They'd beat us though.
Leicester v Liverpool Match Thread (League Cup)
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They'd beat us though.
I have to say, I half agree with Modo about Henderson. Only I fault his attacking, rather than defensive, abilities. It's strange that Lucas is being held up like some kind of a solution because he's been faulted over the years for a same thing – an overly safe approach when the team needed some spark from the middle. In games like these, when the attackers are tightly marked and space up front in severely limited, ideally you need someone like Xabi Alonso pulling strings in the middle and constantly probing and looking for the smallest opening.
Hendo's problem is that too many of his passes are the non-thinking, automatic variety – you just know by the type of position where he receives the ball what pass is going to follow and the opposition usually knows it too. He has many great qualities, but ultimately he just doesn't have the right tool kit to be the central playmaker for the "death by possession" style of football. This is one of the many reasons why I just don't have trust in Klopp's LFC's implementation of this style and why I think Klopp needs to find a way to make each game more of a transition game, which is where most of our players (including Hendo) are at their strongest.
Hendo's problem is that too many of his passes are the non-thinking, automatic variety – you just know by the type of position where he receives the ball what pass is going to follow and the opposition usually knows it too. He has many great qualities, but ultimately he just doesn't have the right tool kit to be the central playmaker for the "death by possession" style of football. This is one of the many reasons why I just don't have trust in Klopp's LFC's implementation of this style and why I think Klopp needs to find a way to make each game more of a transition game, which is where most of our players (including Hendo) are at their strongest.
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Ah well, 1 down 3 more to fail at.
Most importantly, does anyone have the possession stats? Can't wait to hear about those. Also, how many shots did we have from outside the box? I hope it was 30 like last weekend.
Most importantly, does anyone have the possession stats? Can't wait to hear about those. Also, how many shots did we have from outside the box? I hope it was 30 like last weekend.
We had 21 shots and just 3 were on target whereas Leicester only had 8 shots but 5 were on target. Without Mane, Salah and Firmino we're just as shit going forward as we are at the back. I got the stats from the BBC match report http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41235273
We are shit without mane . With him we can win. With salah we can draw. Without them both we just lose. Seriously we need to fucking get that CB and a really good striker - does not have to be a world beater just someone like that knows where the fucking goal is.
Why are you so sure of that? Eibar is currently 13th in Primera with 2 wins and 2 clean sheets out of 5 games. They are not some hopeless floor-mat of a team. But again, the point I'm trying to make is not about Eibar, but the fact that Barca have now learned how to win convincingly with only 50% possession, while we struggle to score with 70%. It's not 2013, we need to evolve.
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Man City (a) 34% possession for us, 0 goals scored
Hoffenheim (a) 37% possession, 2 goals
Hoffenheim (h) 45%, 4 goals
Arsenal (h) 49%, 4 goals
Sevilla (h) 49%, 2 goals (and missed penalty)
Watford (a) 54%, 3 goals
Leicester (a) 70%, 0 goals
Burnley (h) 71%, 1 goal
Crystal Palace (h) 72%, 1 goal
This can't be any more clear, can it? Other than the obvious outlier in the Man City game, the correlation is more possession = less goals scored. The sweet spot seems to be somewhere between 45 to 55% possession – in those 4 games we scored 13 goals out of our 17 total this season. That's transition game and that's what we are really good at. On the contrary, we are terrible at the possession game – in 3 games with 70+% possession we only mustered 2 goals (and conceded 3). That's not a coincidence or an aberration, it's a feature. We're an MMA fighter who can hit with the best of them, but always gets choked in a clinch even if he starts out on top. We need to learn to avoid the clinch.
Hoffenheim (a) 37% possession, 2 goals
Hoffenheim (h) 45%, 4 goals
Arsenal (h) 49%, 4 goals
Sevilla (h) 49%, 2 goals (and missed penalty)
Watford (a) 54%, 3 goals
Leicester (a) 70%, 0 goals
Burnley (h) 71%, 1 goal
Crystal Palace (h) 72%, 1 goal
This can't be any more clear, can it? Other than the obvious outlier in the Man City game, the correlation is more possession = less goals scored. The sweet spot seems to be somewhere between 45 to 55% possession – in those 4 games we scored 13 goals out of our 17 total this season. That's transition game and that's what we are really good at. On the contrary, we are terrible at the possession game – in 3 games with 70+% possession we only mustered 2 goals (and conceded 3). That's not a coincidence or an aberration, it's a feature. We're an MMA fighter who can hit with the best of them, but always gets choked in a clinch even if he starts out on top. We need to learn to avoid the clinch.
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Well, you can in a way – remember how Jurgen praised Solanke's contribution for Mane's goal against Palace, that he was "awake" enough to intercept/deflect the ball from the opposing player into Mane's path. Guardiola also emphasizes regaining possession in the final third as one of the best ways to create chances, because the distance to goal then is so short and opposition has less time to react. So in theory you can have majority of the ball and also "counter," but for that players need to take risks and also be quicker to react to rebounds and deflections than the opposition – yesterday not all of our players were up to the task, I thought Coutinho and Wijnaldum were in the 1st half and also Solanke, Grujic and Robertson to some extent, but overall it was not comparable to the speed and cutting edge of the front 3 of Mane-Firmino-Salah. Then after the interval I don't even know what kind of game we were supposed to be playing; it was not possession or counter-attack, just weak and devoid of ideas and waiting for trouble.
That's why I think maybe Klopp can give his preferred system one more chance when meeting Leicester at full strength on Saturday – surely they will once again opt to sit back and wait for our mistakes, but maybe the extra cutting edge by the likes of Salah or Coutinho playing himself back into form will be enough to break through and thus discourage other teams from using a similar strategy against us. But if not, then it's probably time to rethink some things.
