Liverpool Banter

25 Apr 2024 11:07:34
Trend seemed like he did not want to defend.
He should be moved to MF and we should give up this fullback moving to midfield tactic. It leaves us exposed at the back specially with Konate on that side.

Salah seems to have his mind setup for an exit in summer.
Nunez will miss a host of chances and we need to live with that unless he can apply himself in training at skill of hiting the target.

We may need to replace salah in summer.
Move Diaz to right, gapko on left and unez/ Jota as CF.

25 Apr 2024 10:24:00
So what are we playing at? We've suddenly turned into a shambles, Klopp, coaches, players, everybody has buggered up. We can't just pin the blame on Klopp it's not just him, way I see it is the players have just given up.

It was always going to be one of them games and fair play to Everton but come on we should be beating them, the fact we didn't says a great deal, we are in a right state and it won't be an easy fix I don't think. go back a couple of months and we're hammering that Everton team, now we are this sloppy? It makes no sense to me and is doing my head in. I just want the season to end now, roll on next season.

25 Apr 2024 10:44:01
Partly tactics but mainly Nunez, if we had firmino last night we score two or three. Cannot even bear to watch the bloke anymore. The stick heskey used to get and he's not a patch on him.

25 Apr 2024 10:50:09
The recruitment has been bad for a number of years. Not sure who to blame for that.

Midfielders should have been brought in after 2021/ 22, Salah should have been sold last season – late in both instances – and then there's a handful of players, such as Keita, who were simply a waste of money, and others, such as Díaz, who have been decent but not good enough.

25 Apr 2024 10:59:10
It's a combination of everything you say, Salah. Not just Klopp, for sure, and definitely not just Pep Ljinders, which I'm getting sick of hearing about. Not one player escapes criticism, but some are deserving of it more than others. The suddenness of our decline is what I find most surprising. A month ago we were on for 4 trophies, and now it's all gone down the pan.

It's a shame that our greatest manager in the last 30 years is going out this way, but we can only look forward to next season and the start of, hopefully, a promising new era.

25 Apr 2024 11:00:15
I was asking myself the same, Salah. Aside from concluding that we have simply had a classic run-in meltdown and collapsed in the way that we've seen teams do so many times down the years (which I wouldn't have expected from this team), I found myself wondering if actually somehow our results and position up to March was actually misleading and not a true representation.

Sounds daft perhaps, and typically I am happy with the principle that the table doesn't lie, but look at the stats on first goal conceded and the number of times we have had to come from behind. Normally a team with such damning stats in that department wouldn't have sustained a title challenge.

And then less qualitatively and more subjective, but the level of performances. There aren't many times this season where I watched us and came away thinking we were on fire. Chelsea at Anfield was one (but we still managed to conceded two goals and we lost the next match at Arsenal) . I know it's ultimately a results business but I always feel that, even if you're grinding out the results, if your performance level is poor, it will catch up with you eventually. We can't honestly say that we've consistently been at the same level as City and Arsenal through the season can we?

25 Apr 2024 11:03:38
Yet we're still second in the table and above the best team in the world 😂.
I don't think we are a shambles but the past few weeks have been difficult watching us. I don't think we've been great for a while but results and being at the top masked that, possibly. And don't forget, we won our two previous games prior to the Derby both away from home.
There's no denying that performances and results have gone downhill and a big worry is they have come at a time when energy levels are on the wain. Can we just roll out sleeves for the last few games?
Saying that, we could have enough points already to hobble into the top four.

25 Apr 2024 11:05:08
Recruitment has been so poor the last few years. Go back to when Klopp first took over. Wijnaldum, Matip, Mane in his first summer. (Milner Firmino Gomez just before Klopp came in) Robertson Salah van Dijk the following season. Fabinho Alisson the next. We’ve signed decent players the last few years but it’s been nowhere near as good as it used to be.

25 Apr 2024 08:12:24
That was a dog ugly performance and it seemed like all they wanted to do was pass between each other at the back again. I seriously could not watch much more of that type of football and I agree that the nutty professor Lijnders has something to do with this awful style of football. Next season will be a breath of fresh air without him.

