Defence

[Portly]

The BBC needs to add fat-arse couch potatoes to the list of persecuted minorities it makes programmes about on TV and radio. Thus LGBTQ should become LGBTQFACP.

 

[RedStar]

The thing that alienates me from these kinds of discussion is that, either knowingly or, more likely, unconsciously, they ignore the reality of how a club, and this club, is actually managed in reality.

When it comes to the issue of a problem in the side, and why it has remained a problem, the singularity of focus on Klopp is just silly. If you really know how a club works these days you know that a manager isn't the sole figure responsible for spotting and reacting to problems, and yet (encouraged no doubt by professional sports hacks who know damned well what the realities actually are but ignore them because to acknowledge them would force them to be more sophisticated in their analysis) on and on goes this childish moan about what one man does or doesn't see, react to and resolve.

In the case of Liverpool, it's not just Jurgen Klopp supposedly failing to see what various fat-arsed couch potatoes take pride in seeing and loudly announcing. It's also Zeljko Buvac, Peter Krawietz and Pepijn Lijnders - all of them with pretty impressive track records in football who probably know considerably more about the game than the aforementioned fat-arsed couch potatoes. In addition to all of them, there's also a mini army of video analysts who are paid to study each game and highlight any issue. And yet, time and again, these fat-arsed couch potatoes rant about one individual failing to spot basic defensive problems and/or solving them.

It's actually a pretty large group that, according to this noisy toy town critique, signally fails to see what the average punter sees. A sane grown-up, you'd think, would assume that it's a bit more complex than that. For one thing, you'd think, with their records in the past for assembling and managing good defences (much, much, much better defences than this current bunch), that they'd be able to spot what the average forumite could spot, and be able to remedy the problems. So if the average forumite cared more about seeming alert, honest and informed rather than just a monumental smart arse, you'd surely expect them to be hugely bemused about why the improvements haven't happened, rather than just furious at a top class manager, and a top class coaching team, for not 'getting it' as well as they do and in general for being 'c*nts'.

Is the way the defence and midfield defend infuriating? Yup, obviously. Is it down to the management and coaching team failing to notice it, let alone work to remedy it? So highly unlikely as to be laughable. Are these people even more exasperated than us, disappointed in the players and probably looking to find better and far more intelligent players, whilst adapting in the here and now to the fact that this bunch of players are probably the stupidest they've ever coached? Very likely.

I don't mind the general moaning and groaning. It's inevitable and, to an extent, cathartic. But please don't try to claim that its all as simple and obvious as some of you do. It's just tiresome, insulting and utterly pointless.

A good time to read a book and shut out the noise.

That's the footballing equivalent of blaming the courtiers rather than the King. While I agree to a certain extent that it's not all Klopps fault it's his coaching team, his squad his tactics his recruitment. Not being able to defend set pieces is a huge indictment of our coaching set up, every team knows they will face set pieces in every single match, mutiple times. It's not some new or unique tactic that an opposing team springs on us at the last minute. Every week we will face corners and free kicks, to be so poor at defending them is just negligent.

 

[Oncy]

The thing that alienates me from these kinds of discussion is that, either knowingly or, more likely, unconsciously, they ignore the reality of how a club, and this club, is actually managed in reality.

When it comes to the issue of a problem in the side, and why it has remained a problem, the singularity of focus on Klopp is just silly. If you really know how a club works these days you know that a manager isn't the sole figure responsible for spotting and reacting to problems, and yet (encouraged no doubt by professional sports hacks who know damned well what the realities actually are but ignore them because to acknowledge them would force them to be more sophisticated in their analysis) on and on goes this childish moan about what one man does or doesn't see, react to and resolve.

In the case of Liverpool, it's not just Jurgen Klopp supposedly failing to see what various fat-arsed couch potatoes take pride in seeing and loudly announcing. It's also Zeljko Buvac, Peter Krawietz and Pepijn Lijnders - all of them with pretty impressive track records in football who probably know considerably more about the game than the aforementioned fat-arsed couch potatoes. In addition to all of them, there's also a mini army of video analysts who are paid to study each game and highlight any issue. And yet, time and again, these fat-arsed couch potatoes rant about one individual failing to spot basic defensive problems and/or solving them.

