Liverpool Banter

26 Apr 2024 10:55:39
Hi Ed's

Do you think Salah's drop of form has coincided with Trent playing this awful invert fullback role. I have noticed when Bradley is playing, Salah seems to have more space as the defender is occupied with two player instead of one. Which gives Mo the extra space to do his stuff.

I know Mo has been awful the last few months but I don't think this inverted fullback tactic helps.

Would love to hear your opinion on this.

Thanks.

{Ed001's Note - that hasn't helped, but it is not the issue. It is not an inverted full-back that makes his touch so bad.}

26 Apr 2024 11:18:31
Mos finished everything comes to an end time to move on as not to tarnish his legacy.

26 Apr 2024 11:18:43
Didn’t Salah have good form at the start of the season when Trent was also playing the inverted full back.

I’m not sure how many of Mo’s 24 goals and 13 assists have come when we haven’t played Trent there?

{Ed001's Note - yes mate he did. The only real difference it makes to Salah is that he plays wider. But early in the season he was creating more chances for others and playing some good stuff.}

26 Apr 2024 09:04:50
Ok, this is just my theory on the, I really believed Amorim is really the first choice of who FSG wanted as our next manager (after Alonso). Both parties surely had talks ongoing and probably had a disagreement on certain things.

Then what happened, the Amorim team decided to play games by approaching West Ham, and leak it to the media maybe to put pressure on FSG?

And what happened next, FSG definitely not happy with it, decided they won't bother wasting time with the Amorim team.

26 Apr 2024 10:00:42
Possible, but i think it’s equally likely that they felt they were incompatible with his formation and amount of control he would demand over transfers. Slot plays in a way that already suits the squad of players we have and would require far less change. Furthermore, a coach who is happy to collaborate with analysts once more is important, it was one of the underpinnings of our success compared to the clubs below us in the league. Move us back towards the transfer policy of the 2010’s and away from the manager and his coaches signing players they seem to just fancy, like Thiago and Nunez.

26 Apr 2024 07:59:45
Slot's post match interview has got me thinking. Is it refreshing that he's being honest, or is it worrying that he should have perhaps deflected the questions and kept all this behind closed doors?

{Ed001's Note - or is he just worried that Feyenoord are resisting the advances of Liverpool and so trying to force their hand?}

26 Apr 2024 11:12:10
I like that he spoke to it. Who knows the ins and outs but in general it feels pretty rare to hear a manager talk openly like this.
IMO it came across level and fair.

25 Apr 2024 22:48:39
Obviously an interesting and anxiety filled time for fans.

Klopp was a real difference maker so I’m not making a direct comparison between Slot and Klopp. But my thinking is that before Klopp came in, the vast majority of fan opinion on the squad at that time would have been that they couldn’t win this or that or even be competitive.

Enter Klopp and a European final that first half season.

Again not a direct comparison but my encouragement to everyone is to see the potential in the players we have and how a new environment can help them to improve.

It may be u popular to say this, but we’re not a useless team. Anyone coming in has a fantastic squad to build upon.

26 Apr 2024 06:13:22
The ability is definitely there. It’s just been the lack of application this last month.

26 Apr 2024 07:47:19
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. How many of them do you truly trust in the most important games? If you can’t up for a title run in against your biggest rivals then you clearly have problems. The first rule of football is win you duels, we look actually scared like young kids. Some of the clips of Sob, Jones and Trent trying to defend set pieces are cowardly. Lots of work to do.

26 Apr 2024 08:36:22
I've never had Szob, Jones and TAA down as defensively minded; especially on set pieces.
In fact, we over rely on VVD to deal with set pieces and Everton did their homework. They targetted him and we were in trouble.
More generally I believe that we have been more focused on attacking than defending this season. Our midfield leaves and we bring in Mac, Szob, Grav and Endo and only the latter is a defensively minded player and we all know he was a cheap option.
Not only that, but we also tell one of the defenders to drift into midfield and leave the right sided and inferior centre back covering a larger area.
It's not my thing and it's intended to get us on the front foot but how often have we conceded the first goal this season? It has the opposite effect, we end up chasing games and it was always going to catch up with us.

26 Apr 2024 09:18:05
You don’t need to be defensively minded to give one. Effort, desire, application. At least give 100%. You actually jump and put a challenge in, don’t cower down, it looked like they were praying the ball didn’t come near their area. I don’t see how you’re going to give certain players a set of balls.

26 Apr 2024 09:40:54
You do have to be defensively minded to defend. If your mind is not telling you to defend or sensing danger you're not going to do it as well as someone that is defensively minded. It's easy or lazy for a corner to come in and let VVD deal with it.
I agree though that every player should defend and put the effort in. Some are more natural than others though and Trent, Szob and Jones have never struck me as defensively minded types.
Trent has some brilliant attributes but they are usually going the other way.

26 Apr 2024 11:03:15
Trent is an amazing player I agree. But I fear if we don’t add a couple of leaders then these kind of defeats when it really matters will continue to happen. Mac, Jones, Sob will never ever be a good enough midfield to win the PL.

26 Apr 2024 11:21:33
The problem stems from a one formation for every game for me, it’s worked for klopp for sure but there’s always been teams who we couldn’t get past and who defended deep, usually he’d throw another 2 forward attackers on and we’d manage to get through it. However against Everton 2 nil down we put kostas and Gomez on…. that is giving up. (and both should be out the door now) Agree they need a rocket up their arses all of them. But why can’t we change formation 3-5-2 for instance, pack the midfield would have destroyed all Everton attacks and 2 front players closer together with crosses into box. Kloppo given up and rubbed off on players, should remember they are playing for the club and more importantly the fans not the manager.

26 Apr 2024 11:24:27
Mark - I don’t think this was a title worthy team to start with. And I think most reasonable fans would agree. But we’re building towards that. What has changed the narrative is Klopp announced his departure which turned this season into All or nothing. And contextually, we performed so well for much of the season so we’ve fallen from a winning position.

In reality we are about where I think we should be.

So, now it depends on what you believe we have to build on. Sounds like you’re in the camp that believes this squad is full of useless and unreliable players o we need to clean house. Or thereabouts, yea? I’m of the kind that we have more than enough to build on and we should do just that. A major clean out would set us back years imo.