Klopp is great, but has let someone else sour his thoughts and it shows. That was the opposite of heavy metal football that seems to be a distant memory. But a good memory at least. I look forward to a improved style of football next year with excitement. I am sure we might get a forward who could Slot the ball in the back of the net also 😂😉.

25 Apr 2024 08:22:00
Ljinders should have been sacked after releasing his book - nothing about that was in anybody’s interest except his own. The less said about his tactical ideas the better.

25 Apr 2024 08:25:54
You are missing a very important point about midfielders. Our midfeidlers cannot run forward with the ball nor they can dribble to take a man. Everton played a low block and there was hardly any gaps. In such cases you either need your wide players to hit the byline or your central midfielders to run with the ball. Gravenberch for all his issues could do it.
Usually in klopp's whatever system the LCM is tasked to do this (keita / wijnaldum / thiago) Jones simply cannot. and Szobo is asked to play a DM rather than an ACM today.

25 Apr 2024 08:31:27
More scout spout.

25 Apr 2024 08:44:23
Exactly, Flash. How can the players do all these things the "Chief Scout" is going on about without even being ready to fight, scrap and earn the right to compete in a Merseyside derby. No matter how much ability you have, if you are not up for it the way Everton was, whatever qualities you have or don't have, won't matter. That is is the fundamentals of sport. No guts. No glory, all your ability be damned.

25 Apr 2024 08:51:34
I don't think we won anything playing heavy metal (cringe) football. We scored and conceded a lot of goals and it was thought to be unsustainable.
We became more pragmatic and won the League and CL. The midfield were disciplined but could win the ball and hold onto it. The front three could win the ball high up the field and create goals or break from our half and score goals.
We also had two very creative fullbacks one of whom had a terrific engine.
That team inevitably broke but let's not kid ourselves that it was the heavy metal side that Klopp had earlier in his Liverpool career.

25 Apr 2024 09:26:46
We reached the CL final twice and won the league playing heavy metal football, and had one bad season in between, what have we done since shifting to this possession based, inverted fullback nonsense? A league cup. I know which I’d rather win, I know which system would suit our players, and I know which system I’d rather watch.

25 Apr 2024 10:07:13
There’s 2 things I’ve noticed since the Man Utd game in particular.

Firstly we are scared to give the ball away so always play safe to the point where the forward players have stopped making runs because they know they won’t get the ball.

Secondly we are not winning the ball back quickly enough when we lose it.

We have been playing with fear and that has made us very twitchy on the ball and very passive off it. The defence drop too early which makes us way too open to press effectively and even when we do we are so passive that we lose pretty much every tackle.

Added to that we are so tense and fearful that we miss pretty much every chance we do create. People will point to Nunez and Salah and rightly so but it’s everyone. Robbo actually missed the ball completely when presented with a chance, Szob used to have a rocket on his right boot but scuffs every shot now, VVD has had numerous free headers and either misses the target or heads it to the keeper, Diaz, Jones, MacAllister they have all forgotten how to hit a clean strike. Trent tried to reach the kop end goal from Goodison with a couple of his efforts last night.

The criticism they are all getting is warranted, the performances have not been good enough but writing these players off as not good enough is extremely knee jerk and shows a total lack of understanding of human and sports psychology.

It’s not that they are not good enough, they have just realised the enormity of what they could achieve and they’ve frozen with the fear of failure. It happens every day in every sport and these players will be stronger for having these type of experiences.

I’m disappointed just like everyone else but I appreciate what Klopp and the players have put in this season to give us a trophy and a title challenge. It’s all gone a bit wrong but we dust ourselves down and we go again.

25 Apr 2024 10:09:07
We didn't win the League and CL final playing heavy metal football, Seano.
The season we won the League we would selectively press but could also be quite conservative. Henderson, Milner and Wijnaldum would just sit in front of the back four knowing the front three could always get a goal with our fullbacks often supplying them.
Think back to the CL win. It was a boring game. We got an early goal and sat in with the intention of not conceding.
It was not heavy metal football.