CHAMPIONS League nights are back. I’m later than I want to be, having stuff to do and then tickets to sort. But it works out well, getting up the stairs just as You’ll Never Walk Alone is starting.
The Kop looks and sounds terrific. There is a We Are Liverpool banner the size of St George’s Hall, seeming like its coming towards you the more you look at it. I don’t know what it does to the opposition, but by God it frightens me. Actually, the opposition just seem to be enthralled by it all, enjoying the occasion in the way even a lower league team coming to Anfield in the cup will refuse to. The Bulgarians seem a great set of lads.
The referee, on the other hand, looks dreadful. Is that a black shirt, black socks and khaki shorts combo? My dad says he looks like a kid who has forgotten his PE shorts and been made to go out in his boxers, but all his mates are dressed the same so it can’t be that. You leave a competition for a few years and this is what happens.
The match starts and I try to figure out what we are doing. It looks like a 1 and a 2 in midfield, with Lallana and Sterling wide of Balotelli. It seems to suit us better than the 4-2-3-1, with Henderson allowed to be more mobile, the wide men getting close to the forward and Coutinho seeing plenty of the ball. But it gets to 15 minutes and nothing much has happened. Then it gets to 30 and nothing much has happened. Then people start getting a bit edgy.
We’re trying much harder to press than at the weekend, but we keep undoing good work with silly fouls, although the referee was as fiddly and annoying as you’d expect from a man dressed in such an appalling way. Suddenly there is a chance, through neat feet from Sterling and great running from Jordan. He can’t get the shot away so squares to Lallana who gets it a bit stuck under his feet and then messes it up.
It’s a funny performance from Lallana all in. He does some nice things but its all a bit ‘and what?’ He can’t seem to figure out yet how the nice things he can do contributes to Liverpool winning football games, but he’ll be alright.
When do we start worrying about Coutinho though? This was yet another position for the player who apparently hasn’t been played in the right one yet, and not much better from him, giving the ball away too frequently and struggling to impose himself. He’ll be alright too. Hopefully
And then there is Mario. The man who can score a goal and still receive a shout of “now get him off” from behind me. His main problem seems to be that crowd and team mates can’t figure out what he is yet. His persona and hype seems to have blinded everyone to the fact that he is essentially an old-fashioned target man. People want him running channels, when he just wants it into him. People expect him to turn and run, when mostly he just wants to pop it off. That is not to say he is always in the right position on the football field, quite often he is spectacularly in the wrong one, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily needs to be running around a lot either. Just give it to him where he is. He takes wonderful care over the football, and will only ever be knocked over when he wants to be.
This type of striker brings questions about the balance of the squad, of course. Will the likes of Lallana and Coutinho ever gel with him, or do they crave movement to really shine? What of Sterling, who loves moving into space vacated by a forward, but now has one less likely to pull defenders about? For now we have what we have and we will have to make better use of it. Although, in terms of Sterling it was perhaps surprising that he and Lallana kept their positions for the entire first half, when switching them for periods may have allowed Sterling in particular to make greater use of his pace down the right flank.
A double sub allowed us to switch to the diamond so many crave, but it brought as many problems as solutions. Borini up top gave us a greater presence and threat, and it encouraged the full backs to push on even further, but we looked more vulnerable at the back too, perhaps due to Lucas’s lack of mobility and Gerrard tiring meaning a lack of legs to cover. Both teams’ best chances quickly followed the formation change, with Borini heading too close to the keeper, and Ludogorets hitting the post.
Did you think a goal was coming? I did you know, although I’m a terrible optimist. I didn’t see three goals coming though, I’ll admit that. Especially as, after Balotelli had finished so well, we then seemed to be doing a pretty good job of having nothing happen for the rest of the game.
That was until the 89th minute. Sterling perhaps naive in losing the ball when he can release. Moreno, who played well, certainly naive in getting so far ahead of the ball at that stage of that game. Gerrard possibly too in getting caught watching the attack and then out of position. They celebrate with a disabled fan. That was nice, wasn’t it. Especially as at first I thought they were mocking one of ours…
That should really be that, no less than Ludogorets deserve. It is difficult to say at this stage, as other results can make you look stupid, but they looked nowhere near the group whipping boys they had been billed as, with plenty of neat play and determined defending. They deserved a draw, but didn’t get one, a nervous goalkeeper getting a dreadful back pass and making a hash of it. Plenty more experienced have buckled so close to getting a result in front of the Kop. Gerrard does the rest. Then all the fans clap each other like we do in Europe. That’s nice too.
