The Bigfooty Liverpool Army

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austinnn

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Sounds silly but City are a team like us and Arsenal, open play, play to win, creative, positive. You're always half a chance against a team like that, and it takes balls to play that way and have confidence in your ability. Wenger has played that for years, gotta admire that. Sadly he's become an ideologue who can't move with the times. But we've had great games against AFC for years now. Always a chance against Arsenal. That open play hasn't always been our ethos lately. Rodgers started us on that path and nearly won a prem, but his man management and poor LFC transfers did for him. Pep and Klopp clearly have it, and it's great to see both teams play each other. I don't know about Conte and Poch as I haven't seen enough of them but José, no way.

Anyway it's teams like Man U who play negative footy that scare me more that artisan teams like City and Arsenal. Just as Fergie was always the toughest nut to crack.

But we're better equipped than ever and if we can get a strong authoritative keeper in and Robbo keeps on his path, we should be fine.

RB has Clyne and Alexander-Arnold, plus Gomez for cover.

CB has Virgil, Matip, RK, Lovren, Gomez.

LB has Robbo, Morono, plus Gomez and Milner for cover

(Poor Joe Gomez, he's needed everywhere!)

But two of the flakiest keepers in the league behind them.

Time to see what Danny Ward can do. And break a keeper transfer record to get our spine in order. The last piece of the puzzle? That and making sure Salah and Firmino don't follow Steve, Michael, Xabi, Alvaro, Javier, Luis and Philippe!

(In before Barcelona offers Liverpool £50 for Andrew Robertson!)
 

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craigos

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What an epic match. After watching the Victory game at AAMI park and then avoiding results to watch this merely an hour ago it was an insane weekend of football. Watching the game I was pretty critical of Can, he chased hard but dweller on the ball a lot but then hearing he wasn't well am happy to cut him some slack. Was actually one of the few times I have seen him impart his physicality without giving away free kicks 50% of the time.

Also, I remember (probs mentioned here a few times before) when Firmino was too easy to move off the ball and the talk was that he wasn't going to be physical enough for English football, now he would have to be one of our most physical players (physical isn't giving away free kicks imo), physical in he knows how to walk the line of free kick/good challenge better than anyone in our squad.

Klopp mentioned in his post match that you can't sit back against City and hope to win (not exactly verbatim) but if we are ever to win the league we need to be able to flip the switch and realise if you have a goal or more advantage in the last 10 minutes that if you counter attack that you have to be able to get back. We weren't playing Stoke where a Crouch or the likes is going to out jump you in the box. Obviously a low ball across the box is a different story but our inability to hold back is concerning. City are a brilliant team and it'd be hard to stop them regardless but we do the same against lesser teams when in the same position.
 
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Matip's effort was heartless but you've also given Lovren an absolute free ride here. It was reckless to go in on Aguero here - look at the moment the first pass in the 1-2 was played.
View attachment 451217

Lovren is way too far away to affect the pass from getting back to Gundogan. We're not talking any old gronks here, this is the best passing team in the league, so it's gonna be an instant flick on from Aguero. If Lovren remains in his position he would be in the way of both the running Gundogan and the turning Aguero, no matter which way they play that move. It was reckless.
Gotta love the internet for this stuff. But I guess i have to pull out the screengrabs too now...

...OK. You say "If Lovren remains in his position he would be in the way of both the running Gundogan and the turning Aguero". That's two on one. i.e. If he remains in position he will be passed around easily and instead would likely have to guess at where the ball was going and dive in, hoping he guessed right. Which is what he did, but in the earlier phase - outside the penalty box (better). If he doesn't apply pressure, what you said is what happens:
if Gundogan raises his head a moment he would have been able to tee up Silva for a tap in.
What's more, the fact it looked like, as you said an "elementary one-two passing move" is because Ilkay plays the ball slowly to Aguero (which essentially guarantees you're going to get it back, because Kun can't easily turn with the pace of ball). Because it's played slowly, Lovren actually does get close to cutting it off, despite what your screengrab showed. I see your Exhibit A ( View attachment 451217 ) and raise it with my Exhibit B (he's under a foot away):

Lovwrong.jpg


I did not give Lovren "an absolute free ride", but I do analyse things from how they are and all possible explanations, rather than basing it on reputation. I like Matip, he was in my top 3 of last season, but that piece of play was bad by him. I liked the Milner signing - he was very handy and under-used at City - but he starts off the problem. He let Gundogan run at them. He made two good tackles, but the 2nd one kicked the ball straight to City and when he rushed in for a big third tackle, Ilkay tapped the ball around him. Then Gini doesn't come across to help, and is easily passed by the play (including by Milner who is trying to make up for it). But Matip (moving himself outside the penalty box, like Lovren did) plants his feet and fails to take Gundogan out. He then just watches. The whole time. Crazy bad.
At any rate it shows that both of them are easily sucked in up the pitch.

Their third was basically the result of Lovren getting sucked up the pitch by Sane for no good reason
Again. "For no good reason"? Even if you don't like what he did (understandable), it's very obvious what the reason is: Sane is very dangerous. He'd already scored. Early in the play Sane runs from the right directly into the space between the CBs. KDB doesn't play the ball off the back of that run, and Robertson correctly passes Sane on to Lovren. Then Sane runs back the way he came as Robertson is caught trying to cover the right-wing space. So Lovren is on him. Robertson continues to cover Silva and the space, and just as Sane starts to dribble back around, Milner is both running the wrong way and is distracted. Exhibit C:

Milno.jpg


Milner glances at where Matip is and in this first frame is just starting to turn his head back to Sane. Eyes off the ball and the man. Lovren decides at that point that he won't let Sane turn and he is rushing forward as Milner is just starting to change direction in the second frame. Lovren tries to take him out. The problem is he fails to get the man well enough. That's bad for sure, and Lovren has done this with mixed results many times, but Klopp does want there to be a press. Wouldn't a DM be reducing the need for Lovren to do this? Covering better where Gini and Milner weren' quite on it? But you're saying it's a reason not to have a better DM? There would've been fume is Lovren just let him run off, don't you reckon?

EDIT: Hope that made sense, I did get pretty bored of it half way through.
 
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jod23

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we only have Man Utd and Che as the big teams we have to play away now. We also play Spurs at home who we should beat at Anfield.

if we miss out on top 3 and direct qualification for the CL from here I'll be bitterly disappointed.
I wouldn't be bitterly disappointed. You act like we are in a real position of strength when really it's very tight between us, Chelsea, United and Spurs.

We've just lost Cout too and it doesn't look like we are replacing him. Plenty of work to be done to finish top 4 just yet.
 
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