Liverpool Football Club Thread

[Chewylegs]

Fabs not at the races at all. So slow to react to things.  Shoddy defending but Mount did well.

[gospvg]

Poor at the back and up front we are passing too much. Hope we are still in the game when Jota comes on.

[Adrock]

I don't think you can blame the defender for Mount's goal, he beat Fabinho for pace. It was just a very good goal.

 

There isn't any energy in the team at all. Plenty of tidy football but it isn't creating anything, story of the season. Chuck Jota on.

[glb]

Good goal and no less than Chelsea deserve. Liverpool have been poor. Five defeats at home in a row would be pathetic but more than likely at the minute.

 

Despite a brief glimmer of hope with results elsewhere, even top four looks like utter fantasy.

[CheekyLee]

Fabinho not up to speed, unsurprisingly. But Firmino doesn't even appear to be on the field. Has he even had a touch? 

 

We've hardly been outplayed, we've simply not done enough with our possession. Too many long balls straight to Mendy. Too many short passes to the nearest blue shirt. Their goal was very well taken, but it came from a long and hopeful punt. 

 

Jota on ASAP, get some forward motion into the team.

[Chewylegs]

4 minutes ago, Adrock said:

I don't think you can blame the defender for Mount's goal, he beat Fabinho for pace. It was just a very good goal.

 

There isn't any energy in the team at all. Plenty of tidy football but it isn't creating anything, story of the season. Chuck Jota on.

You can. Both Fabinho and TAA were poor at closing that down.  You'd expect them to be closer.  Well taken goal though.

[Azrael]

Get Jota and Shaq on. 

[glb]

 at that Expedia/Liverpool advert.

 

Do they do day trips to Burnley?

[Chewylegs]

8 minutes ago, CheekyLee said:

But Firmino doesn't even appear to be on the field. Has he even had a touch? 

Yup. He started the Chelsea goal with a really shit pass.

 

[Azrael]

The fuck are Salah and Jones coming off before Firmino? 

[Gabe]

We could be 9th if Tottenham and Villa win their games in hand. Awful title defence and the record books won't state "but they had so many injuries!" Maybe we'll fluke the Champions League instead 

 

Just for the lols I'd like to see West Ham get top-4 now.

[Chewylegs]

4 minutes ago, Azrael said:

The fuck are Salah and Jones coming off before Firmino? 

Weird one that.

[ryodi]

 

[Gabe]

Yeah, it's a shocking statistic. Before this game I thought 4th would be a real struggle, but a win would at least put it back in our hands, but now I think we're done with the games still to play. Every fixture doesn't even look like a banana-skin, more a 'let's hope we can at least get a point' right now. Even Fulham at the weekend looks a bit dodgy given how they played us off the park before Christmas - and we've got worse since then!

[Azrael]

And it's five!

 

 

... home defeats in a row. 

[glb]

Very interested to hear what Klopp has to say after that. Shocking performance.

[gospvg]

The squad is just devoid of any creativity or pace when attacking. Hopefully Jota will start the next game, we have 2 central defenders. Thiago can sit out and Fabinho can play in DM.

[Adrock]

Horrendous. I've come to the conclusion Jones and Thiago can not start in the same midfield, both don't have the driving energy and momentum of the others and Wijnaldum can not be expected to do that as well as screen the defence.

[glb]

1 minute ago, Adrock said:

Horrendous. I've come to the conclusion Jones and Thiago can not start in the same midfield, both don't have the driving energy and momentum of the others and Wijnaldum can not be expected to do that as well as screen the defence.

At the minute Thiago is the player to drop. He’s sitting too deep for his passing range to be effective, and in all honesty doesn’t look up to the pace of the league, even when the pace is less than its usual intensity.

 

Just hope Fabinho plays in midfield on Sunday. There’s zero protection for the back four at the minute. At least him in the ‘6’ role means Jones (or Thiago) can play within the same postcode as the opposition goal.

[Azrael]

At least without European football next season  we can concentrate on the league 

[Adrock]

For Sunday they should try to freshen it up, play Fabinho, Keita and Jones in the middle. Give Wijnaldum the rest he deserves and then hope Nat Phillips is back, he was injured got tonight wasn't he?

[Loik V credern]

Liverpool currently on 5 points less than at the same point in Rodgers' pretty disastrous second season. That one where Suarez had left, Sturridge was injured for most of it, Balotelli got 1 league goal. 

 

Salah, Mane, Firmino still have a combined 30 league goals this season. Liverpool have been weird the last few years. Or maybe football is getter weirder. It seems like there's more extremes in terms of goal hammerings and either winning runs or losses teams can't get out of. I remember in the 00s the United 7-1 of Roma was a big deal, like the most exciting thing. 

 

Pundits will point to the pandemic but extreme results occurred before that, like the 9-0, like Brazil Germany, many Bayern games. Momentum seems to mean more than it should. 

[glb]

1 minute ago, Azrael said:

At least without European football next season  we can concentrate on the league 

 

 

Joking aside, and assuming such a finish doesn’t lead to mass departures and bugger up any transfer incomings*, not being in Europe at all might be a benefit just in terms of the schedule.
 