So we start with a win. Tougher assignments to come, both in Europe and at home. We need to find a way of making it all work. Where good players look great and everyone seems on the same page. Hurry back Daniel. The music sounds better with you.
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda
The banner made some by me fume. The lad on the end said it was to go with the mosaic but some abused him even when he said they were taking it down once the mosaic had been displayed. Onto the match, a group that sit behind me in the Kop always call Sturridge lazy, so I knew Mario would get the same treatment. Hopefully he’ll keep scoring like Sturridge last season & shut them up. I don’t think we can play Lallana, Coutinho, & Sterling at the same time. Think Coutinho might be the one to miss out. Hopefully Lambert might get some time on the pitch next week.
Agree with all that. Especially your dads remark about the shorts. You say silly fouls but ref was a joke.
Think it was a good job Mario scored. People were losing patience. You may be right. That could well be his game.
Borini changed it. With respect to him he worked hard. Mignolet narrowly missed out on Twitter death threats.
There are no whipping boys in the Champions League. We should have known that.
Still, when you take your lad to his first CL game then you either want loads of goals or a late winner and we got 2 of those. I’m made up. The Bernabeu feels less appealing though now. We could get embarrassed.
Basle were whipped last night Robin.
Basel obviously play in the Limerick league here in Ireland!!
It was St Pats 5 Basel 2!!!
Note to self: when making a smart arse reply at least get the team name correct.
I thought that was Basil ?
The score in Madrid will be 17-14.
Great piece of writing, John. You made the event come alive.
It was a tough match to watch. Sure, Stockholm Sweden is a long way from Anfield, but even I could feel the jitters at 75 mins.
Kept trying to figure out if their new keeper would be the fairy tale story or maybe Borini, who I think did well. And then up stepped Gerrard: nerves of steel! He’s got a few tricks in him still.
Love your writing, which was nice…
Think you’re on the money with your assessment of Mario. Likes it in to feet, but boy when he gets it and he’s on song is he dead good with it in tight spots around the area. Silky at times in turning people, and looking after it. He looks a bit rusty, and I think on Saturday still perhaps feeling the effects of that virus. Glad he scored – could be just what he, and we, needed.
Work to be done, but you can see there’s room to improve, and I think on the whole with the players and manager we do have, there’s no reason it shouldn’t come…
Do worry about Phil right now – he’s seems a slow starter in the season though, same for me last year..”
Nice write up.
I’d love to know what their pass completion rate must have been high they just couldn’t hit a barn door…until the 90th minute obviously. Can’t see them causing Madrid problems but they could cause Basel a few.
Thing is though the game was there to be won at the start – their keeper was so nervous we just needed to put him under pressure. We really missed Sturridge’s off the ball runs to create the space and we looked a bit disjointed but I guess that will reduce with games. A goal deffo looked likely once we switched to 2 up top. Nice to see Borini getting on, all in all glad he stayed so close with that header as well.
Trumpet lips on for glasses.
Jones on for Mignolet ? I’m sick of him in goal.
LOLZ at ‘Trumpet Lips’
What do you mean you can’t believe the stick Mignolet is getting, trumpet face? !
I don’t know what his day job is but he’s not a fecking goalkeeper!
Look at the Ludogorets goal again. The second Sterling is dispossessed, there are 4 LFC players already out of the game as they are ahead of the ball (3 + Sterling). The guy takes one touch, plays a 20 yard straight pass taking out Gerrard, Henderson and Lucas, and we now have 7 of LFC’s 10 outfield players out of the game.
On the TV, the talk was all of the defence, and how they need to “stay tight” and “close out” games in situations like this – protecting a lead with minutes to play. Yet from where I’m sitting, the only people not to blame for the goal are Sakho. Lovren and Manquillo (Mignolet was awful for the goal). The concession has absolutely nothing to do with “new defenders still getting used to playing together”; it was all to do with what’s going on in front of them (including the one – Moreno – who was in advance of Sterling when he lost the ball).
All teams are vulnerable in transition play, but none looks as vulnerable as us. I don’t know whether it’s tactical or something to do with Rodgers’/LFC’s footballing philosophy which dispenses with solidity in favour of fluidity, but until it changes we will keep conceding goals.
