Football - City Bid the Wrong Type of Sterling

[Jordan La Cabra]

4 minutes ago, l2 0 5 5 said:

Chelsea hold off Leicester in a sloppy win. Turned the ball over a lot, poor in final third, but a win nonetheless. Nice to see Hazard get back on the pitch, and I like the look of Zappacosta. I think he'll push Moses hard for the starting spot, and eventually win. Can't look past the Italian connection with Conte. Will be interesting to see what the lineup is this Tuesday for UCL.

Wasn't the most impressive performance but I'm happy with the result away from home.

Zappacosta was decent when he came on. Very close to scoring late on. Would like to see him start midweek.

I was impressed with Bakayoko todayZ His passing is slightly sloppy but he is big unit and covers ground well with the ball. Sometimes, when he was charging forwards, I saw similarities to Yaya Toure.

 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I just woke and could not resist checking the Liveroool result, so at least that saves me from watching it.

Good thing i missed the match as well.Seems i saved myself an increase in blood pressure.Didn't even bother with the highlights after seeing the score.

How did Klopp spin this?

[Mexal]

Arsenal played well and Bournemouth played terrible. Good recipe for success. Matches against teams that aren't physical and don't press are right up their alley. Chelsea on Sunday will be a whole different story.

[Jordan La Cabra]

11 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Arsenal played well and Bournemouth played terrible. Good recipe for success. Matches against teams that aren't physical and don't press are right up their alley. Chelsea on Sunday will be a whole different story.

Uncle Wenger has a good record against Conte since he came to Chelsea. I no longer look forward to facing the Arsenal.

[Mark Antony]

59 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

How did Klopp spin this?

Idk haven't watched any post match stuff but it wasn't thaaaat bad. Fairly even game until our best player got a red card then it was always gonna be rough. 

Our backline is really below average though. Watching United/Stoke and Stoke definitely has better CB's than Liverpool. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Meanwhile in the Bundesliga

Hoffenheim - Bayern 2-0. Ancelotti was fuming over a pair of balls (there was a second ball on the pitch when Hoffenheim scored their first).

Freiburg (having to play the game for over an hour with a man down) managed to get a point off Dortmund, but no Clark or Ryan Kent to be seen in the matchday squad, yet. (small service information for our scousers).

[Jordan La Cabra]

7 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

Our backline is really below average though. Watching United/Stoke and Stoke definitely has better CB's than Liverpool. 

Really should have had plan B in store if they didn't get VVD. 

 

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, JordanJH1993 said:

Uncle Wenger has a good record against Conte since he came to Chelsea. I no longer look forward to facing the Arsenal.

There is truth to this. I just don't trust this team, especially the midfield. Ramsey was once again playing CF for half the match and when that happens, it's just Xhaka in the middle. You guys will score a few goals on Arsenal because Ramsey is wildly out of position.

[polishgenius]

Weird game that. We didn't play badly but a few ricks in defence cost us... but the exact same can be said for Stoke.

[Consigliere]

Entertaining game and a fair result. Unfortunately our defence was not as solid as it usually is due to Jones and Bailly putting in their poorest performance of the season and Herrera's play was just too conservative - too much backward and sideways stuff.

[Consigliere]

Messi is carrying Barca atm. Including the Spanish Super Cup, Sergi Roberto is the only other Barca player to have scored a goal this season.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

1 hour ago, Mark Antony said:

Idk haven't watched any post match stuff but it wasn't thaaaat bad. Fairly even game until our best player got a red card then it was always gonna be rough. 

Our backline is really below average though. Watching United/Stoke and Stoke definitely has better CB's than Liverpool. 

Even with 10 men,5-0 is humiliating.It's not like we lost a defender.

Regarding backline: who's fault is that? This is Klopp's team now.

[polishgenius]

13 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Even with 10 men,5-0 is humiliating.It's not like we lost a defender.

Regarding backline: who's fault is that? This is Klopp's team now.

Yeah. It's like Isk said earlier: as long as the attack is threatening and pinning teams back you're fine, but when a team feels they can take it and pushes on at you the defence is unprotected. And the 5-0 happened because after the sending off Liverpool had no idea whatsoever how to shell up and steady the ship and City just felt they could attack with impunity suddenly.

[Consigliere]

The problem is that Liverpool only know one way of playing. Even when down to 10 men, they still persisted with a high defensive line. Didn't help that the entire back four were poor either. I've said this before, Liverpool are fun to watch but naive. Klopp needs to be more flexible tactically if Liverpool are to be serious contenders for major honours. Can't keep playing 'rock 'n roll' football for 90 minutes in every game. That will eventually catch up with the squad in the last few months of the season.

[ljkeane]

In fairness they did grind out some results at the end of last season.

I didn't see the second half but it didn't help that we were already behind before the red card so it's not like you can just defend the edge of your box with 10 men and try and kill the game. They still needed to find a goal from somewhere and City are probably the worst side in the league to try and force the game against with extra space from missing a man.