*it probably would.

 

2 minutes ago, Adrock said:

For Sunday they should try to freshen it up, play Fabinho, Keita and Jones in the middle. Give Wijnaldum the rest he deserves and then hope Nat Phillips is back, he was injured got tonight wasn't he?

 

Absolutely start Keita. Need to get a game or two out of him before his groin goes again.

[Gabe]

26 minutes ago, Loik V credern said:

Liverpool currently on 5 points less than at the same point in Rodgers' pretty disastrous second season. That one where Suarez had left, Sturridge was injured for most of it, Balotelli got 1 league goal.

Too many players this season have been off the boil at the same time. Last season Mane was picking up a hell of a lot of the slack when Salah and Firmino weren't clicking; the season before that Salah was obviously scoring gangbusters. This season, Jota had started to provide important goals and take on that kind of role, but when he got injured we had no backup to help (Origi is an answer to a question nobody would ever ask). Even though Salah's scored well, he's been awfully patchy and absent in a lot of games.

 

I have also questioned Klopp's plan B - in that we don't have one (which is very much a problem we had under Rodgers too when Suarez wasn't scoring). That's partly a recruitment issue (we haven't had quality backup forward players at all in Klopp's reign until Jota) and partly tactical - other teams have completely shut-down TAA and Robinson down the flanks.

 

As much as the ridiculous injury list has hurt the team (and it has, in a number of ways), the coaching group has struggled this year to come up with a way to break down teams that are both happy to have men behind the ball but also press harder when we get into the final third - so you see loads of awful long straight balls down the middle or crosses into nobody. It's been grim watching for a little while now, in truth.

[ryodi]

The side has fallen off a cliff this season but I think when we look back at Klopp's Liverpool in a few years time it's going to be in awe that his sides pushed Pep's City side so close and managed to beat them to the title. Just compare the Liverpool bench to City's this week, no one can compete with that and they are going to win it by a mile this season. 

[glb]

Klopp looked dejected in the post-match. Weird answers too about Oxlaide-Chamberlain looking good in training, then conceding Keita coming on would have made more sense for footballing reasons.

 

Obviously so much else going on, and especially for him recently, but that’s the first time I’ve really started to doubt he’ll stay beyond this season. Hopefully a completely wrong kneejerk reaction, not least because he deserves to have his name sung to the rafters the next time Anfield is open, but something just feels completely off at the moment.

[Chewylegs]

Unfortunately with the injuries, we've had to rely on all the usual names being on form and playing as well as they did for the last two seasons....it hasn't happened.  In an ideal world, players like Firmino would have been dropped and Thiago wouldn't be playing every game....and we'd have a defence. 

 

Players out of form this season for whatever reason (covid, mental well-being, injuries etc)....TAA, Robertson, Mane, Firmino.  Add that to the injury list and things just don't look good at all.  Playing one or no centre backs for the majority of the campaign is fucking brutal. City found that out when Fernandinho had to play there for more than one or two games.  It's unsustainable.  It's destroyed our midfield as well as our defence, so it all honesty I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise to us that we aren't playing well.

 

I do have to have one moan though, why does Klopp persist with bringing Oxlade-Chamberlain on.  He looks truly awful everytime. I don't know whether he's finished since his last injury but I'd not be bothered if he left this summer.  I think if Gini leaves will be a bit screwed though

 

One big plus this season is Curtis Jones.  He's turning into a great player.

[Gabe]

I said a few weeks ago that I wonder if he would have the stomach for rebuilding a team (well, doing a lot of reconstructive work, at least) in the Summer, and that I could certainly understand if he wanted to go home (something he's always been up-front about doing at some point) - and that was when we were still in third in the table!

 

It's been a weird few months, for sure. I like to think he still has the hunger and desire to prove something next season, but I wonder a) how many of the current team will still be part of that project and b) can he motivate them to push on - can he instil the necessary hunger for title winners to go and want, nay, need to win it again, as Ferguson did so well down the M62?

 

As much as I totally disagree with Pockets' "they don't give a shit" in the main thread, I do think something in the coaching hasn't quite right for a little while now, and I feel like Klopp is as puzzled as the rest of us but doesn't have the ideas to change it at the moment (due to personnel available and the form of the players). The rest of this season should be quite exciting and a real battle for as high a finish as we can get, yet I'm just full of such apathy at the moment due to how the team are playing. It's quite sad really.

[Gabe]

3 minutes ago, Chewylegs said:

Thiago wouldn't be playing every game....and we'd have a defence.

I haven't watched too many of our games recently, but how has Thiago been, generally? I know he's playing too deep at the moment, but I haven't seen enough to form an opinion on him.

[Chewylegs]

He's been a 6-7.5/10 player. He never looks shit, sometimes he looks like he's trying too much and sometimes the game can pass him by. He is an excellent passer of the ball but I think with Henderson or Fabinho next to him he'd look better. 

 

Put it this way, I wouldn't be starting him every game if everyone was fit.