24 Apr 2021 19:32:19
You'll have to forgive some of what I say as it's related to US ice hockey and not football but some of what I'll say is transferrable.

I've seen people asking why the team has collapsed this year. A few people (notably ed001) mentioned the lack of time on the training pitch due to the condensed season.

I'd say this is pretty accurate. I worked as team psychologist for a US hockey team during a shortened season where they too had an injury crisis in defence.
The issues in defence led to playing inexperienced players there and almost all of whatever tactical coaching time there was ended up being spent working with the defence to help them get up to speed. This meant other areas of the team had far less coaching time and their game suffered as a result.

I think this is probably happening at Liverpool. Which explains why areas of the pitch are suddenly lacking now. Contrary to popular belief players do need consistent coaching all through the season both on long term goals and game by game goals or they become less fluid, flexible and adaptable.

It seems counter intuitive to think professionals at the top of their game and some of the best in the entire world would need coaching but they absolutely do.

The issue for me isn't why we are fading this year, I think the issue is that it's likely to happen next year too thanks to the new European formats and the extra games in the calender, so how will klopp combat this next year.

They need to start preparing now and split coaching priorities a bit more evenly.

{Ed001's Note - the new European formats are not coming in until 2024/5 season mate.}

1.) 24 Apr 2021
24 Apr 2021 19:56:07
Sadly the amount of missed chances we had today and this season cannot be blamed solely on us missing some of our defence. We scored 7 against Palace with Fab and Matip in defence. And we were top of the league in Dec despite losing Vvd and Gomez in Oct. Yes it’s 100% weakened us but today and a lot of games since Christmas our finishing and build up play has been Sunday league standard. Season is a right off but we go again next season.

2.) 24 Apr 2021
24 Apr 2021 20:39:57
Our finishing issues do not date from today. It has been problem since last season BUT cos we had a defence that could shut the oppo. down, we would win games by one goal even tho, we had enuff chances to win by 3/ 4 or 5 sometimes.

Now that our defence is weaker, the poor finishing is even more glaring and annoying right now. We literally screwed ourselves out of 2 wins in the past 2 games and we have no one else to blame but ourselves. If we don’t fix our issues in front of goal going into next season, we will struggle again regardless of our defence being better.

3.) 25 Apr 2021
25 Apr 2021 08:40:24
JK23 - the problems in defence have been and still are a major issue though JK. OK we did win games without VVD and were top at Christmas, but teams can manage like this on a short term basis, and don't forget we still had Matip playing very well at the back. We also had Henderson in the middle.

When Matip got injured that changed things so much for me. I think with our full strength defence we win last week and yesterday - but we are where we are.

I thought our build up play was really good yesterday, but you are right, the finishing was woeful.

4.) 25 Apr 2021
25 Apr 2021 08:50:46
Kbl I said the missing defence has weakened us 100% mate. I just don’t see how that’s turned our finishing into Sunday league.

5.) 25 Apr 2021
25 Apr 2021 09:17:45
You're right ed got my dates mixed up but it just means klopp (or whoever) will still have this problem in a couple of years time.

6.) 25 Apr 2021
25 Apr 2021 09:18:04
It's nothing to do with lack of time on the training pitch, it's the same for everyone.