Mon 2 Jan 17:30 Brentford vs Liverpool

[TheHowieLama]

Cover band heavy metal football.

[Red Shift]

Here’s a question…who’s the better left handed defender - Kostas or Robbo?

 

 

[Carra_is_legend]

11 minutes ago, Mark M said:

Klopps comments blaming the Ref and saying the 3rd goal shouldn’t have stood doesn’t look good.

if he thinks this result / performance can be brushed under the carpet by blaming the officials he’s badly mistaken. 

He should be laying into his players first before blaming anyone else. 

 

The 3rd goal was all on Konate, foul or not. He could have easily cleared that even before the chance of a foul. If he had cleared it and gone down we would have got a freekick.

[Red Shift]

7 minutes ago, an tha said:

Sick of hearing/reading excuses for our poor efforts this season like "They are disappointed after last season"....."They are mentally drained"....."They are tired" blag blah fucking blah....

If they haven't got the heart, the guts, the bollocks for the fight anymore then they don't deserve to wear the shirt anymore.

What was it Rocky Balboa said...."It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!".....So yeah they have taken some big hits, but get up and fight back and the desire to win after losing should be higher than ever.

I actually don't believe it is about them being fucked mentally anyway as it happens - for me it is simply we no longer have the right attributes in key areas to do what we are trying to do and what we did so well 3 or so years ago.

When we were at our best we were an intense pressing side with lots of legs in the team who pressed the shit out of teams, ran teams ragged, squeezed games, forced and punished errors ruthlessly and outran, outfought and with the class we had often outclassed teams.....It was all about intensity and it was all about playing a high speed, high octane game.

 

It of course needed and had really good footballers, but on top of that it really needed and had really good footballers with lots of energy, great engines, legs and no little nous - those attributes enabled them to go out as a team and perfectly execute that high speed, high octane game plan.

 

The players we have now simply do not have those attributes in anywhere near the required amounts to execute what is pretty much the same plan, and what we are seeing as a result is the sort of performances we have had to endure far too often this season - we are getting exposed and punished, because we are leaving gaps, there is nobody alert to those gaps, nobody plugging them before they become a problem and all too often nobody who has the legs to recover.

Teams are carving us open with ease - aiming for and exploiting the time and space they have.....time and space are things you just don't want to give the opposition, when you do you run the risk of being hurt, when you do it often you will get hurt......Teams didn't often have time and space against us when we were an athletic, intense side with players with powerful engines.....

It starts from the front - Mane and Firmino used to press like evil bastards and we won so much ball high up the park as a result....the mayhem that we caused as a result was a joy to watch.

That pressing from the front is barely seen now and as a result we don't win ball in those dangerous areas as often and the front men don't get the chances they once did as a result.

Then we come onto the midfield and its press/its success rate in winning 2nd balls....When we were in our pomp it was top drawer at these things - it was pretty much all it did and all it needed to do really, win the ball and then give it to the marauding full backs or the front 3 and watch the fun begin as we attacked out of shape teams and caused havoc....

We used to have Hendo and Wijnaldum who covered the space when the full backs pushed on.....now Hendo has not got the legs, Wijnaldum is gone.

Now because of our lack of legs, broken play just means our back line gets exposed and teams walk through our midfield and onto our defence/keeper.

There is so much space, we are caught out of shape and the gaps are too big for our slow midfielders to close.

We if we we are not going to get in the players with the legs we need in there and ability to win those 2nd balls/win those battles/be in the right place to snuff out danger and put us on front foot will have to play within our limitations, and adopt a more compact shape.....we are currently embarrassingly easy to pass/play through.

We are being out pressed and our slow, unathletic midfield and forwards who used to lead our press so well are starting their pressing movements from further away and often not at all or too late.....and are simply much, much less effective.

When our midfielders were younger/more athletic and when our forwards pressed like fuck they were the triggers, when Bobby pressed the two wide forwards closed down the passing lanes and Hendo and the rest of the midfield gambled and closed down the opposition and we won the ball and got at and behind teams.....As that happened the centre halves pushed up and squeezed the play too.

Now the press is slow and half arsed and often non existent, players can't physically get there. That means we now get passed through at will and our centre halves get exposed.

 

We are trying to play same way we used to but are not doing the key parts of it anywhere near effectively enough because players are physically incapable of it now.

If you are going to play a high line then you have to press as a team and above all pick up loose balls/win those challenges when the ball breaks and opposition are committed....again we just don't do this right now.

