Robbie Boy
Full Member
He looked pretty good to me. Thought he was Liverpool’s best defender but I get it, it was a low bar.
An extremely low bar, yes. Two of their back four were hooked at HT, and Konate was absolutely atrocious.
He looked pretty good to me. Thought he was Liverpool’s best defender but I get it, it was a low bar.
Wondering if klopp has ever thought about a 352 / 532 with the players he has.
You would think the way taa and Robertson like spamming the ball in, that them out wide with three cbs would help protect them.
You can flood the midfield and then have Salah and caroll up top
Great points. Where's a nail when you need one?Liverpool will struggle to get back to where they were full stop. It’s a lot more simple as far as I can see it.
Liverpool had Salah and Mane scoring for fun and seemingly always fit. In the year they won the league both played every single game I reckon and scored 20+. That’s a perfect storm.
Their current team is still capable of playing decent football and winning matches but without those two at their peak and in good health…their way of playing is shown up because they don’t have those extraordinary players causing such a huge threat and forcing other teams to really adjust. Teams can defend against top full backs and creative midfielders - it’s those mercurial talents that make the difference and Liverpool had two at once…often getting early goals and killing games before they even started…changing other teams week long preparation game plans in the first 5 minutes. That’s just how good those two were. Without them - Liverpool were playable.
it’s what’s made/makes City a different prospect. They are not so reliant.
No matter what they do…unless Salah suddenly starts carrying them again…they are gonna struggle to challenge for major honours because Nunez/Gakpo/even Diaz are not ready to fill the gap left by Salah and Mane.
I honestly don’t see it as being more complicated than that.
I also don’t think it even suits Trent either. He’s not really a player who would excel as a wingback — when he’s actually playing well he’s at his best exploiting the high central-ish right sided areas that Salah and the RCM vacate for him to cross spam. As a wingback he’d be tucked a lot wider and find himself stuck in a lot of 1v1 scenarios (attacking wise) where his dribbling ability is somewhat average when you compare him to other top fullbacksThat's going to be an issue for several reasons:
1) Most of their players cut in from the wide to create space for others. 3-5-2 or 5-3-2 will basically render Diaz, Salah, Jota, Gakpo etc useless. They'd be caught out and will stop scoring.
2) They'll need better midfielders than the lot they have for this formation to work. There's basically no creativity from midfield - just work horses who (used to) run the length back and forth for 90mins. All their creativity is from out wide, so the opponents will need to just mark the wing backs out of the game.
3) They'd now have to depend on actual center forwards to score (Nunez...)
Don't think it's that simple, nor easy to correct. He's been trained and honed as an offensive threat - every sinew poured into attacking contributions and it even being arguable if he's even an actual fullback or someone who should be in midfield, and probably would be in a flat 4-4-2 era.Gary Neville probably think he's writing poetry in his mind. Either Liverpool are scared to upset him, or he just doesn't take criticism on board.
You can see him defending like this in every game, for the good he brings in attack he sure does outweight it defensively.
I find it odd Klopp is not all over this. Surely he doesn’t accept laziness from his players?
EtH would have gone ballistic and I’m sure the old Klopp would too…
He's just defensively thick. He ball watches and his attitude comes across as not giving 2 shits to be honest.Don't think it's that simple, nor easy to correct. He's been trained and honed as an offensive threat - every sinew poured into attacking contributions and it even being arguable if he's even an actual fullback or someone who should be in midfield, and probably would be in a flat 4-4-2 era.
I don't think it's unique to him that it's really difficult to train someone to be rounded in a position they're on the periphery of at the best of times.
Wouldn't be surprised to see him moved forward at some point in his career; he's just not a natural two-way fullback and never got praise in that capacity when he was flying.
It's dogshit defending. His positioning there is the mind of an attacker rather than a defender - i.e. "we are 2 goals down with not a lot of time left, I need to gamble and so I'll position myself where I'm in a great position to counter attack the second ball." Whereas with natural defensive instincts a full-back would typically tuck in and assume the worst (that the centre-halves would make an arse of it). Problem for Liverpool is there doesn't feel to be much accountability for repeated feck-ups as the same players keep their shirt irregardless. Can't be doing much for the morale of the players on the bench.Don't think it's that simple, nor easy to correct. He's been trained and honed as an offensive threat - every sinew poured into attacking contributions and it even being arguable if he's even an actual fullback or someone who should be in midfield, and probably would be in a flat 4-4-2 era.
I don't think it's unique to him that it's really difficult to train someone to be rounded in a position they're on the periphery of at the best of times.
Wouldn't be surprised to see him moved forward at some point in his career; he's just not a natural two-way fullback and never got praise in that capacity when he was flying.
As bad a RB display as a I have seen
I don’t know if it’s laziness or loss of concentration.
I think he's just given up (for the time being at least).
Whether thats due to personal issues , issues with tactics or with the management team who knows but at the beginning of the game he was their most "active" defender and by the end he's just walking around not giving a shit.
He's not the only player I feel this way about at Liverpool, I would say the majority of their players are acting the same way game in, game out.
Compare that to the Arsenal side (Jesus even the Brighton side which played them off the park) and it's night and day.
Theres something going on behind the scenes there IMO because if one player is out of form you can blame the player, if 11 are out of form then it has to be the managers problem (they are every bit as Bad as United were at this time last year).
They should move to a back 5 with 2 of Henderson/ Fabinho/ Thiago sitting in front of the CBs and give their full backs defensive freedom until they stop the rot but they won't because the moment Klopp changes anything they fall apart (which is why I rate Pep higher as he is flexible, though a little too flexible at times ) which is why it's the same mistakes being repeated over and over again.
They are worn, the long cycle has ended. The sooner the club acknowledges it and moves on, the better for them.
As bad a RB display as a I have seen
Well no. Crossing and Freekicks aside. Pretty niche playerHe's not very good, is he? Individually, he just isn't a top class player, but is capable of top class performances when his team is on-song, and everyone is playing well. His deficiencies have been badly exposed since Liverpool have started to fall away.
I was going to say the same. It's hard to judge.I don’t know if it’s laziness or loss of concentration.
Wow. Look at him at 1:40. At the edge of the box while the action is inside the box, as if he were the RW not RB. I can't believe it. Surely he has to be dropped. That's criminal.
Recording his laptop screen playing a youtube video with his phone. Genius.