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Football: A Blizzard of Games


polishgenius

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10 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Curtis Jones is technically very good, he's confident, and he's useful at the sharp end of movements, but he doesn't seem to see the bigger picture at all. Just dithers in possession not really knowing what to do.

When Curtis Jones first came into the team he was looking to take a shot, dribble past someone or play a killer pass at every opportunity. I think he’s been told they think he’s a good player but if he’s going to hold down a regular place in midfield he needs to rein it in a lot and pick his moments. I think you see him quite a lot inclined to have a go and then thinking to himself that he’s been told to just cycle the ball through midfield and keep possession. As he gets more comfortable he’ll get better at getting the balance right.

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Last season, Liverpool would've converted at least 2 out of those 3 juicy clear cut chances.

If you fail to win this, you can blame it on Salah or Firmino for missing those sitters. They are easily way more at fault than Jones or Wijnaldum.

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We should have scored at least one of those, sure, but we should have created a lot more than this. If our forwards have forgotten what to do in front of goal as it's been so long since they last had the ball there, our useless midfielders are to blame.

Not that any of this is Wijnaldum's fault, I was just questioning what difference he was going to make. With Thiago now on, the midfield has a bit more balance.

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So United is as of right now, trailing Liverpool by 3 points with one game in hand. Looks like Ole didn't fall asleep at the wheel at all. Of course, the supposed haul from Liverpool's last two games was 6 points instead of two.

So is this Rashford's year?

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If you guys keep playing like this I'm going to start believing we've got a shot at this and that won't be pretty at all, fucking stop it.

I mean don't, carry on, but do so for the remainder of the season and don't put a fifteen game winning run together to close it out that would be depressing.

If we beat Villa and then you the hype is gonna go wild and I'm worried about it.

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1 hour ago, Soylent Brown said:

Should we be jumping for joy that our team is playing badly and dropping points all over the place?

For you that is every game it seems, even when we get the points or perform relatively well :P You seem to exclusively focus on the negatives. If your commentary in this thread was anything to go by, we are clearly the worst team in EPL, if not Europe! When was the last time you were happy with a game? Barcelona CL? :dunno:

 

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He was pretty jubliant during the Palace game I think.

 

Anyway. Liverpool were really not that awful. If United wins against Wolves was in the deserved bracket (which it was), then you have done more than enough to win this game. This was really down to the finishing.  Salah and Firmino being the culprits there. Either one of them could or rather should've won that game.

Happens.

Right now United is squeezing out the one goal wins, like you did last season. Maybe, they want to keep their place on the perch. With Ole at the wheel.

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6 minutes ago, The Winged Shadow said:

For you that is every game it seems, even when we get the points or perform relatively well :P You seem to exclusively focus on the negatives. If your commentary in this thread was anything to go by, we are clearly the worst team in EPL, if not Europe! When was the last time you were happy with a game? Barcelona CL? :dunno:

 

Do you think we've played well many times this season? Outside of the Palace game, there hasn't been much to be cheerful about.

As bizarre as it sounds, we were a bit crap for a lot of last season too. There were so many games where we just about did enough to win. We very rarely played brilliantly and blew a team away, we were just incredibly efficient. We won the league by a mile and yet in half the games teams were all over us.

We played much better football in 18/19. We've been slowly decaying ever since.

Which is not to say we're doomed or anything, but I think some things need to change. We need to go back to actually using our midfield to play football, especially in games like the last two.

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3 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

Do you think we've played well many times this season? Outside of the Palace game, there hasn't been much to be cheerful about.

As bizarre as it sounds, we were a bit crap for a lot of last season too. There were so many games where we just about did enough to win. We very rarely played brilliantly and blew a team away, we were just incredibly efficient. We won the league by a mile and yet in half the games teams were all over us.

We played much better football in 18/19. We've been slowly decaying ever since.

Which is not to say we're doomed or anything, but I think some things need to change. We need to go back to actually using our midfield to play football, especially in games like the last two.

I think the performance has been pretty good in most of the games (barring some super bad ones like Villa). I think overall we are much better at breaking down the low block than previous seasons, but somehow got worse at finishing. We just can't finish at the moment. We should've won the last two games if we weren't so wasteful with our chances. We did more with less last year and the year before. We create a lot more 'half chances' and 'almost clear cut chances' than previous years against low block team, but just don't finish those as often. I think we have awful patches in games, but very rarely did we play an awful game. The main thing that stands out this season is that we seem to have too many starts where we are not up to gear in the first 30min. I'm used to it being the other way around where we just smash teams in the first 30.

Even 18/19, I just don't ever remember us being super dominant in chance creation in previous years. Just a lot more efficient around goal. It's almost always been scrappy wins otherwise. I think it was around Feb 18/19 that we had a big patch of draws as well, not being able to break down low block. This season it came a bit early. Unfortunately, we haven't had the incredible start of last two seasons to offset this patch of draws that we always seem to go through.

I don't think we had the players to play through the midfield so far because Keita, Shaq, Thiago and Ox were injured. Hendo can do the job ok but he had to drop with Fab playing CB (he still tries though, bless him). I think you will see us playing more through midfield now that they are coming back. I don't think we will ever really see both 8s and fullbacks pushing high if that is what you want. Klopp wants to protect the counters so the midfield will almost always be protection first, creation second.

Certainly we have been more inconsistent at this time of the season than last two seasons. But with the injury list it is somewhat understandable. I am kind of surprised we are doing as well as we are (probably because everyone else is struggling as well).

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