The Guest

A few years ago I might have been able to give you a better response than this but I don’t watch Barcelona at all and from what I’ve seen of Arsenal they’re nowhere near what was made out and they will struggle next year. Barcelona play in a comically uneven league where they could play Xavi in goal every week and probably still make the champions league. I don’t think whatever they do now should be impacting what Klopp does here. Zinchenko is actually a midfielder originally himself and Arteta is a poundshop Guardiola so he will just be copying his plans on the same thing he’s doing with Stones. If you think we are playing Trent in midfield because these other managers are doing this though I think we are in even more trouble than I thought. We clearly have unique problems to solve. I think you’d be mad to think we don’t. You seem to be struggling to comprehend what I’m writing though. I’m not saying Klopp has put him in midfield because he’s shit defensively. He’s clearly still forming part of a back four when we don’t have the ball and he’s obviously moving him inside to get him on the ball more to help us create. What I’m saying, which I thought was obvious, is that I disagree with this as a long term solution because he is shit defensively and I would prefer him to just be in midfield and put a proper right back in place. It would give us more width and Trent more options and less worries about turning over the ball and getting into that back four. Go back and reread what I’ve put. It’s not what you seem to think at all. Just one other point I forgot to mention. You say he’s not playing midfield he’s still playing right back as if it was some sort of zinger. When we don’t have the ball he obviously does drop back into the 4 but we have the ball more than we don’t do so he’s actually spending more time in midfield.

You can dress it up however you like. We’ve shit the bed all over the pitch this season and there’s all manner of explanations for it. The result has been getting the best passer in the league who’s fucking shocking defensively into midfield but instead of just doing what anyone else would do we’re still weirdly playing him right back. We absolutely wouldn’t be doing this if the player playing right back was the right sided equivalent of Robertson. We are doing it because of Trents profile. I probably wouldn’t got as far as saying we are doing it because Klopp doesn’t want to make a tit of himself after his comments to Southgate about playing the best right back in the world in midfield but I’m pretty close. While it’s working I’m genuinely not arsed. I wouldn’t be doing it going forward for the reasons I’ve put forward but if I’m wrong then great. The fundamental problem for me all season has been width. It’s been getting progressively worse over the years and not being addressed. The hybrid formation is making the situation even worse really but is somehow getting us results. I don’t think it will last. It feels like when Rodgers switched to the back 3 with Can. We went on a great run and then it got figured out but we just carried on doing it until it became completely untenable. If that happens here what is Klopp going to do? Put Trent back at right back again and we are back to square one. With Sadio going it’s ended up with Robertson being out on the left permanently on his own. He’s not a tricky winger, he needs to link up and overlap. With no foil to work with it felt like 95% of his passes were recycled back inside. On the opposite flank Trent would hardly ever overlap Salah so it ends up with Salah being occupied by multiple players. It’s mad because the odd time he would we would look dangerous but it was like it’s as beneath him as tracking a runner is. I think it’s the main reason Salah has had such a poor season. If we had a right footed Robertson I think Salah finds his best form again and that should be the priority.

