The 2024 Carabao Cup Final - Chelsea V Liverpool
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Can I just remind you that you're in a title race and this was a Chelsea side that finished 12th last season and is currently sat in 11th this season? It also doesn't matter how much their players cost if the price tags were vastly inflated when compared to their ability.
As for the points you've made:
Chelsea's side was younger, on average, both at kick-off and at full-time of extra-time.
They had eleven players aged younger than 25, compared to Liverpool's nine, and four players aged 25 or over, compared to Liverpool's eight. They also only had one fewer player aged 21 or under on the pitch at full time. I'll give you that McConnell, Clark and Danns are inexperienced, but Bradley (who was apparently "unknown 2 months ago") made his debut in 2021/22 (playing five times that season) and is in double figures for appearances this season, and Quansah has 20 appearances. They're not at the level of Palmer, Colwill, Madueke and Gusto, but similarly, those players aren't really at the level of Elliot, who's 100 appearances into his Liverpool career.
Of course if you don't count the oldest players of one team then their average age will decrease, however, in the interest of entertaining this ridiculous point, Liverpool's average age (discounting the oldest three) was only 0.2 years younger than Chelsea's at kick-off (which still includes all of their oldest players), and was only 0.28 years younger at full-time (or 0.85 if you discount Tsimikas as Robertson was off the pitch). For comparison, if you remove Chelsea's three oldest players as well, they're 1.13 years younger at kick off and the same average age at full-time; when you don't arbitrarily remove the oldest players from consideration, Chelsea's was 1.81 years younger at kick-off and 1.36 years younger at full-time. Even discounting your oldest players, bringing on the teenagers only brought the average of your side roughly in line with Chelsea's.
Who are your seven "genuine first team starters" there?
We'll ignore Endo and Gravenberch (who I'm assuming you're talking about with those spellings) as they started the match so weren't missing, and I'll accept Salah, Alexander-Arnold and Allison as "genuine first team starters", but are Jota and Nunez really guaranteed week-in, week-out over Diaz and Gakpo? Out of Szoboszlai, Thiago, and Jones, who is/are the guaranteed starter(s) over Mac Allister and Gravenberch (or indeed, Alexander-Arnold and that on-off experiment)? I'm assuming Matip isn't a starter over Konate.
By my count it's four "genuine first team starters" out of the starting line-up (Allison, Alexander-Arnold, Salah and one of the midfielders), which was basically three as it's pretty common for second-choice keepers to play the league cup final, which is hardly a mad line-up.
I understand your optimism regarding this Liverpool side post-Klopp (and time may prove you right, especially if you avoid hiring a Moyes-esque replacement), but many of us were similarly optimistic but it turned out that Rafael, Jones, Evans and Smalling weren't the future of our defense, Cleverley and Kagawa weren't the future of our midfield, and Welbeck wasn't the future of our attack, and Ferdinand, Vidic, Evra, Fletcher, Nani and van Persie were closer to the end of their careers than we thought. You may well find yourself looking back similarly at some of your current squad in 10 years time.
I wouldn't pay much attention to Chelsea fans being negative on a Chelsea forum.
Ferguson proved it wrong within a season of Hansen saying it. Like, what the feck are they even attempting here?
That Amazon thing is so obviously a wind up
The shocking underrating of Nunez and Jota on Redcafe is mind blowing. Alex99 asks "are Jota and Nunez really guaranteed week-in, week-out over Diaz and Gakpo?"
Narrator: "...."
Seriously, you lot will struggle to turn that magical "corner" at Utd until you start seeing the real world.
Narrator: "...."
Seriously, you lot will struggle to turn that magical "corner" at Utd until you start seeing the real world.
Jota is not a guaranteed first choice starter over Diaz imo. Questioning Nunez compared to Gakpo is certainly... a choice though.
I'll gladly read about average ages all night long, the only thing that matters is that we won the damn thing.
Jota uninjured will put up numbers, specially goals, that Diaz can't dream of. I know Diaz is great too but goals win leagues.
But that's the thing, he always has something. It's why Thiago can't qualify either as a first team starter, and why it's laughable that someone would include permanently injured Reece James as an important absentee.
You can't use injury to judge the quality of a player. Reece, Thiago and Jota's quality makes them first team players regardless which was being discussed here I believe.
Well he is an important absentee. It’s ridiculous that anyone would make the argument that he isn’t. He’s the best player in the team. Him being out for months doesn’t diminish the impact his absence has.
Might've been worded too strongly. But the best ability is availability and James doesn't have a ton of that, neither do the likes of Jota and Thiago, which - irrespective of how good they are when fit - can be very frustrating at times to the point you even forget that they play for you, in case of Thiago.
Some Utd fans laughed when Dumbstar mentioned Thiago as part of our starting midfield, and I agreed with them.
I hear your bro but you can still count them as important absentees though. Yeah he’s a crock but if he was available, his impact for us would have been huge. Jota is absolutely a huge miss. He’s arguably the best finisher in your team. I definitely saw it as a big advantage for us that he wasn’t available.
Fully agreed. I just don't get what's so difficult to understand about this to be honest but life is about opinions I suppose.