Right now, we are bang on target to concede another 50 league goals this season. Once everyone is in the groove, we have enough firepower to get close to scoring another 100, so maybe it turns out alright in the end. We’ll see. But in the meantime, I think pundits and fans need to get off the backs of the defenders. I don’t care who is playing centre-half or fullback; you can’t play like that and expect half-decent opposition to have ‘nil’ against their name come 90mins.
Spot on. It’s easy to blame the defenders. All we heard last season was ‘individual mistakes’, but these are clearly good defenders. The problem is game-management and, I have to say, our skipper should be responsible for that: it’s his job to organise the team on the field.
Don’t agree. I do agree about the goal in the sense it was naive for Moreno et al to be so far up the field at a time when the highest priority was not to concede but it’s daft not to question the play of the central defenders. Have a look at this and tell me Sakho has done ok here.
https://vine.co/v/OW7neOwLdxd
It’s appalling defending. We saw a potentially game changing mistake when Chadli got through just before half time against Spurs.
Villa’s goal on Saturday saw Lovren and Sakho both at fault. Lovren for letting his man get in front and Sakho for letting the ball bounce prior to the corner.
Last night Ludogorets should have scored when Sakho ran out and jumped into his man who promptly slipped it past him and Lovren wasn’t in a good enough position to react.
There are plenty of other examples from this season alone and we’ve only played 5 matches.
Letting the ball bounce, not staying on your feet and not staying goal side when marking corners is taught at under 7’s level. By 8 or 9 years of age we expect footballers to know this and not do it.
I’m sure there can be blame placed on those in front and behind but under no circumstance can we say the defence are not to blame. You could say they’ve been shocking even if they were playing in the non league but at this level it’s beyond words. I’ve been a strong advocate of playing Lovren and Sakho. I still think Lovren is our future. His pace (or lack of) worries me though.
Sakho is a strange one though. I’m not good enough to play for my local pub team anymore but if the ball drops to me on the edge of the box I can hit the target with power. Throw the ball to me and I can get it under control and pass it. How is it then that Sakho can’t do these basics of football? He just doesn’t look comfortable on the ball. He looks like the kid in school who you know is rubbish but wants to get involved. A simple 5 yard pass seems uncomfortable in his body shape.
The point is, if your team mates let you down and you find yourself under pressure defending there has to be a certain level of competence. As it stands, I can’t see it.
Christ, are we ever going to agree on anything again? :-)
I think what you’re doing here is selective remembering. Saying “Look at defender X making a mistake here. He’s no good.” You could do that with any defender who has ever played the game. If an alien landed here tomorrow and you showed him a video of Kompany’s performance at Anfield last year, he’d come away thinking the guy’s crap. Kompany had a shocker that day and was directly responsible for the goal that lost them the game and almost lost them the title. Of course, some defenders are better than others and Kompany is, for my money, probably the best, but Lovren, Sakho and Skrtel are all top quality centre-halves.
Every fan focuses more on their own players and team, of course, and the result is that you wind up thinking we’ve done more magnificent things than we really have, and that we’ve also ballsed up more than we really have. If you’re suggesting that our defenders are responsible for more individual errors than the EPL average, I would bet that’s wrong. The Spurs defence makes mistakes, so does the Arsenal defence, Everton, ManU, the lot of them. Which centre-halves at these rival clubs would you trade for ours?
On the Sakho thing, I think a lot of people have been listening to pundits and the press too much. The idea that Sakho can’t pass a ball is a myth. A complete myth, borne of the fact he’s lanky and ungainly and that a lot of commentators have just started saying so. (Did you know John Barnes never had a good game for England?) I pulled his pass completion stats and put them on here the last time this came up, but I can’t be arsed to do so again. The fact remains, the numbers simply don’t support this “uncomfortable in possession” stuff. He’s not Beckenbauer or Hansen, but then who is?
We could have Baresi, Costacurta, Tassotti and Maldini at the back and playing the way we do we will still concede more goals than is good for us. Some will be individual defensive mistakes – just like happens to all teams – but most will be due to the way we are set-up, the way we play, an example of which was the Ludogorets goal last night.
If this is the price we pay for our style and it produces similar results to last season, I won’t be complaining, but we need to rid ourselves of this delusion that you can play like we are and keep it tight at the back. You simply cannot.
Haha, I’d hate to live in a world where we all agreed with each other, Brownie mate.
I enjoy debating (trolling) because I often learn from it. I make a point, get told it’s ridiculous for x reason which I comprehend and then that becomes my view. In this case however, that’s not gonna happen just yet, lol. Maybe down the line I’ll concede you’re right but I doubt it.