I remember at the toilet this season as just one example in sadly too many TAA put in a long ball and the mancs cleared it....a couple of seasons ago Henderson would have mopped it up no sweat and we would have had a transition and probably punish them - instead his lack of athleticism and inability to pick up a loose ball meant we were exposed with half our team out of position and we get played through.....goal..... We have all seen it too many times this season.

We see young Elliott being shoehorned into midfield, the poor lad thinks like a forward/penalty area player all the time because that is what he is......We are trying to shoehorn the poor kid into midfield and ask him to do all that entails and he just does not have the skillset or mindset to do it and as a result he is exposed defensively and the resulting gaps, time and space lead to big problems for us.

We desperately need legs and some defensive nous in what is an urgent midfield rebuild, we need our forwards to be pressing properly again....Or we have to accept that we need to cut our cloth to suit and change how we play.....Stop committing so many players up the park and in advance of ball....be a bit more conservative.

We are too open, we play too attackingly with everyone pushing forward and players looking to do things quickly all the time....things like Elliott trying little flicks and looking to get ball into a dangerous area but not being switched on to the gaping hole behind him that when the flick does not come off the opposition are going to exploit.

Things like pushing too many men forward too quickly, we take too many chances and we over commit......which is all well and good IF you have solidity around that and players with ability to plug gaps/recover and sense danger.....We don't now and teams are just picking us off at will.

It will continue to happen too....we simply don't have the tools to play how we try and play anymore and how we played when we did have those tools.

We either buy the required tools or we have to accept that this set of players can no longer do the job they are asked to do to the level we need and change.

At present we look like a team who are trying to play the Jurgen Klopp way but without Jurgen Klopp players....



 

We haven’t played heavy metal football for 3 years.

Jurgen has already changed the approach to suit the players we have.

[Lee909]

Seeing the comments he can fuck off too

 

Airing shit in public to keep sky happy. Turned into a right company prick since that spitting stuff. 

[an tha]

9 minutes ago, Red Shift said:

We haven’t played heavy metal football for 3 years.

Jurgen has already changed the approach to suit the players we have.

No we aren't playing heavy metal football anymore but the shape of the team and how it is set up is still the same as when we were and that is the problem.....we are asking Harvey Elliott today to do what Jordan Henderson was doing in 2019 and he simply can't do it.....We are sending Fabinho bombing forward in advance of the ball when he can't run back quick enough....Our full backs are up the park with nobody dropping in....and so on.

 

We haven't adapted properly at all to what we have, that is why the gaps, the time and the space are there and that is why they are being exploited week in week out.

[razor]

55 minutes ago, Trumo said:

Utterly gash, very reminiscent of the bad old days when we'd fall apart at places like Stoke and Hull.

 

We'd actually been OK for 10-15 minutes but from the moment Brentford went on a counter-attack that needed a save by Ali, we just could not get a foothold. Darwin had had an effort blocked (if that was Haaland, the exact same shot would find the net) and Kostas fired a powderpuff effort straight at the keeper.

 

What was alarming was how ragged we became. Brentford found the net 4 times in that first half and had 2 chalked off for offside.

 

Virg was hooked at half time, supposedly with a knock, but there was an air of complacency about him all game. One instance, when we were 1-0 down, saw him toss the ball in the vague direction of Kostas who wanted to take a quick throw in, but had to retrieve the ball first. If he is giving those vibes, a spell on the sidelines will do him good and get his head back in the game. Mo - one fine pass to Darwin in the first half aside - was similarly ineffectual and didn't try to take the game by the scruff of the neck.

 

Something is very broken about us, because there just isn't any intensity or real belief that we might be contenders for anything.

 

Someone mentioned earlier about us lacking structure.  I agree.

 

There was more than one time tonight when we had only one solitary player closing down.  The ball going square to a full back used to be seen as a trigger for a swarm of pressing, at pace with a sense of purpose and co-ordination.  I just don't see it anymore.

 

Added to that, our shape at corners looks ragged.  The disallowed goal saw the Brentford lad in our box totally unmarked.  (Those corners all came from defensive errors, also.)

 

Virg was hooked at half-time, and I bet I wasn't the only person that was pleased.  I want to see what we look like with him out of the team for a bit.

 

I love what the man has done for us, but that whiff of complacency has crept into his game, and I don't trust him like I used to.

 

Anyone calling for Jurgen to go or questioning his commitment needs to log off.  You're an absolute disgrace.