[The Winged Shadow]

Well that was a disappointing result to say the least. Hopefully they can bounce back by mid week. Can Mane play champion's league matches with a red card?

That first goal was the fault of midfield. No one anywhere near KDB. Can't give him that much space. Doesn't matter how good a defender is, a 1v1 against Aguero is just asking for it. Although Klavan was caught out for sure, but it's to Aguero and Jesus's credit as they were moving around a lot and made it difficult (but that's the job!). Klavan played Jesus onside against for the second goal. He didn't have a good game at all.

Milner and Mignolet need to do better for both of the Sane goals.

Guardiola's teams are probably the worst team to be down 10-man against. His system always allows for an out ball, so there wasn't a lot of hope after that when down to 10.

13 hours ago, JordanJH1993 said:

Really should have had plan B in store if they didn't get VVD.

No thanks. We already know what Plan B defenders look like (i.e. Klavan). Liverpool's previous 5+ years of transfers have been full of "Plan B" and in the end they ended up with a mediocre squad. They panic buy mediocre plan B players and then don't buy plan A players the next transfer window (as they just wasted money on Plan B). I'd prefer they just wait for VVD. Or at least someone as good if not better, which would be a difficult find IMO. Gomez is there as the backup, and they just need to hold on until Jan and re-evaluate. With Klopp they can certainly attract their Plan A now so it's better they wait and get those players. Even if it means that this season it won't allow them to be contenders.

Needless to say, it's easy enough to find better CB than Lovren and Klavan/Gomez. But there aren't a whole lot of CBs who would do well at Liverpool given the system of play. Liverpool needs very specific type of CB and those are a lot harder to find.

[polishgenius]

36 minutes ago, The Winged Shadow said:

They panic buy mediocre plan B players and then don't buy plan A players the next transfer window (as they just wasted money on Plan B).

If you're panic buying, that's not plan B. Plan B would be to have a further list of players similar in profile to VVD you can work on once it became clear he wasn't moving to you- which was apparent very early on in the window.

[Jordan La Cabra]

2 hours ago, The Winged Shadow said:

No thanks. We already know what Plan B defenders look like (i.e. Klavan). Liverpool's previous 5+ years of transfers have been full of "Plan B" and in the end they ended up with a mediocre squad. They panic buy mediocre plan B players and then don't buy plan A players the next transfer window (as they just wasted money on Plan B). I'd prefer they just wait for VVD. Or at least someone as good if not better, which would be a difficult find IMO. Gomez is there as the backup, and they just need to hold on until Jan and re-evaluate. With Klopp they can certainly attract their Plan A now so it's better they wait and get those players. Even if it means that this season it won't allow them to be contenders.

Needless to say, it's easy enough to find better CB than Lovren and Klavan/Gomez. But there aren't a whole lot of CBs who would do well at Liverpool given the system of play. Liverpool needs very specific type of CB and those are a lot harder to find.

Alvaro Morata appeared to be a plan B for Chelsea when they didn't get Romelu Lukaku. He has turned out pretty good for us so far. It's not always a case of 'if it's not VVD, it'll be someone's Klaven standard'. There are plenty of other good defenders out there that isn't just VVD.

Anyway, the idea that VVD would suit Liverpool's system is a strange one. In terms of defending, it doesn't really seem like they have a system at all to begin with.

Recently, he has played for Celtic, where they were the dominant team in their league and didn't expect to defend much. He moved to Southampton and became a key member of a team that has had a strong defensive under every manager they had since they got back into the PL. Lovern was really good at Southampton, too, and he doesn't look the same at Liverpool.

When AVB was manager of Chelsea for half a season in 2011/2012, our defence was woeful because he played a high defensive line. We conceded a ton of goals with centre backs that included JT, Luiz, Cahill - three of the best we have had.

Di Matteo came in and changed our system and made us play a defensive style of football and we ended up winning the CL and conceding very few goals. Cahill and Luiz, that looked useless under AVB, played together during the CL final against Bayern and were excellent.

Liverpool could have Bonucci, Chiellini and Barzagli in their defensive and still concede the amount of goals they do. It's about the system and the coaching, and neither of those seem good at Liverpool, with regards to defending.

[Mark Antony]

1 hour ago, JordanJH1993 said:

Alvaro Morata appeared to be a plan B for Chelsea when they didn't get Romelu Lukaku. He has turned out pretty good for us so far. It's not always a case of 'if it's not VVD, it'll be someone's Klaven standard'. There are plenty of other good defenders out there that isn't just VVD.

Exactly. This VVD or nothing nonsense will cost us. It already kinda has. Klavan starting against City away for fucks sake.

[ljkeane]

11 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

 It already kinda has. Klavan starting against City away for fucks sake.

It really didn't, there's not much Klavan or most other centre backs could do about the first goal. Given the red card the game was pretty much over at that point.