It's actually a pretty large group that, according to this noisy toy town critique, signally fails to see what the average punter sees. A sane grown-up, you'd think, would assume that it's a bit more complex than that. For one thing, you'd think, with their records in the past for assembling and managing good defences (much, much, much better defences than this current bunch), that they'd be able to spot what the average forumite could spot, and be able to remedy the problems. So if the average forumite cared more about seeming alert, honest and informed rather than just a monumental smart arse, you'd surely expect them to be hugely bemused about why the improvements haven't happened, rather than just furious at a top class manager, and a top class coaching team, for not 'getting it' as well as they do and in general for being 'c*nts'.

Is the way the defence and midfield defend infuriating? Yup, obviously. Is it down to the management and coaching team failing to notice it, let alone work to remedy it? So highly unlikely as to be laughable. Are these people even more exasperated than us, disappointed in the players and probably looking to find better and far more intelligent players, whilst adapting in the here and now to the fact that this bunch of players are probably the stupidest they've ever coached? Very likely.

I don't mind the general moaning and groaning. It's inevitable and, to an extent, cathartic. But please don't try to claim that its all as simple and obvious as some of you do. It's just tiresome, insulting and utterly pointless.

A good time to read a book and shut out the noise.

It is. Sign better defenders and train them.
I dont care how many hours of video footage we have analysed as a club by a wall to wall of European experts.

Would Lovren, TAA, Milner, Henderson, Can, Moreno, Mignolet etc get into Chelsea, United, Spurs, Arsenal or Cities team?

No. And you cant argue that they would, because they arent good enough.

Its not Klopps fault that they arent. But its his fault that 3 windows in we still have all this average waste of skin and blood in our ranks.

Yours Couch Potato.
40 years of experience thank you very much.

 

[Oncy]

One quality DM and a Quality CB and shit would look a whole world better.

 

[ibromurph]

I remember when Guardiola was at Barcelona, he was talking about their pressing game and said something along the lines of him being nervous when his team don't have the ball.

That's how I feel with this Liverpool team. We are a horrible horrible team defensively. So were / are Barca but they had players like Messi and Xavi and Iniesta and Eto'o and no-one could get near them.

We don't have players like that and we aren't going to get them. What's more the likelihood of all the chips falling into place and us transcending into a team that is greater than the sum of it's parts to the extent that we can blow away all before us is slim to none.

We know we can dominate games. We also know that you simply can't trust us not to drop points in those games. It was a problem under Rodgers and it's a problem under Klopp.

The solution is not to carry on doing the same thing and hoping it all works out.

I think the solution is to KEEP our best players and add to them.

The problem is we keep selling our best players and never get to put the likes of Torres, Suarez, Coutinho, Alonso, Gerrard, Reina, Mascher together.

This year we'll be selling Coutinho, when what we really needed to do was add Keita and VVD to him.

But like you say, we keep on doing the same thing.

 

[gkmacca]

They're all part and parcel of Klopp though Macca, they're his team. He wants them alongside him and puts his trust in them, so the buck always stops with the manager. It was the same with Rafa. When Paco went, everyone blamed a downturn in form on the loss of Rafa's right hand man, the buck stopped with Rafa on letting that happen, not the club, not Paco, but the manager. Rightly so. When he was too stubborn to address our flaws and repeatedly made the same mistakes, he rightly took the criticism.

When Rodgers brought in those amateur, lower league buffoons in his last season and we were garbage, he rightly took the flack for it. Just like he took the flack for letting his original staff go.

This is all a bit selective really, talk about blame shifting. FSG are failing to cover themselves in glory in the transfer market and Klopp is failing to address the problems that have held us back for the last few years. They're the two biggest issues with the club at the moment and it's right that the main people (the owners and the manager) are the ones who are questioned about it.

That fat-arsed couch potatoes stuff is nonsense, and frankly insulting. There are plenty of knowledgeable fans and people around the game who know their stuff.

Good of you not to be so personally abusive this time, even though you lack the decency to realise when an apology is in order.

I still think, absolutely seriously, you should step down as a moderator. You don't behave as a moderator should behave, you actively behave as precisely the kind of poster who should be smacked down or banned by a moderator and generally you show, time and again, that you are distracted by petty and personal vendettas and prejudices when you should be standing back and giving some sober and serious guidance. The standard of moderating on here is excellent, but you're the exception; you're a disgrace. Give yourself and everyone else a favour by stepping down and taking a break.