I´d say
Jota Nunez Salah
Jones MacAllister Szoboszlai
Robertson Konate VVD TAA
Allison
is Liverpool´s best 11. Arguable between moving Diaz in on the left and Jota to the middle for Nunez. I´d also say that Gomez as an inverted LB and Bradley as a RB might be defensively stronger than Robertson/TAA at his stage. Kelleher probably played as good a final as Allison would have last night. Allison usually makes the great 1v1 saves, so did Kelleher. But Allison is also more prone to the crazy mistake.
If everybody else is fit then Endo, Gakpo, Elliott, Tsimikas, Gravenberch aren´t that much of an individual drop off either, but they are. Thiago is hardly noticeable. Just a squad player at this stage. No way he´s a starter.
If you have to start without five of your top six players in midfield/up front, then have to replace three of their replacements, and the other three (Diaz; Elliott and Endo) run themselves ragged, then it´s absolutely infuriating to hear Poch say: Uh we were tired and felt we should play for penalties. WTF. Mudryk, Nkunku and Mamaduke were fresh as a daisy.
Looked it up at Transfermarkt
Danns: 1 professional minute before the final.
McConnell: 96 professional minutes before the final.
Clark: 135 professional minutes before the final.
I get it. Chelsea´s team is young, but there young players are basically mostly Harvey Elliotts. Enzo has played more minutes in the World Cup than these three kids have in their pro careers. Plus none of their minutes meant anything until this final. It was dead minutes for the most part.
For Chelsea to not only lose, but in the manner they did in OT was truly bizarre. The tactical comments by Poch afterwards were just wow. That was another level from ETH´s "Trust the Process" post-match interviews.
The front three if they were fit would more likely than not be Jota Nunez Salah. Which in turn gives you the option to bring on Gakpo and Diaz from the bench. The midfield would have been Mac Allister Szoboszlai and Jones. Thiago has unfortunately been a non entity this season, Endo and Gravenberch would have likely been on the bench.
I can see your point, we’ve rotated often due to injuries and fixtures/intensity so only by watching us week in week out would you get a sense of who is generally favoured to start most games. The players who’ve come in have done quite well I.e Endo, and Diaz would likely be a starter on top form, but since his injuries he’s seemingly lost a step. I can see why people would think he’s a starter though, from the outside looking in his reputation means people think he’s an automatic starter.
It is also fungible, Mac Allister has done well as the 6, but looks just as impressive in the 8 with Endo behind, so does he stay there or do we go back to the team of the first half of the season. It’s a squad game, I don’t think we have the strongest first XI but our squad when we don’t have as many out as we currently do is one of our biggest strengths.
I’m not really sure what the importance of their side being younger really holds? It’s a poor narrative sure, and we didn’t start a load of kids but we did end the game with Quansah, Mc Connell, Clark, Danns. Who were replacing players who were already replacing players who would have started.
I think the narrative stems from the fact they should have won the game in the 90. They then sat off in a cup final when we had a front 6 of Endo, Mc Connell, Clark, Diaz, Danns, Elliot.
On another day Chelsea probably win that game.
Some fair points and apologies for some of my spelling, dyslexic and words look right to me even though I may see it different another time. Anyway, I agree the media have way overhyped the 'kids' thing, that's what the media do, it's cringeworthy and annoying, they'll make it a negative just as quickly. There 5 Liverpool youngsters getting game time now that have less than 20 first team starts between them.
The 'genuine first team starters', of course there is team rotation, so I would say for Liverpool, only Salah, VVD, Allison and maybe Arnold this season are 'guaranteed' first team starters, others are 'genuine' first team starters in my thinking. Minutes played this season isn't a clear proof of anything either as some players injured would have played more, but overall from the current injury list, regular starters would include, Alisson, Salah, Szobozlai, Arnold, Nunez, Jota and either Jones or Endo
| Player | Age | Starts | Min |
| Virgil van Dijk | 32-234 | 24 | 2,097 |
| Alisson | 31-148 | 21 | 1,890 |
| Mohamed Salah | 31-257 | 20 | 1,786 |
| Dominik Szoboszlai | 23-125 | 20 | 1,657 |
| Luis Díaz | 27-045 | 20 | 1,656 |
| Alexis Mac Allister | 25-065 | 20 | 1,629 |
| Trent Alexander-Arnold | 25-143 | 19 | 1,622 |
| Darwin Núñez | 24-248 | 16 | 1,465 |
| Ibrahima Konaté | 24-278 | 13 | 1,242 |
| Diogo Jota | 27-085 | 13 | 1,047 |
| Joe Gomez | 26-280 | 12 | 1,272 |
| Curtis Jones | 23-028 | 12 | 956 |
| Cody Gakpo | 24-296 | 11 | 1,065 |
| Wataru Endo | 31-018 | 11 | 973 |
| Andrew Robertson | 29-353 | 10 | 977 |
Regards post Klopp, you are correct, no guarantee of anything and I think most fans would expect a dip, as you said, next manager choice will determine a lot. I was more making a point that if you were to go by the forums on here, it has been Klopp carrying an average side which I think is unfair, Klopp gets the absolute best out of an overall very high quality squad of players. Maybe Alonso will come in and win the league with a completely different style of football, or maybe some other Harry come lately takes over and Liverpool go backwards, players drop effort and leave responsibility on the new manager, a lot of unknowns but I'll be optimistic and hope this squad can kick on, but a lot of change ahead for sure.