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@rurikbird
I'm not as convinced as you that the way in which these games are unfolding are entirely by Klopp's design. I don't remember Klopp's Dortmund team playing death by possession football - it certainly can't be described as "heavy metal".
The first half of last season demonstrated to most teams in the Premiership that they will get battered if they come out and play against us. And so teams began to sit deep, compressing space and it yielded results.
The opposition do come out against us but usually as we have run out of ideas and / or our heads have dropped. And this is a crucial time of the game that we continually fail in - we need to be able to manage games better and go for the full 90mins. If you're going to go all out attack and make teams fear you, you can't continually go to pieces, which is what we do.
We have a serious personnel problem at the heart of our midfield and defence. Maybe Keita and VDV would've resolved it... maybe not.
* As for Barca, I'm not so sure that's entirely by design either. It's true that after Pep left the managers that followed moved way from tiki-taka and instead used the attacking threat of Messi, Neymar and Suarez who could counter very effectively along with Rakitic. But with Xavi gone and Iniesta fading, it's not entirely by choice. I've watched a number of their games in which it's obvious that they want possession but struggle to get it - that's where having a brilliant, clinical attacking force fixes most problems.
I'm not as convinced as you that the way in which these games are unfolding are entirely by Klopp's design. I don't remember Klopp's Dortmund team playing death by possession football - it certainly can't be described as "heavy metal".
The first half of last season demonstrated to most teams in the Premiership that they will get battered if they come out and play against us. And so teams began to sit deep, compressing space and it yielded results.
The opposition do come out against us but usually as we have run out of ideas and / or our heads have dropped. And this is a crucial time of the game that we continually fail in - we need to be able to manage games better and go for the full 90mins. If you're going to go all out attack and make teams fear you, you can't continually go to pieces, which is what we do.
We have a serious personnel problem at the heart of our midfield and defence. Maybe Keita and VDV would've resolved it... maybe not.
* As for Barca, I'm not so sure that's entirely by design either. It's true that after Pep left the managers that followed moved way from tiki-taka and instead used the attacking threat of Messi, Neymar and Suarez who could counter very effectively along with Rakitic. But with Xavi gone and Iniesta fading, it's not entirely by choice. I've watched a number of their games in which it's obvious that they want possession but struggle to get it - that's where having a brilliant, clinical attacking force fixes most problems.
Just because I know fuck all about the lad and because being stuck out in Asia I couldn't watch it....
How did Grujic get on?? Is he any good??
How did Grujic get on?? Is he any good??
Exactly this.
That game frustrated me - though I saw some things I really liked.
The Sack Klopp thread depresses me - though there's some (obviously) valid criticism).
At least the Stars & Rangers won last night after a quite shit 10 day period for the teams I like.
The Sack Klopp thread depresses me - though there's some (obviously) valid criticism).
At least the Stars & Rangers won last night after a quite shit 10 day period for the teams I like.
I never said Klopp does this by design. I think he was surprised at how many teams in England are willing to "park the bus" compared to teams in Germany – the question is how to solve it? One way is becoming better and more clinical at possession game, so teams feel like they will be punished for playing this way against us, another way is to refuse the offer of the "clinch" and force the opponent to play transition game by taking more risks in attack, playing "vertically" with more long balls, attacking in small numbers etc. So far the former strategy hasn't worked due to a combination of poor finishing and slack defense; if things don't improve quickly I think Klopp should try the latter.
Another thing that would really help is not being shit on set pieces (both in defense and attack) – if we turned our consistently superior number of corners and free-kicks into a consistently higher number of quality chances and goals, this would ease the burden on breaking through a tight defense considerably.
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One last thing before I go to sleep – one positive I took from the Leicester game was the performance of Grujic, not just the individual performance, but also the tactical idea he was implementing, constantly bombing forward from midfield and appearing everywhere in attack, while Coutinho dropped deep to start passing moves. In some other games this season Emre Can did the same thing. I think this is a nice idea by Klopp and a bit of a development compared to last season – having a tall, physical player up front (who also has a bit of flair and ability to score) creates problems for defenders. Mourinho does something similar with Fellaini at United. This is a promising way to bring more variety to our attack without changing the basic system.
That's a really good point about set pieces as it's often pointed out how bad we are at defending them but the fact that we are desperately poor when it comes to the delivery of corners and free kicks as well as posing any sort of a threat when the ball does get into the box is just as relevant.
The problems stems from us not having many tall players in the team or squad and the ones that are tall ( centre backs like most teams) aren't particularly good at challenging and winning headers. The key thing for me is that far too often we don't even challenge for the ball with any sort of belief and just challenging even if you don't win the ball can be enough to put the opposition player off.
I've no idea if we work on set pieces in training but i have to assume that we do because if we didn't that would be madness. I don't think that Klopp is mad enough to ignore working on set pieces but whatever he's doing is having little effect.
How do you mend a broken heart?
Thought he was excellent in the first half, and deserves more chances in the first team. Controlled the midfield and bombed forward at every opportunity.
Used his size and strength well and set up several attacks.
Like the rest of the team his performance dropped in the second half, but there were loads of positives from him.
I actually kinda like it. I'm not really into fps games so the fact it's easier than most to get to grips with is cool with me. It's a bit repetitive though.
Still, I used to pay £5 for a magazine with demos on it FFS, so £4 for a game, even a poor one, is a bit ridiculous. Took my mind of the match anyway!
Haha - Great book - Even better film. If you're implying I'm crazy or even worse - I'm like nurse Ratchett. You are quite right. That doesn't change the fact you are still a massive bellend though. 🙂
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That's Lukaku isn't it?
Racist
Embrace that expectation, then. Stop fighting it.
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