Walcott's goal

[Modo]

So this is frame I captured just before the pass from Iwobe, I believe, to Walcott who's completely open on the left.

Before that, Lallana had lost the ball to Coquelin.
Moreno (circled) was wrong to move up the pitch so fast.

But look at the guy waving his hand, Henderson. Had Klavan moved up with the rest of the defenders Walcott would have been offside.

I can't solely blame Moreno for the goal, his positioning was poor, but other circumstances also caused the goal.

 

[The Nomad]

Moreno was at fault, he didn't ensure that either Klavan, Henderson or Wjinaldum had picked up Walcott.

Lovern was attracted to the ball and should have been goal side to Sanchez, while Henderson had no business being there. Klavan spotted the danger and was goal side as the situation demanded at that time. You can't play offside with an opposition player in a strikers position, with the ball no more than 30 yards to goal. The one player 100% NOT in the wrong here is Klavan

All in all a calamity goal, but for me 90% of the blame goes to the one circled.

 

[Modo]

Moreno was at fault, he didn't ensure that either Klavan, Henderson or Wjinaldum had picked up Walcott.

Lovern was attracted to the ball and should have been goal side to Sanchez, while Henderson had no business being there. Klavan spotted the danger and was goal side as the situation demanded at that time. You can't play offside with an opposition player in a strikers position, with the ball no more than 30 yards to goal. The one player 100% NOT in the wrong here is Klavan

All in all a calamity goal, but for me 90% of the blame goes to the one circled.

I missed the Henderson bit, you're right he shouldn't have been there.

 

[mark1975]

If Henderson's starting position was central, then he was right to track Sanchez because he was making the diagonal run for the ball to be slipped through between Clyne and Lovren. If Henderson doesn't track that then Sanchez is in - you can't always be aware when coming from a midfield position about where everyone is, you see a player timing his run and you track him. If he hadn't tracked him and that ball was played through, then Henderson is to blame. Lovren went out to close the play.

The other way of looking at that is that Lovren stepped out, as had Clyne (who had come tight to close the play), while Klavan stayed deep, with Moreno already pushed up. Klavan's starting position is already deep, it's not like you can tell from a picture that Henderson's hand going up signifies that Klavan has been duped into dropping deep and tracking the player instead of stepping up - the photo is from the moment the ball is about to be played, so even stepping up at this point isn't going to put Walcott offside.

Either way, Moreno has been guilty of being positionally naive too many times to be given the benefit of the doubt, while cohesion is well lost on our defense and has been for ages, so it'll take time for them to get playing as a unit.

 

[binomial]

As a unit we're just a very very disorganised side.

First mistake was losing possession in our own half and from there 2 passes is all it took for walcott to find himself in 80 yards of space and get a shot away.

We need a proper DM and a LB otherwise we're going no where fast.

 

[Mystic]

The fault lies with Lallana and Klavan for me, you just can't give the ball away so cheaply inside your own half, but at the same time we should be able to deal with mistakes being made, we should never have just a single point of failure, this eventuality should have been covered, and for me the bad line and Klavan are more at fault than Moreno is. I know it's easy to blame Moreno here, but he's clearly been told to get up the pitch as soon as possible when we turn over possession, he's instrumental in our ability to rapidly counter, you'd all be bemoaning our lethargic ability to break on opponents if he wasn't doing what he did. I remember many people complaining about that under Rodgers, so it's either one way or the other, personally I prefer it this way. So whilst scapegoating Moreno is easy, it's wrong, if Lallana had be more careful, or if the defence pushed up as a unit and Klavan didn't get dragged five yards deeper than he should have been, that goal would have never happened.

 

[Mystic]

Just look at the pictures, Klavan goes far far too deep.

 

[The Nomad]

Looking at that, you could say that Klavan should have gone left, and Henderson should have picked up the spare man. Either way Moreno didn't do his job properly for me.