He’s an unbelievable passer of the ball. I’d have said Fowler or Garcia were the most two footed players we’ve ever had but neither of them could hit 40/50 yard passes like Trent seems to do with ease on his weaker foot. “The most talented player by a mile” though? Absolutely no chance. We’ve had Mane, Salah, Van Dijk, Thiago here in that time. They’re all far more complete players with at least equal “talent” on whatever metric you want to put in there. The major flaw in his game is just so massive that you can’t put him in that group because none of them have something like that. None of them are perfect obviously but it’s just so stark with him. When he can’t be bothered to run we are a mess and it was happening in parts of nearly every game. I’m not buying this redefining a position thing either. Klopp has played him at “right back” when possibly no other manager in world football would have done it and persevered with it. He’s provided ridiculous attacking stats but so has Robertson on the other side. The difference being one actually has defensive instincts and a good attitude to defending and doesn’t cause a 10th of the problems on his side of the pitch. He plays the position with little care for defending which gives him the opportunity to create. It’s not him it’s the manager giving him a kamikaze role. This season it’s been found wanting. The only reason he’s got away with it previously is because of Klopp’s set up and how well the rest of the team worked for so long. There’s a very good argument that it’s all been worth it because we won the league and champions league. I fall on the side of it costing us more. I think if we play a lot of the big games last season with Gomez at right back or even better signed an actual right back we beat Real and even win the league as well. In terms of building the team around him. The argument for doing it because “he’s won loads of trophies” sounds a lot like the people who try to tell everyone Scholes is better than Gerrard. It just words that don’t have any substance to them at all. I’ve never liked the idea of building around a player anyway. It’s a stupid idea. We didn’t build the team around Gerrard or Suarez even as good as they were. We signed as many good players as we could and then played them wherever they could fit to help the team and because they were that good it worked. Building a team around a massively flawed player like Trent would be mind boggling because building around him is accommodating him. At the moment that involves this mental formation where everyone is learning a job to cover for him. What suddenly happens if this formation doesn’t work out and we’ve signed players to build around it? What if he gets injured and our whole tactical plan is built around it. Klopp isn’t that stupid.

I thought he was going to be far more of a liability in midfield than he has been. He can take it on the turn and is very comfortable under pressure and being closed down. His passing in there is as good as it has even been at right back. He still gets waltzed past in midfield once or twice every game but I think that’s far less of a problem with other players behind him and if we had an actual back four that didn’t include him there it would be even better. I’m sick to death of him doing that mindless attempt to cut out a pass that he’s got about 5% chance of success when the winger has ran off him. I’d happily never see him play right back for us again. I might be completely off here and I hope I am but I doubt we will attempt to sign a right back. I think this weird hybrid formation is now the plan. It’s been spoken about on the Podcast a few times how it surely can’t be the case because we can see how lopsided things are and how once this sort of thing is figured out by the opposition then that will be the end of it. I think the other side of it is the impact on the rest of the team. Do Konate/Matip find the energy to keep covering the whole side of that pitch for counters week after week and month after month? Do the midfielders and Salah have it in them to be acting as the wide player with one less option out there. We’ve already seen how narrow things have gotten after the initial few games of it. It’s extremely short sighted if it is the case. Klopp has a real blind spot for Trent at right back. It’s like Benitez levels of pig headedness. Everything is pointing at him being a club/season destroying liability at right back and has the talent to play as an outright midfielder yet we still haven’t tried it fully for some reason. How bad could it have been to just put Gomez at right back and let’s see how Trent plays with options both ways and no worry of getting into the back four when we don’t have the ball? I can personally see us heading into next season playing this formation, struggling and the club hitting the panic button at the end of the window and trying to sign one in embarrassing fashion because we don’t seem to have the right plan anymore.

It’s just not worth selling Fabinho for what it’s going to cost to replace him with someone better. Considering the problems we have everywhere else it’s pointless. We would be lucky to get 20m combined for him and Elliott. I like Rice but it’s easy to get carried away right now because he’s in a really good patch of form and has scored against 2 shit teams. He’s been poor this season and they would want 100m. I agree with Paul on this one. Just fucking sign Bellingham and worry about everything else later.

I think it’s gone past the filling the gaps he leaves. I honestly never minded him being caught out of position when he’s gone up the pitch and generally still don’t. Both Brownie and now Dave on this pod have mentioned Trent “bombing on” and overlapping Mo which baffles me to be honest. We are lucky if he’s overlapped Mo once a game for years now. He hardly ever gets to the byline which I think is half our issue with creativity and Mo struggling. He’s never been more “in position” than this season because he hardly moves. The biggest problem is his attitude when we don’t have the ball. He’s always picking the lazy option. Whether it’s hidden by him pressing someone 20 yards away from him instead of going with his runner or them ridiculous risky times he tries to cut out the pass instead of staying goal side with the winger. When it comes off for him it looks good and creates an opportunity but it’s just beyond high risk because it’s hardly ever successful. It’s just so easy to play around like we’ve seen all season. When we play against any good side it’s difficult to see us winning because he’s in the team. At the business end of last season he was the major reason we only limped over the line in the cups and couldn’t hold it together in the champions league final. Against the shit teams I honestly feel like you could play him anywhere and eventually his quality on the ball will show. This is going to rumble on for years and I can’t see us winning the 2 major trophies again unless it’s solved.