[3 Stacks]

24 minutes ago, Mark M said:

Klopps comments blaming the Ref and saying the 3rd goal shouldn’t have stood doesn’t look good.

if he thinks this result / performance can be brushed under the carpet by blaming the officials he’s badly mistaken. 

He's doing the usual thing of blaming anybody but the players, it's not what he really thinks. You didn't say this, but the people saying he's not motivated either are crazy. He signed an extension 6 months ago, he's all in. 

 

The issue with Klopp right now is this tactical change we made two years that is making us completely porous. And then secondly, his belief that Bellingham is van Dijk part 2 and that he's the missing piece that will make it work. Because in the meantime we can't cope.

[George Costanza]

The whole thing is a mess from top to bottom.  Probably the only person doing their job well at the moment is Alisson

[Baltar]

Poor performance, got what we deserved, which was fuck all.

Midfield is an issue that can no longer be ignored now. Two TOP midfielders are needed. Spend whatever the fuck it takes. We are a shambles in the centre. Keep Thiago, and move on the rest except the youngsters like Harvey and Carvalho. 

 

Whilst not complaining about the result, I do want to moan about VAR again. It's so infuriating that the Nunez goal was disallowed. Just what part of him was offside? We're talking millimetres here. It's so stupid. VAR is supposed to be for clear and obvious errors, not to analyse every possible offside down to the inch.   

[TheHowieLama]

Can't keep both Harvey and Carvalho tbh.

[Aventus]

21 minutes ago, Carra_is_legend said:

He should be laying into his players first before blaming anyone else. 

 

The 3rd goal was all on Konate, foul or not. He could have easily cleared that even before the chance of a foul. If he had cleared it and gone down we would have got a freekick.

He'll be laying into them behind the scenes. He diverts the blame away in the media to take the pressure off the players. 

 

If we drop points in the next game he'll say some wacky shit or headbutt the interviewer or something because it keeps the attention away from the lads. 

[Code]

24 minutes ago, Red Shift said:

Here’s a question…who’s the better left handed defender - Kostas or Robbo?

 

 

Tsimikas is shite

[Butch]

18 minutes ago, Lee909 said:

Seeing the comments he can fuck off too

 

Airing shit in public to keep sky happy. Turned into a right company prick since that spitting stuff. 

They should have sacked him. Wouldn't have to listen to him any more. 

 

[stringvest]

1 hour ago, Josef Svejk said:

 

You want to compare that bum Nunez's track record with Kuyt's?! 

 

give it two seasons.  Kuyt was a terrible player with a busy running style.  Slow as fuck, no technique, loved by the fans because he was a tryer. 

[J-V]

1 minute ago, Aventus said:

He'll be laying into them behind the scenes. He diverts the blame away in the media to take the pressure off the players. 

 

If we drop points in the next game he'll say some wacky shit or headbutt the interviewer or something because it keeps the attention away from the lads. 

 

and they'll offer the same shit up against Wolves.  He's either a wet fart during teamtalks before and at halftime or they don't give a shit.

[J-V]

3 minutes ago, stringvest said:

 

give it two seasons.  Kuyt was a terrible player with a busy running style.  Slow as fuck, no technique, loved by the fans because he was a tryer. 

 

The only player I've ever watched a youtube highlight real of who looked muck throughout.  Boy he didn't disappoint.

[Special K]

5 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Can't keep both Harvey and Carvalho tbh.

Great, sell them both. Neither will make it here

[Red Shift]

2 minutes ago, an tha said:

No we aren't playing heavy metal football anymore but the shape of the team and how it is set up is still the same as when we were and that is the problem.....we are asking Harvey Elliott today to do what Jordan Henserson was doing in 2019 and he simply can't do it.....

 

We haven't adapted properly at all to what we have, that is why the gaps, the time and the space are there and that is why they are being exploited week in week out.

We can single out a lot of the attack and midfield. The lack of pressing starts with the strikers and continues with the midfield. We do still overturn the ball in midfield, but our front three are far less effective at it. Diaz had been right on it, to be fair, and we are really missing his intensity. That is a very unfortunate injury so early on in his Liverpool career. So many of our recent signings have been unlucky (?) - Thiago, Jota, Diaz.

 

I think the 4-3-3 with 3 dynamic strikers all hounding the opposition is the point, but no, it’s not happening, agreed. The first 20 minutes of a game was where we excelled. We never do that now. That is on Klopp and training staff, yes. 
 