 

[Gary25]

Good of you not to be so personally abusive this time, even though you lack the decency to realise when an apology is in order.

I still think, absolutely seriously, you should step down as a moderator. You don't behave as a moderator should behave, you actively behave as precisely the kind of poster who should be smacked down or banned by a moderator and generally you show, time and again, that you are distracted by petty and personal vendettas and prejudices when you should be standing back and giving some sober and serious guidance. The standard of moderating on here is excellent, but you're the exception; you're a disgrace. Give yourself and everyone else a favour by stepping down and taking a break.

Are you going to address the valid points Mark raised though? You're coming across as a bit of a Jurgen Klopp apologist to be truthful.

 

[gkmacca]

At another time, although, for one thing, your first line either ignores my whole point or chooses to excuse it, and it's hardly down to me alone, but, at the start of a long and probably fractious season, I think, in this local area of a forum, it's more pertinent, right and proper to deal with this first. Mark has shown over several years now that he's not suited to being a moderator. And sadly it's getting worse. You can search through the posts in the past to see me saying this multiple times. It's a responsibility. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. If he wants to rant at people, get involved in bitter and abusive exchanges, insult other posters and leap into debates, fine, but stop being a mod. Don't do it with impunity. Either do the job or don't do it.

 

[LarryHagman]

The most surprising thing is we seem to get worse. That's an achievement in itself.

 

[My_Blood_Bleeds_Red]

This club is run by clowns. Fact.


Sent from my iPhone 8 Plus using Tapatalk

 

[rurikbird]

We played against the most physical team in the league and we had young TAA and tiny Moreno as full-backs – no wonder we got outmuscled when it mattered. Having VVD (and Kolasinac at LB) would have helped for sure, but even if we had Milner and Clyne I think we would not have had the same defensive problems against Watford.

 

[JohnnyRocket]

I must admit, Saturday was the first time I found myself genuinely worried about Klopp as our manager.

To still be confronted with the same issues that were there 22 months ago when he joined is alarming. Add to this his seeming blind trust in some of the players who we all see aren't good enough. I can name 50 centre backs better than our dross, so that's a load of bollocks - it's the sort of statement that reminded me of some of the stuff Houllier would come out with in his last season.

I honestly don't think FSG are the major issue in this case - Klopp's stubbornly decided not to buy unless the players are VVD our Keita.

3 signings, and only one good enough to start. We're a Mane / Salah hamstring tear away from a disastrous season.

 

[refugee]

I can name 50 centre backs better than our dross

Is he allowed to buy any of them though? Didn't Rodgers say he was given a list of 5-6 players he was allowed to buy and one of those lists had Balotelli on it, so we know the lists aren't infallible.

 

[dmishra]

I must admit, Saturday was the first time I found myself genuinely worried about Klopp as our manager.

To still be confronted with the same issues that were there 22 months ago when he joined is alarming. Add to this his seeming blind trust in some of the players who we all see aren't good enough. I can name 50 centre backs better than our dross, so that's a load of bollocks - it's the sort of statement that reminded me of some of the stuff Houllier would come out with in his last season.

I honestly don't think FSG are the major issue in this case - Klopp's stubbornly decided not to buy unless the players are VVD our Keita.

3 signings, and only one good enough to start. We're a Mane / Salah hamstring tear away from a disastrous season.

Yeah, I'm getting that feeling too. He's saying some weird things of late.

 

[Dreambeliever]

The fact after two years Klopp still hasn't realized you cant play with two full backs that high at the same time is incredible.

Once any team transitions past that first phase of possession we are goosed and totally exposed.

It's almost as if he's too stubborn to change which in itself is a major concern.

 

[tombrown]

Not sure how playing a pressing game, or having full backs high up the pitch, is to blame for conceding two goals from set pieces.

 

[Best Believe It]

I hope what Klopp meant by the 5 centre back thing was there aren't five centre-backs out there who are: very good now (as opposed to potentially very good), can cope with being one-on-one with attackers, can dominate space both aerially and when the ball is on the ground and can organise a defence. Because essentially whoever was to come in would need to do all that.