Fabinho has been bad this season but the past month he hasn’t been bad at all. People just get sucked into repeating the same thing regardless of what’s going on in front of them. Other than his skied shot he didn’t put a foot wrong all game. He was sweeping up and getting across to cover Trent plenty of times. We went to pot when he went off. We’ve got absolutely no chance of signing Caicedo. He was on a 3 grand a week 5 year deal. There was no incentive for Brighton to put a clause in to a new contract. They’ve clearly just give him more money to keep him happy and stop going on strike but there’s no way they’re also adding a clause in. Fabinho isn’t going anywhere and he will he be playing 40+ games next season. He’s already recovered to his old form anyway. It’s just autopilot slagging him off. I went home and watched the sky game of the day and he was absolutely fine because I seen people talking shite about it. Paul’s idea that 2 games against 2 of the worst sides in the league confirms Trent can play there and is absolutely fine defensively etc is comical. He was crowded out in the Arsenal game in the first half and barely touched the ball. We struggled defensively and it gave him more excuse to pull his lazy arse behaviour which impacted the goals we conceded. Funnily enough when he got wide and hit the by line we got the equaliser. He followed it up by being our best player against Leeds and doing well again against forest. He still got completely waltzed by in the middle of the pitch like a cone at one point. Our biggest problem with him is against good sides wherever he plays he’s a defensive liability. It remains to be seen whether that’s worse in the middle than at right back. The game today was very similar to lots of games last season. It’s mad how quickly people forget just how shit we were to watch last season and just getting over the line in so many games.

Souness’ contract is up at the end of the season and they reckon that’s him done at Sky then. He hasn’t gone yet though, I agree with Paul I think it was when he said about the subs. It was the only real gripe I had. We were sitting there saying you could see the game starting to turn and we needed a change specifically Nunez on to offer that bigger presence with more pace. We weren’t getting battered or anything but it was starting to go their way. You look over and the lads aren’t even warming up so you know it’s going to be about 5 mins of warming up and another 5 reading all the shit they have to take in at least before they come on. It’s probably Klopps one weakness. He delays the subs too long. Luckily we were okay in that period. It was good to see us doubling up and even getting 3 players out wide at a time. Robbo hit the byline a few times for the first time in ages in that first half. That’s where Nunez will benefit I think if we can do it with him on the pitch. I think I was as worried as everyone else seeing Milner at full back but it goes to show you don’t need to be rapid to be able to defend there. Surely even to his biggest advocates the idea of bringing Trent back in has got to be off the table now. We’ve been struggling against shite and then suddenly the whole defence looks rock hard without that weakness and Gomez looks his old self. If Milner can’t play in the week then Gomez needs to go there. All Milner did was play the position. He was aggressive and constantly aware and basically just wanted to defend.. Other than one ball he let bounce he didn’t put a foot wrong but he didn’t have to do anything amazing. Trent is completely incapable of doing that. We need to build on the defensive display. We’ve got the attacking players to create and score with playing Trent at right back. Last point - the pod misses brownie when he’s not there!

They probably look at the team sheet and see that cunt starting right back again and think we are fucked before we’ve even begun. Its not even ‘like’ it’s a goal head start for the opposition, it literally is a goal headstart. Then everyone else is all over the place making mistakes taking risks to try and get back into the game. You take him out of the team and we would instantly improve. We need to start getting 2 players outwide on each side consistently as well. This is absolutely soul destroying watching us get dismantled by everyone other than championship sides all down to a fucking fat headed ego at right back who can’t be arsed learning how to defend.

