17 Mar 2015 07:02:11
Pardon me for repeating but in the 1st half, our game was disgraceful. No pace, woeful passing, failing to hold on to possession and a lack of motivation almost giving an impression that the players were tired or were showing way too much respect (unwarranted) to the swans.

Our attacking play also had no aggression as was evident form the tactics employed by BR in the first half. IMO we were playing so deep that when the ball was played to studge in and around the swans box, sterling coutinho and lallana were still in their own half and left studge with no option to dribble and shoot in vain.
There was nobody to pass the ball to!

One more tactical flaw by BR was that he did utilise sterlins's and lallana's wing play even after keeping them on the wings. They were continuously looking to cut inside and dribble through the crowd of defenders instead of making vertical runs on the wings/ beating defenders with their pace and then crossing in the box. Particularly sterling wasted good build up play opportunities by cutting inside and getting crowded out.
Also studge kept on shooting aimlessly when he sjould have passed it to sterling /lallana on the wings and then create space in the box.
I think BR failed tactically in all these respects in the first half.

Please also note that Sterling is still not the finished product. His passing was way off mark.

why is our final third play deteriorating? And why can't we keep the same tempo throughout the game as we did in the 2nd half?

please share your views and opinions and smile if you concur with my analysis of BR's tactics yesterday.

PS- laugh if you don't agree with me. Atleast it will keep your blood pressure in check! : )

But a great 3 points for us!

Play like we did in the 2nd half and we sort out our final third probs and i think we will breeze past Man Utd!

March on reds!!!

1.) 17 Mar 2015
17 Mar 2015 07:22:08
typo - BR did not utilize sterling/ lallana on the wings!

2.) 17 Mar 2015
17 Mar 2015 08:18:38
You can't play well all the time.
We were awful last night but we won.
Why did we win?
Because we have not conceded a goal in over 8 hrs away from home.
Must play better but give credit to Gary Monk, he had a plan which worked first half, but I don't think his plan was causing Liverpool players to give the ball away as much as they did.
All in all, a night to forget in terms of performance but don't all good teams win when not playing well?

3.) 17 Mar 2015
17 Mar 2015 08:30:08
We were poor in the first but much better in the second when we matched up in midfield. Ed001 obviously had his anti Joe Allen glasses on then as he was our best player

{Ed001's Note - grow up. I never said he wasn't, but that every player was poor. I can't stand idiots that think criticising a poor performance is an anti thing, rather than merely pointing out where things could be improved. Allen was poor, as was the rest of the team.}

4.) 17 Mar 2015
17 Mar 2015 09:15:25
We haven't conceded in some time, because Migno was superb on the line and because Swansea missed such good chances (Ki heading straight into Skrtel instead of just shoving it in the net etc.).

I'm happy we won, 3 points forward, kudos to the lads, but we are not convincing in attack, for some time now we struggle to create good chances. Sturridge is selfish too often and doesn't seem to link up with Coutinho and Sterling, the latter two are deployed on opposite sides and have few opportunities to play as they used to, creating chances together, Sterling seems distracted and a lot less dynamic than he used to. Most of our goals lately are either brilliant or bizzarre.

I hope against Manchester next week we play like we did against Manchester three weeks ago.

5.) 17 Mar 2015
17 Mar 2015 12:42:20
It was a poor performance, but thankfully we got away with it. Really need to buck up our ideas for Sunday.

6.) 17 Mar 2015
17 Mar 2015 13:39:38
I think Allen is a good player. As discussed previously, neither Henderson or Allen were coming to the ball, leaving the CBs and GK in bad positions in the first half. It was a lot better when Gerrard took over DM duties, as he was actually keeping the ball moving and coming to the CBs for it, although I don't feel he has the pace to start against MU.

The players that stuck out as poor to me were all playing in attack. Sturridge was increasingly isolated, Coutinho couldn't stop cutting back into defenders feet, Sterling only improved once he went to the right, Lallana wasn't much better playing centrally and was moved around the whole night.

Swansea took advantage of the lack of interplay between Coutinho and Sturridge, and the incoherence in defensive midfield and should have been up. Fortunately, Mignolet was our best player yesterday and kept us in the game long enough to get lucky.

It's still 3 points, so forget about it and let's play some real football on Sunday.