There is a thread asking what a good outcome is from the game in your eyes, but how said result comes round is a different question entirely - you can win/lose by a significant margin with wholly different approaches. It can be that you've gone for the game and been picked off or outright defeated, or, it could be a case of an entrenched affair where a scoreline has been kept down as low as was possible. Equally, in winning, there can be all-out assaults that lead to big results, or cagey affairs where everything goes in and gives a somewhat flattering scoreline that doesn't tell the full story of the game.
Ten Hag is under a really massive amount of pressure now, with the murmurs of his successor increasing by the day. In the predicament he/we are in, what approach to this game is actually satisfactory to you before a ball is kicked? Is it an exercise in damage limitation? - a "dignified" loss by respectable scoreline after playing a sensible system and line up? A game you want to see us evoke the spirit of the 80's in (in that decade, we were always the underdog but were nightmarishly difficult for Liverpool home or away because of pride and the ability to treat these games as one off events, removed from anything else going on in a given season) warlike aggression and obstinance? A game you'd like to see us be as cagey/cunning as we can be?
It's easy to slam and critique after the fact, but if we've gone out and executed your personal vision of the game, will you be as unrelenting in your assessment? Another question is whether this game is solely about the outcome for you, and not how we got there in the end?
If we play an actual midfield, keep it tight and try and contest the game in a functional manner, I'll be more assuaged than if we persist with nonsense, despite the two methods possibly leading to the same result regardless. Those kind of optics are dreadfully important to me in this game... the result itself, not as much, so long as we don't get pasted.
How does your line of thinking go?
Ten Hag is under a really massive amount of pressure now, with the murmurs of his successor increasing by the day. In the predicament he/we are in, what approach to this game is actually satisfactory to you before a ball is kicked? Is it an exercise in damage limitation? - a "dignified" loss by respectable scoreline after playing a sensible system and line up? A game you want to see us evoke the spirit of the 80's in (in that decade, we were always the underdog but were nightmarishly difficult for Liverpool home or away because of pride and the ability to treat these games as one off events, removed from anything else going on in a given season) warlike aggression and obstinance? A game you'd like to see us be as cagey/cunning as we can be?
It's easy to slam and critique after the fact, but if we've gone out and executed your personal vision of the game, will you be as unrelenting in your assessment? Another question is whether this game is solely about the outcome for you, and not how we got there in the end?
If we play an actual midfield, keep it tight and try and contest the game in a functional manner, I'll be more assuaged than if we persist with nonsense, despite the two methods possibly leading to the same result regardless. Those kind of optics are dreadfully important to me in this game... the result itself, not as much, so long as we don't get pasted.
How does your line of thinking go?
