fab back in midfield gave us a brief glimmer of what we've been missing. I thought we improved, attacking wise, massively when he came on and only proves what everyone has been saying about missing Hendo and Fab in midfield.

 

I say persevere with whichever two CBs are fit and shove Fab back in the middle along with Hendo if he plays again this season when it comes to the league. Kabak may be a better signing than we think with Fab and Hendo in front of him.

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1 hour ago, Doctor Troy said:

It's basically the worst time to expect them to put up money. They make excuses not to spend when everything is in place for them and the income is at a maximum. 

 

They will do less than what they have already done. 

 

 

This is true, but then slipping into long-term mediocrity will have been a conscious choice on their part and the investment will be diminished long-term. It’s too much to expect Klopp to have the desire to build another team on a relative shoestring and there is no-one else out there who would be able to do much beyond having us in the mix for fourth every now and then. You obviously don’t want to get into stupid territory, but I’d be much less concerned about the future of the club if they put £100m of debt against it for Klopp to use in the summer than say it’s £10m and 50% of what’s raised by selling members of an already wafer-thin squad.
 

If there’s one thing that lends a bit of hope it’s that the net spend was often higher when we were outside the CL. Even with COVID hitting the bottom line, you have to wonder whether we’re any better as a commercial entity than we were under David Moores if there’s still nothing to spend.  

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4 hours ago, an tha said:

 

Lovren as 4th choice played loads last season - did anyone really think 4th choice was not gonna end up same this?...OK nobody probably thought all 3 would be fucked, but still a bad, bad call.

He played 10 league games and 5 other games.  Those numbers don't justify the transfer fee and wages a top CB would command.

 

The gamble was that van Dijk, Gomez and Matip would not have significantly more absences than last season and that Fabinho and Phillips could offer backup. At the time, it didn't seem too risky. It was more important to reinforce the midfield and the front three.

 

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1 hour ago, 3 Stacks said:

We don't play remotely similar to how his Dortmund team did, besides the overriding philosophy of counter pressing. But we've been doing less and less of that too as time has gone on. His Dortmund team had defensive full backs and all the creativity was through the middle. It was Lewandowski, Gotze, Reus, Gundogan and Sahin. 

His first Bundesliga side had Barrios as top scorer then Kagawa, Groskreutz scored the same as the newly signed Lewandovski. No sentiment they moved Barrios on the following year I think and Lewandovski as we know never looked back. 

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11 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

He played 10 league games and 5 other games.  Those numbers don't justify the transfer fee and wages a top CB would command.

 

The gamble was that van Dijk, Gomez and Matip would not have significantly more absences than last season and that Fabinho and Phillips could offer backup. At the time, it didn't seem too risky. It was more important to reinforce the midfield and the front three.

 

Not for me.

 

10 league games when you have 3 ahead of you is a lot....and it tells you you need 4.

 

A solid, good proper by trade 4th choice was an absolute must for me.

 

Matip was obviously not going to be reliable, anybody could see that...that meant that we went in knowing an injury to either Gomez (who hasn't got the best record) or VVD meant we were down to bare bones.

 

Weakening midfield to cover when the need for cover was highly likely to be a bad idea and it has proven to be case...epsecially with injury problems in there.

 

It was a bad, bad call for my money and highly likely to blow up in our face.

 

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1 minute ago, Red Shift said:

Jurgen has made an interesting statement. He says and I quote “if players won’t come here because there is no champions league football, then I don’t want them”

 

Thoughts?

It is totally different from the last quote about cl being vitally important. I guess you have one view point till you get another. 

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3 minutes ago, an tha said:

Not for me.

 

10 league games when you have 3 ahead of you is a lot....and it tells you you need 4.

 

A solid, good proper by trade 4th choice was an absolute must for me.

 

Matip was obviously not going to be reliable, anybody could see that...that meant that we went in knowing an injury to either Gomez (who hasn't got the best record) or VVD meant we were down to bare bones.

 

It was a bad, bad call for my money and highly likely to blow up in our face.

Agreed. Clearly the plan was to run Gomez and Virgil into the ground for another season and hope for the best. 

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2 minutes ago, Red Shift said:

Jurgen has made an interesting statement. He says and I quote “if players won’t come here because there is no champions league football, then I don’t want them”

 

Thoughts?

Probably fair.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Crazy Dave said:

Six home defeats in a row. One goal (a penalty) at Anfield this year. One first half goal in thirteen games. 

