I feel like for almost the entirety of this season I've been wondering whether this team is actually good. I was fairly sure it wasn't good enough to win a title, and that has proven true unfortunately, but there's a massive amount of space underneath that threshold, and I'm still uncertain as to how to plot this team.
I suppose that's not that surprising. This team is in the beginning of a long overdue overhaul, and we bought three midfield players, all of whom have done ok to well, but their stories can also point in different directions. Macca for instance is brilliant, but has played most of the season out of position. Endo is great, but is a very good backup, or needs very good backup, as he can't play two games a week. Szobo has obvious talent but has underperformed and is ill disciplined tactically.
Yes, we've fallen apart toward the end of the season, with our performances looking quite leggy, but there's nothing new about us conceding dumb simple chances, nor being able to control a game, that's been the case for much of the season. The only thing that has changed is we have zero air of inevitability, and less energy about us anymore. That's a reversion to the norm.
The other thing that changed was Klopp announcing he is leaving. I don't think it really changed the team that much, perhaps it gave some extra motivation. I think it just made the fans hell bent on the idea that this team needed to win something, and therefore pushed a fanbase that was thinking "hey, this team might be on to something, but there's quite a few glaring issues" on to the realm of "we're going to do it lads." We weren't going to do it. Good teams don't play poorly in every single game for stretches of time, but then gut out results. Good teams don't allow lots of easy chances and rely upon poor finishing. Good teams do take their chances, but when our team was good we had forwards that missed many chances, but our chance creation and oppressive control of the game just ground plenty of teams down.
On the tactical ends, the late Klopp experiments into inverting our right fullback are never going to finish... I still find the attempts just as unpersuasive as I always have. Trent wandering around hitting long balls with low tactical discipline, sitting on top of players who are no slouches for an outlet ball, just isn't fundamentally solid play. It's the sort of thing a mid table does with a single attacking idea they have. It's easily neutralized, and it's fundamentally flawed. Our best overall play happened with kids, but it also happened with us NOT playing this system. We used VVD to hit the outball, or any number of other players who played quite compact in midfield and had far better structure. I've no idea whether we could work a more traditional system in occasionally with Trent, because our best player in that position by a mile, isn't willing/instructed to use the width of the pitch anymore. We still deal with his defensive inattention, but now it's like he's absolved of it. We get LESS attacking output from him.
While we have spent far less time doing what we want to in games of late, we've almost never turned in professional performances for 90 minutes, from the beginning of the season until now. We've gritted our way through, and inevitably our luck has run out, with our finishing.
We're going to talk about how shit our forwards are all summer, I'd imagine, and I'm fine with that, because our old team, the one that was better, had a lot of its flaws masked by the fact that it had some razors up front, with two speedy outlets and one connector. Goals cleanse all sorts of sins. It's worth remembering though, that that team also had two much better fullbacks to use the acres of space those players created. It had a more sound midfield.
I'm much more concerned about what is wrong with this team all around. I know that the mantra is that pressing is the most creative play, but we do need to be able to build up without hitting long balls. We are so vulnerable against such utterly primitive teams, and look like we aren't positionally sound. I can just as easily imagine this team entirely falling apart, as I can it keeping what it has and building on the flaws. That's not doom mongering, it's just that the old guard of this team is on the decline, and now the captain is off. The collective questions around this team are individual ones as well, on many players. A little less belief this season and we get results like the previous season. Which is more reflective? What is the trajectory? I've really no fucking clue.