 

[The Nomad]

At another time, although, for one thing, your first line either ignores my whole point or chooses to excuse it, and it's hardly down to me alone, but, at the start of a long and probably fractious season, I think, in this local area of a forum, it's more pertinent, right and proper to deal with this first. Mark has shown over several years now that he's not suited to being a moderator. And sadly it's getting worse. You can search through the posts in the past to see me saying this multiple times. It's a responsibility. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. If he wants to rant at people, get involved in bitter and abusive exchanges, insult other posters and leap into debates, fine, but stop being a mod. Don't do it with impunity. Either do the job or don't do it.

Macca, why the vendetta? One of the things I remember reading when the site was set up was that the Mods were allowed to get stuck in if they disagreed. Pretty much anything could be said back to them without the fear of the DJ Syd banning stick.

To you Mark may seem like he's the worst, to others, other Mods seem like they are worse, and not Mark.

Its all about opinions my friend, stop trying to get someone to step down from Mod duties, and focus on what a shower of shit we are at the back.

 

[Dreambeliever]

Not sure how playing a pressing game, or having full backs high up the pitch, is to blame for conceding two goals from set pieces.

Where did the set piece from the first come from and the 2nd had us out of position yet again.

This style of football will never win the league

 

[Rosco]

Its obvious the way we play puts our back 4 under a lot of pressure but when you look back on the goals - none of them were as a result of our back four being exposed.

We had bodies everywhere for all of the goals.

1st Goal
https://my.mixtape.moe/wclfli.mp4

We were too passive in our zonal marking. Also the set up is odd- why is Firmino in our six yard box for corners ?

The second goal came from a throw in, plenty of bodies back in defence but nobody seems to anticipate the danger.
2nd Goal -
https://my.mixtape.moe/cmytvx.mp4


3rd goal:
https://my.mixtape.moe/mjbnex.mp4

I just don't understand Wijnaldum's thought process. Or why he is in that position

 

[Best Believe It]

We've just got fucking stupid players.

 

[hmmmmm1]

Klopps 'latest' quotes are worrying re: not buying new players in defence.

 

[Best Believe It]

Klopps 'latest' quotes are worrying re: not buying new players in defence.

There's no point reading anything into anything managers say about transfers. Our last manager said we specifically wouldn't buy a particular player and we ended up buying that player. Just wait and see what happens.

 

[hmmmmm1]

There's no point reading anything into anything managers say about transfers. Our last manager said we specifically wouldn't buy a particular player and we ended up buying that player. Just wait and see what happens.

We can only go off what the manger says and what the club does. So far, its been a pretty poor window and we are on the brink of loosing our best player.

 

[Best Believe It]

We can only go off what the manger says and what the club does. So far, its been a pretty poor window and we are on the brink of loosing our best player.

We're not at the brink, because we haven't accepted an offer nor given any indication we'll sell. We can only go off what the club does, really. What the manager says in public and what he thinks in private are probably two very different things, considering everything he says in public has to go via the media. I really wouldn't place too much emphasis on whatever he's saying. I agree it's been a poor window considering we weren't able to bring in the right players for the start of the season. It'll be a poor window if we don't sign at least two more first-team players by the 31st.

 

[Oliver Twist]

We can only go off what the manger says and what the club does. So far, its been a pretty poor window and we are on the brink of loosing our best player.

But not according to the club or the manager. So if you are going off what they are saying and doing, we are not actually on the brink of losing our best player at all.

Fuck knows what the truth is, though.

 

[ILD]

Utter Garbage...

Same shit different season..

I don't want to go all Mark on you Jono (no offence Mark) but this is a bit rich coming from you mate 😉.

I'm no Rodgers apologist but your main gripe with him was that he couldn't build a defense and a 'proper manager' would.

That isn't a dig at Klopp from me btw. I'm still very much Pro Klopp but his reluctance to sort obvious limitations in our team is annoying. It is very frustrating that since Rodgers left, Matip is the only player signed who could state a claim to have improved our defence. We have clueless defenders who don't understand the basics of defending at times.

 

[doctor_mac]

My issue is there seems to be basic problems in the way we are set up to defend set pieces. Why the fuck is Firmino left to mark the most dangerous zone for their first goal? It is lunacy.

 

[Rosco]

It seems to be the plan, there's an example from last season:

 

[doctor_mac]

It seems to be the plan, there's an example from last season:

Perhaps we are just so lacking in big and physical players that he is actually one of our better set piece defenders. Which is worrying to say the least.