 

I’m not advocating for a managerial change but is there a point when enough is enough? This is the most dreadful run of form I can remember for 30 years. We can’t even fashion a single chance in our home games. 

 

Whenever I read posts like this, I always end up baffled and ask myself a very simple question - whatever happened to Gary Cooper?

 

The strong silent type.

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7 minutes ago, Red Shift said:

Jurgen has made an interesting statement. He says and I quote “if players won’t come here because there is no champions league football, then I don’t want them”

 

Thoughts?

 

Its true.

 

Its a good sign because it means that he is not thinking of leaving. 

 

We need to sign players that are hungry to succeed and push us back up the league table and in to the Champions League. We can't afford any mercenaries here. 

 

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57 minutes ago, stringvest said:

The 'mentality monsters' thing was always bollocks.  I don't believe there are players in our squad, with the exception of VVD, Mane, Salah and Milner, who have a strong winners mentality.  Not Fabinho, not Henderson, not Robertson, not any of them.  

 

They were dragged into being a successful team by Klopp's mentality.  The sheer force of that will and mentality picked the rest of that group up and ordered them to play like world beaters.  They were not allowed to do anything else.  They knew Klopp would not settle for less from anyone.  Then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it lasted a few golden years.  

 

Now, for whatever reason, the energy has gone.  The force of will and mentality is not there.  And the players, god love them, don't have it within themselves to replace it.  Klopp's forcefield of invincibility is not there to protect and lift them any more.   

 

So, Klopp needs to reflect, to gather himself up, and to rediscover the energy and desire.  Or we need players who can dig deep and find that energy and will to win all on their own.

 

Or - option 3 - we just keep having something to bitch about on here every day.  

 

 

 

 

I thought it wouldnt take long for you to drag Henderson into this,despite him not playing for a while. Milner has no stronger or weaker mental strength than Henderson and much as I love Mane and Mo,they are both as guilty for letting their heads drop too. Its not individual players,its the whole group and maybe even the manager too. They have given up and nobody knows exactly why. It cant help knowing you have lower league ability centre halves in the team but players with a 'winning mentality' would go the extra mile because of it. None of the players you mentioned,apart from VVD are any better than the rest in that respect.

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I said hundreds of times over the past 10 years I'd accept relegation the following year if we could just win that illusive title. I think too many people forget just how far we were from winning the league. It was a dream, as less likely to win it than Spurs or Arsenal. We eventually beat a side to the title that had 300m worth of players on their bench today. We didn't get to celebrate it and we now we endure 90 repetitive minutes of souless football every week. Its fucking shite but its not real, when fans return Brighton, Everton, City and Fulham will turn up sitting themselves again.

 

Today was about sporting integrity,  we gave Burnley and Brighton 3 points, it would have been unfair on Fulham not to give them 3 too. 

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What if we just massively overachieved when the team peaked over the past three seasons, due to great motivator manager and system which made many players look slightly better than they individually are and now that the system no longer works they are unable to replicate anything even resembling the past output and have lost all confidence because of it, with no fans around to lift them up.   

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30 minutes ago, SasaS said:

What if we just massively overachieved when the team peaked over the past three seasons, due to great motivator manager and system which made many players look slightly better than they individually are and now that the system no longer works they are unable to replicate anything even resembling the past output and have lost all confidence because of it, with no fans around to lift them up.   


Very good post.

 

I dont know if I would say massively, but our team was clearly a case of the total being larger than the sum of the parts. We had a very specific idea of how we wanted to play, got hold of the players capable of playing that way and they all followed Klopps way 100%. Very fast CBs, midfielders with four lungs and two full backs that were better going forwards than in defence were all part of the setup. And most important of all was the pressing, out most important attacking and defensive weapon.

 

This season the ultra fast CBs are gone. Energy levels seem to have dropped somewhat, mental and physical fatigue probably part of the reason. Maybe also cockiness. And maybe covid, especially Trent and Mane seem to be a low energy version of themselves now. It’s probably a mix of different underlying factors, but I reckon your conclusion is correct, the result is that the system doesnt work properly any more. And over the last three to four weeks confidence seems to have gone as well.

 

It will take some time to fix it I reckon, but I actually believe it can be done without massive changes to personnel. But I doubt we can turn it around completely befor next season, it would take a number of key players back, a couple of new ones in and a full preseason to get back on track I’d imagine. The more worrying thing is maybe that we dont seem to manage the damage control in the mean time. Tactical adjustments are clearly called for short term to get at least decent results until we manage to get things back in place. At the moment we dont seem capable of making those short term adjustments, and with so much left of the season still that’s becoming a major issue.

