Football: A Blizzard of Games

[Mark Antony]

Not buying a CB would be beyond stupid.

[Soylent Brown]

Trent was fine, though he had a couple of crap moments. He was no worse than Robertson, who, crosses aside, played some dodgy passes.

A part of the problem on his side is the midfield for whatever reason seem to be really slow in giving him the ball sometimes. They basically run the ball to him, bringing their markers, so he can only go backwards

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Rumour is Matip is out for multiple weeks, adductor muscle injury.

[polishgenius]

Shocker of a start by Wolves there.

[Iskaral Pust]

Poor performance by Liverpool.  We’d like to have Thiago, Jota, Keita and (a fit) Ox against opponents like that.  They’re better at finding an creating space against the parked bus.  We’ve dropped a lot of points against the teams at the bottom of the table.

CB is still a huge concern but I have zero surprise that Matip cannot stay fit.  The club needs to decide what to do about that.  

[AncalagonTheBlack]

6 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Poor performance by Liverpool.  We’d like to have Thiago, Jota, Keita and (a fit) Ox against opponents like that.  They’re better at finding an creating space against the parked bus.  We’ve dropped a lot of points against the teams at the bottom of the table.

CB is still a huge concern but I have zero surprise that Matip cannot stay fit.  The club needs to decide what to do about that.  

Klopp is to blame somewhat for today.Against teams like WBA and the way they play, when you're 1-0 up, just shup up shop with your back 4, yet Klopp kept the high line knowing Rhys and Fab are not fast enough to recover against pace.

Allison made a save earlier and saved us or it could have been 1-2.Yet Klopp kept the high line.

[polishgenius]

Spurs are legitimately trying to dig in for a 1-0 win from a goal scored in the first minute. Fucking Jose.

[Rorshach]

All this discussion, and not a word on our very strong 1-0 win away to the bottom side?

In a dreadfully boring match, weather not helping anyone, and if you weren't invested in a team, you'd fall asleep?

Shocked. I am schoked.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

11 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Spurs are legitimately trying to dig in for a 1-0 win from a goal scored in the first minute. Fucking Jose.

Maybe we should have done that today!

[polishgenius]

8 minutes ago, Rorshach said:

All this discussion, and not a word on our very strong 1-0 win away to the bottom side?

In a dreadfully boring match, weather not helping anyone, and if you weren't invested in a team, you'd fall asleep?

Shocked. I am schoked.

You've won four in a row now no? But I'm not surprised you were shit, Richarlison wasn't playing.

[Raja]

can wolves please score

[Rorshach]

Yeah, four in a row. And Richarlison, Hamish and Allan (and Digne and Coleman) out means little creativity.

But still, three points. City tomorrow will be worse.

[Soylent Brown]

30 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Maybe we should have done that today!

Given that we've defended terribly for ages now, even before the big injuries, we should have looked to score more, not sit back. Don't even joke about horrible Mourinho shit like that.

[baxus]

14 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Poor performance by Liverpool.  We’d like to have Thiago, Jota, Keita and (a fit) Ox against opponents like that.  They’re better at finding an creating space against the parked bus.  We’ve dropped a lot of points against the teams at the bottom of the table.

CB is still a huge concern but I have zero surprise that Matip cannot stay fit.  The club needs to decide what to do about that.  

And where would you expect them to find and create space when WBA have played with all 10 players inside 30m from their goal line whenever Liverpool had the ball?

[Soylent Brown]

There is still space to be found in those situations, it's just you don't find it by having Henderson over-hitting diagonal balls to the back post all game.

We needed a creative midfielder badly in that game. Jones can be that player sometimes, but he's young and inconsistent and was awful yesterday.

There was no sign of Keita in the squad - is he injured again?

[polishgenius]

What you need in a situation like that is either really good close-control dribbling down the middle, or a good holdup man. Thiago wouldn't really have helped you coz his influenced is about recycling the ball fast, which with West Brom sitting so deep wasn't a problem, but Jota would have. Seems odd to say that when Salah and Mane struggled, but Jota's main advantage over them in a situation like that is they do prefer to be moving at pace so tend to cut wider when pressured, whereas he's got a habit of stopping dead to send a defender the wrong way which means he's more comfortable cutting for the center from the off.

Shakiri would probably have helped...

[baxus]

1 hour ago, Soylent Brown said:

There is still space to be found in those situations, it's just you don't find it by having Henderson over-hitting diagonal balls to the back post all game.

We needed a creative midfielder badly in that game. Jones can be that player sometimes, but he's young and inconsistent and was awful yesterday.

There was no sign of Keita in the squad - is he injured again?

Sure, there's space to be found in those situation, too. But it's much more difficult to do and creating chances wasn't really Liverpool's problem yesterday, at least in the first half. There were quite a few situations where our front three were a split second too late or just didn't catch the ball properly. Also, Salah spent a lot of time (or at least a lot more than he usually does) in the middle instead of on the right wing and he definitely didn't do much there. Also, it's still a mystery to me why Liverpool insisted on crosses so much in the second half, especially against this kind of setup from the opponent. Do they actually expect Salah, Mane or Firmino to score a header from open play against tightly-knit defence like this?

Sure, Liverpool needs a creative midfielder in every single game, as does every other team in the world. Words "Yeah, we have this creative midfielder but we don't really need him" have never been uttered.

Last but not least, when are we as Liverpool fans going to collectively give up on expecting Keita to play an important role in this team? Sure, he has shown some glimpses of greatness but they are few and far between and most of the time he's either injured or bang average, or worse.

[Consigliere]

Liverpool find a way to break down parked buses in nearly every game. A frustrating game like yesterday is bound to happen occasionally and is nothing to get too worked up over especially considering the injuries and players recently returned from injury still lacking fitness. Most of the chasing pack dropped points too.

And speaking of the chasing pack, it's really only City that Liverpool need to concern themselves with. All the others are too inconsistent to pose any real threat. City, otoh, seem to be gathering momentum and while they aren't scoring at the rate they usually do (yet), Guardiola has compensated for that by successfully managing to tighten up their defending.

[Soylent Brown]

United have had plenty of bad spells in games, but they've still won a lot of them. I wouldn't write them off yet, especially if everyone else keeps dropping silly points too.

[Consigliere]

We look totally clueless though when Fernandes isn't playing or having a poor game (although those have been few). Our attacking playing is far too reliant on one player and our defence is prone to amateurish mistakes in nearly every game. I see this current good run as being no different from our other good runs under Solskjaer. Those were followed by a stretch of dire performances and results.