 

[Frogfish]

The fault lies with Lallana and Klavan for me, you just can't give the ball away so cheaply inside your own half, but at the same time we should be able to deal with mistakes being made, we should never have just a single point of failure, this eventuality should have been covered, and for me the bad line and Klavan are more at fault than Moreno is. I know it's easy to blame Moreno here, but he's clearly been told to get up the pitch as soon as possible when we turn over possession, he's instrumental in our ability to rapidly counter, you'd all be bemoaning our lethargic ability to break on opponents if he wasn't doing what he did. I remember many people complaining about that under Rodgers, so it's either one way or the other, personally I prefer it this way. So whilst scapegoating Moreno is easy, it's wrong, if Lallana had be more careful, or if the defence pushed up as a unit and Klavan didn't get dragged five yards deeper than he should have been, that goal would have never happened.

Sorry but everyone; Souness, Henry, Redknapp, all the media etc. etc. are blaming Moreno (and 90% of 6CM - and we are the acknowledged experts after all), they can't all be wrong. Moreno should never had run past the ball, we had 3 attackers higher up and the ball was on the far side of the pitch. I was wrong when I said he got back to within 5 yds, he was only 1 yd from making a tackle, staying just that tad deeper wouldn't have been an issue at either end. He was too headstrong.

 

[Tinto]

Our counter attack got countered. It was actually a good bit of play by Arsenal.

Lallana lost it too cheaply and I don't really have a problem with Moreno being ahead of the ball in this instance.

If we were building an attack from the back then yeah, you don't want him there. In a counter attack you want players making forward runs as soon as they can to make the most out of the opponents being committed forward and out of position.

 

[bonitoflakes]

The analyses so far are flawed / incomplete because they keep starting from Lallana's possession loss. It's useful (to me) to look at the sequence before that (even the last clip is incomplete - roll it back a second or two more).


-- Arsenal attacks down the right with (I think) Bellerin, Walcott ahead of him marked by Klavan, Lovren is watching Sanchez. Ramsey is accelerating down the middle and Henderson does a great job tracking his run and cutting off the inside lane.

-- Bellerin's pass forward to Walcott is blocked by Moreno - this creates the turnover in our favour. +1 to Moreno there. Meanwhile, Henderson's run had taken him deep into the box and he's slow coming out.

-- Lallana has the ball. Now you should be getting a reset of your defensive setup while we look to push up. Henderson is late in his recovery because of the run he'd had to make to catch Ramsey.

-- Lallana loses the ball. Iwobi gets the ball and has lots of space to make a run or pass. Which of course, he accepts and goes on to do just that. That's the biggest problem right there. Henderson should be in the middle of the park to deny Iwobi the inside space or pass but he's still recovering from tracking Ramsey's run.

-- At the same time, Clyne should be sharpish in pressing up quickly to close the gap to Iwobi the moment Lallana got pressed, as Iwobi gets the ball with his back to Clyne and is a perfect target for a press. If you want to see that press executed right - watch the first half again and see how Lallana sprinted forward and pressed Eleny twice in his half within a space of I think 10 minutes.

-- Anyway, from then on, you have the other stuff discussed above. The whole situation was not down to one guy or another. It was a team defensive failure because Clyne, Henderson, Moreno, Klavan, Lovren - all of them had a role to play. You could argue that Henderson was the biggest culprit because he left the space there in the first place, but then, considering that he'd made the sprint to track Ramsey earlier and denied a big danger and was still recovering from it, I think it's perhaps harsh to be over-critical there.

TV pundits don't have time to go through all that.

 

[Modo]

Sorry but everyone; Souness, Henry, Redknapp, all the media etc. etc. are blaming Moreno (and 90% of 6CM - and we are the acknowledged experts after all), they can't all be wrong. Moreno should never had run past the ball, we had 3 attackers higher up and the ball was on the far side of the pitch. I was wrong when I said he got back to within 5 yds, he was only 1 yd from making a tackle, staying just that tad deeper wouldn't have been an issue at either end. He was too headstrong.

I wouldn't be using the "journos" as a reference here they're just expanding on Neville and Carra's criticism.
It's like when the media started jumping on Skrtel because he held a few players in the box.