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34 minutes ago, SasaS said:

What if we just massively overachieved when the team peaked over the past three seasons, due to great motivator manager and system which made many players look slightly better than they individually are and now that the system no longer works they are unable to replicate anything even resembling the past output and have lost all confidence because of it, with no fans around to lift them up.   

These things obviously have to be taken with a grain of salt, but there's a site called understat that has this xG model. Essentially, all really good teams overperform their "expected stats", if you will, by a decent amount. So goals, goals against and points.

 

That said, the 19-20 Liverpool side overperformed by a ludicrous amount. Something like 25 points higher than expected. The 18-19 Liverpool also overperformed the most out of any team in the league that season. Now that doesn't mean we didn't deserve the title or whatever, but it's true that even at our best, we were living on the margins, so to speak, and now with everything going against us like it has, we've done a complete 180. 

 

https://understat.com/league/EPL

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2 hours ago, Red Shift said:

We strengthened. Just not as extensively as we should have.

That's the top and bottom of it.

 

You can't buy every player you want in any given transfer window, so you have to prioritise.  The club prioritised other positions ahead of CB and hoped we wouldn't lose all three senior CBs for quite as long as we have.  In another universe, the club might have bought a CB and not Jota and we would all be decrying that decision because alternative-Salah was injured.  

 

With hindsight, we can say that the extra £30m or so on a CB would have been a smart investment.  In Summer, it was less obvious.  (Of course, by December it was fucking obvious, so there's no excuse for the failures in the January window.)

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This thread is a shitfest. 

 

Deffo problems at LFC right now. Probably not one single thing that's easy to fix - more likely to be multiple things. But no-one better placed than Jurgen to deal with it.

 

Yeah - forums are good for discussions but some of the bollocks spouted in here is pure speculation and isn't helpful to the club.

 

You are giving oxygen and credence to those opposition and media idiots who have an agenda and would like Klopp gone.

 

All we need to do is have his back.

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13 hours ago, MegadriveMan said:

 

Last season we didn't have many injuries. This year we have and we haven't reacted well to them both on and off the field. 

 

If Jota had got injured in a game that we needed to get a result from then so be it, but it was stupid to risk him and Salah in a meaningless game. Especially considering Klopp was heavily slating the fixture schedule at that point. We should have played the kids in that one and left the first team at home. Jota wasn't just our 4th choice either, he was pushing to take the place of either Mane or Firmino at that point. 

 

I think there are a number of problems. We lack a voice and leadership without VVD, Henderson or Milner, and Milner looks to be really struggling with the pace of the game now.  TAA and Robertson don't look the same players without the defensive shield in the centre and both are better going forward than they are defensively. 

I do completely understand your point, but these players want to play in the CL, like they want to play for their countries. You can't just put out kids and of course there's a couple of mil on the line for a win. Klopp wanted a centre back, I assume money was important. 

 

As for Jota pushing mane and firmino, yes he was. But he hadn't replaced them, so he was 4th choice. 

12 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

He played 10 league games and 5 other games.  Those numbers don't justify the transfer fee and wages a top CB would command.

 

The gamble was that van Dijk, Gomez and Matip would not have significantly more absences than last season and that Fabinho and Phillips could offer backup. At the time, it didn't seem too risky. It was more important to reinforce the midfield and the front three.

 

Philipps wasn't supposed to back up, he was supposed to leave which is why he wasn't in the CL squad for the 1st half of the season. We went in to this season with fabinho 4th choice and billy fucking koumetio as 5th choice, which lasted till he fucked alisson in training. 

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30 minutes ago, Jennings said:

This thread is a shitfest. 

 

Deffo problems at LFC right now. Probably not one single thing that's easy to fix - more likely to be multiple things. But no-one better placed than Jurgen to deal with it.

 

Yeah - forums are good for discussions but some of the bollocks spouted in here is pure speculation and isn't helpful to the club.

 

You are giving oxygen and credence to those opposition and media idiots who have an agenda and would like Klopp gone.

 

All we need to do is have his back.

I'm happy to have Klopp's back but he needs to throw us a fricking bone. We need to attack and create chances and score goals. Period. We can't be the team that recycles the ball, does fuck all with it and gives up chances due to our pointless high line when we aren't even pressing that hard. 

 

Klopp needs to show everyone that he hasn't been "found out" tactically and he needs to show that in the next premier league game. 

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