The idea of putting Trent in midfield is even worse than continuing to leave him at right back. He’s got zero awareness of anything going on around him. He has the minimum requirements on this part at full back. You could say his decision making is shocking but I don’t even think you could call them decisions. He just ball watches in every single situation and either tries to cut the pass out or just runs towards the ball with their second goal being a prime example. Can you imagine that in midfield? Just because he’s good on the ball doesn’t mean he should start somewhere in the team. The fantasy land everyone has been living in for years that he’s a good defender, defending badly etc has everyone thinking he could just transition into midfield but it goes further than that. The fact he hasn’t been able to pick up these basic skills as a full back shows you the clear lack of intelligence he has. The various nuances our midfield play has wouldn’t even scratch the surface of that thick skull. I’m sure it will give the people up his arse another year of defending him though followed by posts like “why are we playing the best full back in the world in midfield” so we can then experience another few years dealing with the transition back. Hopefully this is Klopps Lovren moment with him.

The whole lot of it is on Klopp really. It’s the only real problem I’ve had with him in his whole time here other than the spell when he carried on playing Moreno ahead of Robertson. He seems to have a complete blind spot for Trent and it looks to be the hill he’s willing to die on. The whole coaching set up has indulged him to the point it appears his ego is huge and the effort has completely dropped off. It’s infuriating to watch the laziness in his game and it definitely is laziness because you can see him sprinting seconds or a minute after a lot of these “switch offs” have happened. I agree it’s obviously Klopp telling him or allowing him to go where he wants centrally. The thing that pisses me off even more is the odd time Trent does get to the byline we look really dangerous. I don’t think this 4231 idea is really going to fix anything either and I think if anything it’s going to make it harder for the forward players. I said it a while ago. We need to fundamentally change the way we attack regardless of the formation, It’s so rare that we get 2 players wide on one side together and it a been like that for a while. We just never overlap the man with ball outwide and it kills us. I find it odd that Klopp or Pep haven’t tried to sort this because it’s glaring.

It depends how you define defend. He can physically tackle people, it’s not like he’s a shithouse (unless the ball is in the air and then he more often than not is) and when he’s completely focused he can make good defensive decisions and he tends to cover around the back of the centre backs well on occasion. He is a terrible “defender” though. The problem is that his attitude to it absolutely stinks and it has done for years now. It’s all on his terms and when he fancies it and this can be for whole games or parts of one. Everyone seemed to convince themselves of the “Klopp wants him up the pitch so he’s going to get caught out” excuse to the point I think he started believing it. Nobody ever seemed to want to address the fact that loads of the problems and goals came when he wasn’t even up the pitch or the fact that he rarely gets to the opposition byline even once a game anyway. It started with the just outright stopping as soon as player or the ball went passed him and this was years ago. He’s clearly been told because this doesn’t happen as blatantly now. He covers it with half arsed jogging instead with still no intention of getting in position. I think Carragher spoke a while ago about this and how he never sprints back into position. I think a lot of people would say that he hasn’t got defensive instincts and that’s why he doesn’t do it. I personally think it’s worse than that now. I think he hides from it and it’s a major flaw in his game that basically cannot be improved because if it was going to be it would have happened by now. My biggest fear is that after another year or two of playing like this he is going to get moved into midfield and he’s going to be an even bigger mess there because he would have even more defensive responsibility playing there than he does now. It was pretty much universally accepted that if we wanted to progress the team and compete with city then we needed more from the midfield than the workhorse type we had that covered the full backs. Robbo didn’t need to adapt because he worked up and down anyway and didn’t really need covering. Trent just hasn’t adapted to this shift and it’s glaring in every single game. We got away with it last year because everyone else was playing well. He still cost us in the big moments though. I see everyone coming up with all sorts of reasons for this years slump and the goals conceded etc. I’m convinced that if we just take him out the team we would turn this around and these other players would stop being left exposed so many times. Brighton got in down our right side so many times the goal was almost certain to come. He’s not offering anything going forward anyway and is harming us by not even providing width. The decision to take Tsimikas off and leave him on cost us the game. It feels like even if we win games now it’s going to be through us getting lucky. I find the England stuff baffling. Reece James is a better footballer than him. People will wake up to it at some point. On his current form he shouldn’t be anywhere near the squad. As much of an out of his depth shithouse, picking the wrong players in a daft formation crab Southgate is, he’s called this one absolutely correctly.

