... in Stoke. If you didn't watch the game, it seems perfect: a 3-goal win on the road, a clean sheet, some key players rested. However the reality is somewhat more complicated. Some points, in no particular order:
- Front 3 depth. It says something good when we can rest Coutinho, Sturridge, Lallana, Salah for 70 minutes and start our 3-rd choice striker and still not only score 3 goals, but also create lots of other clear chances away at a solid EPL team. Other areas are still a concern, but this one is full of quality and depth.
- Movember. Credit to @Brizzle for coining the term (unless he also stole it from somewhere, in which case shame on him – just kidding). 8 goals in all competitions in a calendar month, 17(!!) for the season. It's a beautiful thing to see an LFC player in such sizzling form; whether he will sustain it or not is another question, but in November (or Movember) he has been carrying the team; he has been the difference-maker in every way. Even if this turns out to be the absolute best run of form in his career, it's already an accomplishment – in my time supporting LFC there were only a handful of players you could say were "carrying" the team for a solid month or more and those who did were generally superstars like Gerrard, Suarez, Torres, and Owen. At least for the month of November Salah deserves to be mentioned in this company – and if he sustains it further, oh boy...
- Midfield. On paper the double-pivot of Can and Wijnaldum looks like a decent partnership – but tonight's performance left me with more questions than answers. Klopp also seemed not too impressed – I think his comment about using the ball better after we'd won it from Crouch's knockdowns was mostly directed at his central midfielders. It was disappointing how neither of them, despite being perfectly capable passers, was willing to take responsibility for building attacks from the back – instead it looked an awkward "small talk" in the middle of the park, not too purposeful and not too safe. Henderson came under a lot of criticism here lately, but I think it's undeniable that the midfield had better balance with him rather than without him in recent games.
- Right flank. Oxlade and Gomez combined well in Salah's absence and most importantly, they were always defensively solid, compensating for the more shaky left side. Gomez has been growing in confidence and consistency from game to game this season and I thought his last 3 games (against Sevilla, Chelsea and Stoke away – all "above-average" difficulty for a defender) he has been among or near our top 3 players in all of them. Ox has been even more impressive tonight and against Chelsea – all of a sudden two players who were kind of an afterthought are proving they belong in the first team, particularly when we need more energy and defensive stability. I love when that happens – and the fact they are both young AND English is an added bonus.
- Mignolet – extremely lucky he didn't cost us a game. We really need a better goalkeeper – although in hindsight I'm still glad we dodged Joe Hart this summer.
- Do we really need Coutinho? In his best form he still walks into this team, of course, but if he's anywhere below that, then suddenly it's not so clear-cut – you can make the case that someone with more energy, like Ox or Lallana, or a 3rd CM provides better balance since the front 3 seems well capable of scoring on its own. At Chelsea Fabregas has not been always playing even though he's hands down the best passer on that team, same for Mkhitaryan and Mata at United, Lacazette at Arsenal – at big clubs even fully mature star players sometimes have to be sacrificed to larger tactical considerations. Until Coutinho makes himself as consistently clinical as Salah, as intimidating as Mane, or as crucial to the team shape as Firmino, he might find that his place in the first 11 is not longer a guarantee.
- The "away model" is humming along nicely – once again we lined up with 2 in central midfield and 2 up front (even though Solanke in particular dropped deep, too deep for my liking). So it could be described as 4-2-2-2 or (due to Solanke's positioning in this particular game) 4-2-3-1 – in any case, the main idea was to have 2 CMs side-by-side rather than an "inverted triangle" Klopp used for most of his games at LFC. By my count we have played a version of this formation in 4 games since the beginning of November – Maribor (h), West Ham (a), Saints (h) and Stoke (a) and so far it's 4 wins out of 4 with the goal difference of 13:1. The other 2 games where Klopp went back to 4-3-3 (Chelsea and Sevilla) were both draws.
http://sportyhl.com/video-stoke-vs-liverpool-highlights/
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