 

[Mystic]

Sorry but everyone; Souness, Henry, Redknapp, all the media etc. etc. are blaming Moreno (and 90% of 6CM - and we are the acknowledged experts after all), they can't all be wrong. Moreno should never had run past the ball, we had 3 attackers higher up and the ball was on the far side of the pitch. I was wrong when I said he got back to within 5 yds, he was only 1 yd from making a tackle, staying just that tad deeper wouldn't have been an issue at either end. He was too headstrong.

Of course they did, it was the easy scapegoat, but it was the wrong scapegoat, Lallana and Klavan are the culprits here, Moreno was doing his job. As Tinto points out it was actually great play by Coq and Arsenal, they did a Klopp on us, and it took a very tidy finish from Walcott for them to score, still a poor goal to score, but to blame Moreno misses the real issue.

 

[peekay]

Of course they did, it was the easy scapegoat, but it was the wrong scapegoat, Lallana and Klavan are the culprits here, Moreno was doing his job. As Tinto points out it was actually great play by Coq and Arsenal, they did a Klopp on us, and it took a very tidy finish from Walcott for them to score, still a poor goal to score, but to blame Moreno misses the real issue.

Exactly, harsh to blame Moreno for the Arsenal goal. As soon as Arsenal lost the ball, he jet heeled up the field on instructions. Lallana should have protected the ball better and our defenders should have been better positioned.

 

[mark1975]

At the end of the day, Lallana is unlikely to do that week in, week out. It happens. We can't really say that of Moreno. If he's been made a bit of a scapegoat over this, it's a culmination of mistakes over the last two seasons and him starting the season where he left off. Gives away a penalty and then he's at least partly at fault for the subsequent goal. He'd already fucked up before the penalty and was in no mans land for one of their attacks.

The bigger problem here is being missed really, we can analyse the goal and surmise it was poor team play, but 9 times out of 10 most of those players will do their jobs much better, you can't really say that about Moreno.

 

[peekay]

At the end of the day, Lallana is unlikely to do that week in, week out. It happens. We can't really say that of Moreno. If he's been made a bit of a scapegoat over this, it's a culmination of mistakes over the last two seasons and him starting the season where he left off. Gives away a penalty and then he's at least partly at fault for the subsequent goal. He'd already fucked up before the penalty and was in no mans land for one of their attacks.

The bigger problem here is being missed really, we can analyse the goal and surmise it was poor team play, but 9 times out of 10 most of those players will do their jobs much better, you can't really say that about Moreno.

Mark, there is absolutely no doubt that Moreno's mistakes and brainfarts have cost us a lot and he has very little credit in the bank. And he deserves a lot of criticism for those mistakes. But I think for the Walcott goal his positioning was because of instruction from Klopp to break free at the first available opportunity. Plenty of reasons to criticism him but this particular instance is harsh.

 

[mark1975]

Mark, there is absolutely no doubt that Moreno's mistakes and brainfarts have cost us a lot and he has very little credit in the bank. And he deserves a lot of criticism for those mistakes. But I think for the Walcott goal his positioning was because of instruction from Klopp to break free at the first available opportunity. Plenty of reasons to criticism him but this particular instance is harsh.

That was more or less my point though. If he's not being given the benefit of the doubt over this one, there's a reason why. It's not really cut and dried either way how at fault he was, it's a combination of alot of factors, but like I say, when it comes down to it you have to just look at consistency. We could rip into Clyne over their second goal, but what would be the point? It's not something you're likely to see happen a week later.

 

[rurikbird]

Not sure Klavan was wrong to track the runner – the ball could have been passed at any moment and had if he tried to play the offside trap, if the pass was timed right Ramsey would have been clean 1 on 1. You can't really see it in this video, but on TV it seemed to me that Wijnaldum could have put more pressure on Iwobi, but was too slow to go back from attack to defense. Only Klopp knows if Moreno was following his instructions to run forward as fast as he can for the counter or not.

For sure Lallana has to be much more careful not to get dispossessed here; it's very hard to defend a counter-counter-attack.

 

[Fallon]

I could understand a misguided defence (I maintain he was out of position by a mile. We hadn't had the ball 10 seconds, no way he's asked to get that far up that quick, he fucked up) for a well liked player, or one who has put shifts in time and again even if they aren't amazing, but just why are a couple so ready to defend this clown?