It’s still the best podcast. It goes hand in hand with listening to Klopp after a defeat. It helps you get over it. This game and situation has been coming though and not just this season. Looking leggy and the points about pre season are valid but they don’t explain why we’ve been like this for a long time now. We’ve just been getting away with it. It’s not about effort or running or even Mane going because we were having these exact problems last year. Theres a massive problem with how we set up and use the ball when we want to attack. For as long as I can remember we have one man out wide. It tends to be Robbo on the left and Salah on the right. Trent’s too lazy/unfit to go past him or overlap consistently and is clearly being told to either do what he wants or drift inside and it’s absolutely killing Salah. We use to see it a lot last season and it would end up being Mane going wide with Robbo that would open up the game. Last night Trent actually did get to byline twice and it should have led to goals but then we just revert to the same shit that isn’t working. I was worried about Diaz when mane left as good as he is he loves drifting in. I think from the off last night he was trying to stay wide though but then Robbo was just not on it and it’s hard to just make that connection trying to do this for the first time in a game like this, We just don’t create good chances because we don’t stretch teams enough. The Firmino one mentioned is not a good chance. It’s a high ball going on to his left foot. The fact that it was air shot shows how bad he is these days but not many players are scoring that. The whole thing is exacerbated by just how bad and lazy Trent has been. It was obvious to me that any game against a good side last season was going to be a problem because he’s such a weak link defensively. I think on the pod last year you were saying this is a myth but it categorically isn’t. He can put his foot in but defensively he’s absolutely clueless and the way he’s been indulged has hit a critical point. It’s like he’s got a licence not bother and he’s following it up with horrific offensive decisions making as well. The myth for me is that it’s the risk we take because he gets caught up the pitch. I couldn’t care less if he’s got to the byline or someone makes a mistake and he’s deep in their half and they break, that’s not on him. What is on him is the consistent lazy walking around. When he’s in reaching distance of players and just gambles on not following them because he obviously just can’t be arsed. He nearly cost us the palace game standing right by his man and just letting him do what he wanted at the end of the game. You could argue both goals tonight are on him. The first one he’s doing that lazy walk as the ball goes out wide and doesn’t close the man. Then gets one two-d not doing anything at all. At this point it’s classic Trent. The balls gone past me “I’m done” mode. Everyone is focusing on Virg because it’s so odd what he does but go back and look at Trent. He could have come across and stopped Sancho getting that shot off but he can’t be arsed. The half arsed jog he does towards sancho as he’s in the space sums him up. He gets away with it because he’s kept himself out of it instead having defensive instinct and just getting back in. The second one comes from one of the countless aimless smashed balls he tried into the middle of the pitch. How often did we use to talk about the situations where we have to keep the ball in those situations because if we lose it we get exposed so badly. His reaction after hitting the pass again is something nobody seems to pick up on. He just stands there while they’re breaking free. He literally doesn’t move because he can’t be arsed. If you’re going to hit such a low percentage pass when you’ve got 2 or 3 options around you then you’ve got to instantly be heading back to goal because of the likelihood of whats going to happen. He was killing us all night by giving them the ball and leaving the defence exposed. The strange wandering around the pitch he’s started doing this season as well doesn’t seem to be being picked up by anyone either. We’ve had patterns of play drilled into the players that have worked for years but now our centre backs are struggling to pass the ball out at times in the game because Trent is just standing up front and everyone just seems to ignore that it’s happening. I think Gomez hit ones straight out of play at one point because Trent was nowhere to be seen. It’s gone from being a problem against good sides to now hurting us against average and bad ones as well.

