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Watford 0 Liverpool 5 (Oct 16 2021)


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Dave Usher

 

To think that some of us thought this might be tricky. It couldn’t have been easier in the end. The front three were on fire, the defenders had the pipes and slippers out, our inexperienced keeper barely touched the ball until the last 15 minutes and the ‘makeshift’ midfield completely bossed it.

 

Watford were brutally bad though weren’t they? It was almost like someone told them they were playing Man City so they just went into roll over mode. Five was the absolute minimum we deserved from this game. On another day we might have scored eight, but I’m glad we didn’t as usually when you run up a cricket score you end up drawing a blank the next game. So if we’ve ‘saved’ a few for the next couple of games then great. 

 

Going into this one I would have taken three points regardless of how we got them. I didn’t care if we struggled or weren’t at our best. Given the circumstances I’d have been made up to just get the points and get out of there. I mentioned this on the pod, but in the build up to this I’d started to talk myself into how tricky this game was going to be. They seemed like legitimate concerns. Coming off an international break, playing at a ground where we’ve had some terrible defensive collapses under Klopp, players missing for various reasons….  

 

It felt like it had the potential to be trouble but the second I saw the Watford line up it was like a slap to the face to bring me back to reality. There’s no way that team were going to be able to live with us. Not a fucking chance. I hadn’t heard of half of them and the ones I did know were either shite or had seen better days.

 

The new manager bounce wasn’t a factor either. Watford didn’t bounce, they just went splat. But should that be surprising? The international break hurt them too. Ranieri hadn’t worked with his entire squad, which is a pretty big problem when you’re trying to implement a new set up. Watford looked like they didn’t have a clue what they were doing, because realistically they didn’t. 

 

As it turned out, this was the perfect time to play them even though we had difficulties of our own that we had to deal with. Bottom line here, look at the team we were still able to put out despite having four midfielders missing, no Alisson and Jota only fit enough for the bench. Now compare it to Watford. 

 

 

This is just a teaser, click here to view the full report

 

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  • dave u pinned this topic

New manager splat. Love it. Spot on about the offside law, but isn’t it interesting that wankers like Jenas  only seem to get agitated about such anomalies when we get an advantage from them? I don’t remember much fuss when one of the most blatant offsides of recent times (City vs  Villa last season) was allowed to stand. Equally, that idiot Micah Richards was ‘disappointed’ by Watford…… bet he wasn’t disappointed when they conceded eight to City a couple of years back. 

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From The Guardian min by min on Saturday (Scott Murrary)

 

"29 min: Matip strides out of defence, not so much avoiding a couple of Watford challenges as ignoring them. He’s a magnificent player. Previously under-rated, but everyone’s caught on these days."

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2 hours ago, tlw content said:

Mo said afterwards that they spoke in the dressing room beforehand how important it was to start well...

I really really hope we're not discussing tactics like that in the oppo's dressing room. Am I wrong to think someone from the home team will be listening? At this level I'd be astonished if they're not. 

 

Great report Dave. Amazing result. 

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Not sure if mentioned elsewhere but I reckon Mo likes a scenario when 2 or 3 players are close to him when in possession in or near the box. It can be a bit confusing who takes responsibility of trying to tackle him in that situation and therefore I think he likes deliberately playing the ball in a corridor of overlapping responsibility between players to either draw a foul and/or have them off. The amount of goals he's scored when beating a string of players at a time says to me he targets this. 

 

Even with my shite memory I can think of the last 2 games, Tottenham, Everton and Watford again.

 

Obviously this takes nothing away from his genius of pulling it off and if anything adds even more kudos for identifying and exploiting something pretty much no one else can do. 

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1 hour ago, rb14 said:

I really really hope we're not discussing tactics like that in the oppo's dressing room. Am I wrong to think someone from the home team will be listening? At this level I'd be astonished if they're not. 


I’ve never really thought about that but saying “We were shite last week, let’s start fast” is hardly giving the game away. 

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6 hours ago, NoelM said:

From The Guardian min by min on Saturday (Scott Murrary)

 

"29 min: Matip strides out of defence, not so much avoiding a couple of Watford challenges as ignoring them. He’s a magnificent player. Previously under-rated, but everyone’s caught on these days."

Love this.

superb performance and love the report.

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