I've seen the lad try 5 tackles in the last season/preseason which are closer to Cantona's karate kick than a challenge a professional should be making. He's given away 4 penalties that I can think of, and for all of the talk of his pace as an outlet I rarely see him effectively support the attack. If all we want is somebody who can run quickly to a wide left position and then play 19/20 balls straight back to the player it just came from, then year we're set, otherwise we need to go buy a bloody LB.

 

[mark1975]

That tackle he does where he launches his whole body into the air and then throws a leg out hoping it gets the ball, it's one of the most ridiculous things I've seen at this level.

 

[Frogfish]

I wouldn't be using the "journos" as a reference here they're just expanding on Neville and Carra's criticism.
It's like when the media started jumping on Skrtel because he held a few players in the box.

Neville and Carra are the media.

 

[Frogfish]

Mark, there is absolutely no doubt that Moreno's mistakes and brainfarts have cost us a lot and he has very little credit in the bank. And he deserves a lot of criticism for those mistakes. But I think for the Walcott goal his positioning was because of instruction from Klopp to break free at the first available opportunity. Plenty of reasons to criticism him but this particular instance is harsh.

Well that is naturally just speculation, as is the counter argument that he bombed on unnecessarily. Or maybe he was instructed to move forward .. but maybe not to the extent he went beyond the ball. All speculation. What isn't is that had he been 2 yds further back he'd have got a tackle in on Walcott and that we had 3 forwards ahead of Lallana, including Coutinho nominally playing on the left.

 

[Frogfish]

That tackle he does where he launches his whole body into the air and then throws a leg out hoping it gets the ball, it's one of the most ridiculous things I've seen at this level.

And will end up in broken legs and red cards sooner or later.

 

[jimmy]

Moreno probably has a share of the blame for that goal.
But for me Lallana's share of the blame is much larger. He lost the ball carelessly.
I don't expect Moreno to be in his defensive position while we break and have the ball close to the halfway line.

 

[mark1975]

Moreno probably has a share of the blame for that goal.
But for me Lallana's share of the blame is much larger. He lost the ball carelessly.
I don't expect Moreno to be in his defensive position while we break and have the ball close to the halfway line.

But to come full circle that, if Moreno is excused for being out of position when we lose the ball close to the halfway line, then what's the rest of the team's excuse? And why does Lallana get a large share of the blame when the opposition should theoretically still have it all to do from that position? We were looking at the oncoming play after recovering from the previous attack. A couple of players were caught on the back foot, but not all of them, we were still just starting to push the defensive line back out, so we have a bank of four defenders plus Wijnaldum and Henderson. That's six players dealing with what essentially became: Ball won back>ball played to Walcott>Ball in the back of the net.

It was a defensive mess. It's not like Lallana lost the ball and let a player go clean through. The player who won the ball back had players infront of him to overcome, yet his pass picked out the one player who wasn't marked, and the person that should have been marking him was Moreno. You could argue that Lallana was going to the right side of the pitch, so Clyne should have been the one supporting, but he held his position. Moreno is essentially on Lallana's blindside during that turn, but is already too advanced.

 

[jimmy]

We can agree to disagree ;-)

I see your point. I'm not saying that it's only Lallana who is at fault. There obviously were some others (as you mentioned).
All I'm saying is that while Moreno is the main culprit for too many defensive errors, and may well need replacing, I don't think it's fair to lay the main part of the blame on him in this specific case.

 

[mark1975]

We can agree to disagree ;-)

I see your point. I'm not saying that it's only Lallana who is at fault. There obviously were some others (as you mentioned).
All I'm saying is that while Moreno is the main culprit for too many defensive errors, and may well need replacing, I don't think it's fair to lay the main part of the blame on him in this specific case.

Yup, like I said earlier, I do think it was a culmination of alot of things. General criticism, the penalty and the form he had showed through most of the first half.

FWIW, I like Carragher but I completely disagree with how outspoken some of our ex-players are about Moreno. Maybe it's just me, but it's not something I like to see. I don't think the lad has a bad attitude or anything, he might not seem particularly bright, but he's doesn't deserve what's bordering on abuse.