You’ve conveniently cut off the 3 or 4 seconds before the ball is played because it doesn’t suit what you are trying to shoehorn in. At that point Robertson is occupied by Ascensio, Kabak is looking at Modric so Phillips shifts across to stop any ball into Benzema. Trent is completely asleep and for some reason is halfway near Mendy which is stupid really because he’s not a threat and if a ball gets played out to him the whole defence could shift across. Just as the ball is played Phillips notices Vinicius and Trent’s laughable positioning. Modric and Ascensio have dropped to look for a pass so it suddenly looks like the defence are only dealing with two attackers which they weren’t. Phillips can’t do anything at any point. If Trent had been in position then Vinicius can’t take that first touch. I can’t believe that Klopp or the coaches won’t have analysed that any club we will play against will hit balls down that channel. It’s the biggest weakness we have and it’s because if Trent and his arrogant lazy Shite defending attitude. That ball doesn’t happen on Robertson’s side because he’s not any of those things. He needs to be spoken to and retrained like a child from the ground up if he’s going to last there long term. Benitez is a knobhead who lived off having Gerrard in his team. Before he fully got his claws into him we were winning trophies. His shithouse behaviour and tactics cost him the league title he deserved. It’s a shame Gerrard didn’t have an attacking manager in his prime because his cabinet would have been bursting. The idolisation of Benitez is fucking laughable in my eyes and the absolute mess he’s created at every club he’s been at since confirms it.

You just haven’t got a clue. He’s the left winger running off the right back into the channel. Trent should be grabbing him, getting in his way and screaming at Phillips to drop because the run is being made. When Kroos has the ball he’s not Phillips problem, Benzema is. He can’t continually keep looking over his shoulder to babysit Trent. There should be more pressure on the ball and that’s on the midfield but he’s Trent’s man and he should be going with him because once again he can see Phillips is unaware of him. Virg never plays on the right side so him playing wouldn’t have changed anything. Gomez and Trent have had very similar problems with that exact ball as did Lovren when he had Trent alongside him. Matip isn’t lightning quick either.

You fucking sad bastard.

Just put him out wide and tell him to stay there. It’s really that easy.

You’re on the internet offering people fights mate. I think you need help.

Brilliant.

Okay see you at 8. Make sure to hang around for a couple of hours as I might be late.

Jesus fucking Christ. How old are you?

Okay then tell me your name and where you live? I’ll head down after work.

Why the fucking hell would I meet you you fucking bell end? You could be Darron Till for all I know and I could be anyone for all you know. It’s a complete empty threat that is never going to be realised yet here you are on the internet offering someone out who for all you know could hand you your arse. Are you mentally unstable?

Trent was always an issue even in that period where we conceded very few goals. Robertson is the perfect example of what Trent should be aiming to be like defensively. They get praised to the heavens when the system works for them and they get assists. When everything isn’t in their favour though it’s highlighting flaws in Trents game. He’s always been a lazy twat when the ball goes past him. It’s weird because in some games he’s absolutely concentrated and he looks good defensively and in others he just switches off and goes back to his norm. Nobody is criticising him for being too high up the pitch or getting caught out of position on a counter attack. Everyone accepts that happens. The thing that pisses me off is his ball watching when the winger runs off him and he starts taking massive risks thinking he can cut out the ball instead of leaving the pressing for the midfield and staying goal side of the attacked until he’s in line with the centre backs. He gets caught out more than any other full back in the league when he’s actually in a decent starting position and it’s all down to his own awareness, attitude and body position. When Klopp goes in a few years time he’s going to be a massive elephant in the room because Klopp is the only manager in world football to play his full backs like this. I can’t see him getting a job in midfield either because his defensive awareness will be even more exposed there.

I feel embarrassed for you.