However, that’s only one issue. 
The other massive issue is our inability to play quick incisive passes at pace w/o fucking it up and giving the ball away, where all of a sudden, we’re totally exposed because our core tactic is attacking full backs playing high with no cover. THAT is why I would like to see a 4-4-2 or 4-3-1-2 with Trent’s skills used in Midfield, with the extra defender behind him. Robbo is far more dynamic than Trent currently and seems to be able to do what is asked of him. 
 

In that second half, Naby made a difference in midfield for Elliot. I thought he played well, looking to do what neither Fabinho or Thiago seem to want to do…push forward at pace with incisive passing. He set Trent up on a plate for his left foot, but Trent dithered.

 

Problems problems.

 

 

[Red74]

I know I’ve harped on about it before but players just stop listening cos they know it’s cheaper to replace you than them. 
 

Rinus Michels said back in the day that you’ve got 3 years to keep players interested before you need to shake them up as they’ve heard everything you’ve got to say.
 

There was a documentary made with the mancs behind the scenes back in the day and fergies doing his team talk, the day before they’re playing us I think, and the players are yawning and schmeichal says we’ve heard all this before. Wasn’t long after a few of them were sold and replaced and a new generation of cunts who came into win for them. 
 

These players will lose faith in klopp a lot quicker than he will in them. Shake them up jurgs. On the pitch and off it. Only Robbo & the keeper should be safe from harm.

[an tha]

3 minutes ago, Red Shift said:

We can single out a lot of the attack and midfield. The lack of pressing starts with the strikers and continues with the midfield. We do still overturn the ball in midfield, but our front three are far less effective at it. Diaz had been right on it, to be fair, and we are really missing his intensity. That is a very unfortunate injury so early on in his Liverpool career. So many of our recent signings have been unlucky (?) - Thiago, Jota, Diaz.

 

I think the 4-3-3 with 3 dynamic strikers all hounding the opposition is the point, but no, it’s not happening, agreed. The first 20 minutes of a game was where we excelled. We never do that now. That is on Klopp and training staff, yes. 
 

However, that’s only one issue. 
The other massive issue is our inability to play quick incisive passes at pace w/o fucking it up and giving the ball away, where all of a sudden, we’re totally exposed because our core tactic is attacking full backs playing high with no cover. THAT is why I would like to see a 4-4-2 or 4-3-1-2 with Trent’s skills used in Midfield, with the extra defender behind him. Robbo is far more dynamic than Trent currently and seems to be able to do what is asked of him. 
 

In that second half, Naby made a difference in midfield for Elliot. I thought he played well, looking to do what neither Fabinho or Thiago seem to want to do…push forward at pace with incisive passing. He set Trent up on a plate for his left foot, but Trent dithered.

 

Problems problems.

 

 

We are not far apart in our reading of it all.

 

I feel sorry for Elliott - poor kid has been thrown in at the deep end an asked to swim using a stroke that is not at all natural to him.

 

It is doing him and sadly the team no favours at all.

[Strontium]

That's us all over though, square pegs into round holes. Instead of just buying round pegs or making square holes.

[Red Shift]

23 minutes ago, Baltar said:

Poor performance, got what we deserved, which was fuck all.

Midfield is an issue that can no longer be ignored now. Two TOP midfielders are needed. Spend whatever the fuck it takes. We are a shambles in the centre. Keep Thiago, and move on the rest except the youngsters like Harvey and Carvalho. 

 

Whilst not complaining about the result, I do want to moan about VAR again. It's so infuriating that the Nunez goal was disallowed. Just what part of him was offside? We're talking millimetres here. It's so stupid. VAR is supposed to be for clear and obvious errors, not to analyse every possible offside down to the inch.   

Yeah that decision halted our momentum slightly, and obviously, if given, Ox’s goal was the equaliser. That would have been interesting. It was definitely a fine margin, not for the first time.

[janmolby]

Heavy metal football? More like drum and bass with a tin whistle and a triangle.

[Arniepie]

Watching that arsenal documentary on amazon and we turned them over 3 times last season,even arteta says to the players we are the best team in the country. 

Mad how it can change so much in 12 months 

When Ferguson was at utd they used to improve the team each season,just 1 or 2 signings. Like others have said,we simply haven't done this. I heard one of those know it all reds on radio merseyside last year saying we don't need to bring anyone in as they wouldn't strengthen what we have got but imho you can always improve.

Fsg must take responsibility but surely klopp can't be happy with it?