The thing is mate, everyone makes mistakes whether in life or in football. I get that. What we measure on is how frequently those mistakes are made. A few times are generally over looked. Regular occurrences have to be addressed. Believe it or not, I always give LFC players a chance and Sakho still deserves more time to show what he can do. At the same time I get a gut feeling. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong. My gut feeling on this is he’s not gonna be good enough for a team who finished second in the league and expect top 4. His performances so far back that up regardless of what happens in the future, surely.
In answer to your question (and without being childish to make a point). I’ll list the centre halves I’d have before Sakho. I’ve only thought about last seasons top 5 but Skrtel, Cahill, Terry, Kompany, Demichelis, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Distin and Jagielka. I’d swap with any of those in a heartbeat.
I left City and Chelsea out of that list for a reason, you cheat! :-)
As for the Arsenal pair – didn’t you see last night?
Sako is a strange one – still young but played for PSG since aged 17, captained them, has a couple of dozen caps for France ( these aren’t pub teams) before he comes to Anfield, yet often hasn’t looked like he has that level of experience in a red shirt. Can’t put my finger on it.
He’s still to learn English but Lovren and Mignolet speak French. He is clearly settled here, loves the city and the club, but doesn’t yet feel right.
Has always looked a class act playing for France….
He’ll be alright in the long run – he is clearly a good player.
Sakho doesn’t cost us goals. Lovren does, near every game.
There are two defenders covering the forward but Lovren’s positioning and decisions aren’t great – again.
At the point sterling is dispossessed Lovren needs to know what’s around him and decide what to do. With only one attacker and Manquillo right there the other side of the forward, the two of them should step up and play the attacker offside.
Otherwise, eg if there are other attackers around, or by default, Lovren has to anticipate the pass to his left where there’s a big patch of space. He doesn’t, thinks he can get a last ditch tackle in once the pass gets played, but he’s not quick enough. It was a gamble he keeps making and it’s gonna cost us just on sheer percentages. Skrtel is smarter than that so doesn’t get caught out like that. Lovren just doesn’t really get what he’s doing until it’s too late. Hence he gets beaten.
Moreno and Sakho have moved up because Sterling was away and you don’t want to leave big gaps between defence and midfield for opposition to run into. But there shouldn’t be any need for more than 2 defenders for one attacker anyhow.
RM are going to look at that goal and the Citeh goal and just play passes down his side all game long. It’s a sure thing.
Even Kyriagos doesn’t mess that up. Lovren is just too much of a jack in the box.
There is a lot of sense in what Gibbo says about Balotelli play. He is a different type of striker, and the team needs to adapt to his movements, likewise, he may want to adapt to the team’s movements a bit. I believe it will come.
What baffles me though, is the fact that Rodgers is trying to change the whole concept of how this team is used to play (quite successfully, lest we forget).
We now see a lot of aerial crosses from the flanks, instead of lightning-quick fluid attacks where the front line players would interchange positions, pop up left, right and center and give a headache to opposition defenders.
Now we seem to be all flat and square. It may sound like a blasphemy, but we resemble Moyes’s ManUtd.. a lot of crosses, not enough intelligent movement in the center, predictability, flatness, lack of incisive movement.
Basically, not only the team has to get used to the new players, they also have to get used to this constant tweaking in formations, and that makes them all stutter. Because they think a second too much about what to do next, instead of playing intuitively… and while they are thinking, they are either dispossessed, or the defences already see what they are trying to do, and intercept or block.
Perhaps Rodgers is thinking about making us defensively more solid? But we seem to be even more error-prone than last season… Simply because our stuttering in going forward makes us dispossessed more often, and more open to the counter attacks.
So, while defence (and I don’t mean the CBs or FBs, I mean the whole thing) hasn’t improved, the attack is suffering from the strange rigid approach that has been taken by Rodgers, for the reasons unknown.
I am not looking forward to the West Ham, to be honest. Unless we go back to our favorite DIAMOND.
I thought that was Basil ?
Who’s Basil ?
we’re not great at this one striker 433 thing. we don’t penetrate their box enough and just take pot shots. What’s wrong with working down the channels and then cutting the ball back, like Citeh and Chelski do. We never do that so we’re always infront of their defence.
Lots of sorting out to do, especially when Balo doesn’t move around like Studge does.
Best English Champions League result this week? Liverpool.
Not even full strength or knitted together yet. Onwards and upwards.