IT’S the first Tuesday Review of the year and joining Neil Atkinson and Sean Rogers is Ian Salmon as the three discuss Liverpool’s very disappointing result against West Ham United. They look at what worked and what didn’t for Liverpool and discuss Jurgen Klopp’s anger at the performance.
Discussed over the hour:
What was the manager thinking of doing with his selection and set up, was lack of options a factor?
To the naked eye it looked like the formation had been tweaked again, with Firmino a little deeper than usual, certainly more 4231 than 442?
Couldn’t seem to get any real grip on the tempo in the middle, both Milner and especially Henderson missing, surely on paper Liverpool should have been strong enough anyway?
In the cold light of day still a devastating result, reflected in the manager comments, he wants emotional football and was certainly angry himself post-match.
Liverpool throwing in 32 crosses over the 90 minutes and not one of them even threatening to be dangerous and only 2 hitting their intended target.
The 15 attempts at goal from outside the area, surely not in the plan?
West Ham having a plan and executing it well, targeting specific areas and player and dominating us aerially and Liverpool struggled to find any answers, even more so after conceding the lead.
The lack of flexibility and cohesion a massive problem and not boding well for the immediate future?
Benteke extremely quiet and struggling to link up with any one of his team mates, but having scored two winners in the last three games, is it all on him?
The Tuesday Review – Loads of chickens and even more eggs.
Here is a small preview of this week’s show for non-subscribers below where Sean talks about what Jürgen Klopp’s plan for West Ham might have been before it all went horribly wrong:
[audioplayer file=”https://www.theanfieldwrap.com/preview_Clips/Tuesday_Review_Clip.mp3″]
A superb show. Spot on about our problems in attack and how teams are generally finding it easier to deal with the 4-2-3-1 these days. We need our strikers back.
This show gets better and betrer. I think it helps when we’ve lost. If you’re genuinely interested in footballing analytics, there’s always more material when you’re on the wrong end of the result. Or at least it seems that way.
Agree with the criticism of Clyne on both goals. They’re not egregious errors, but he can do better on both occasions. On the second, his approach has to be that I’ll do everything up to and including giving away a penalty as I’m not going to out-jump Carroll. As a fullback, you should be thinking pre-game about what your response will be if/when their striker pulls wide onto you. If that striker is Carroll, you can’t be thinking you’ll compete aerially. So just as he should walk Antonio out of the box on the first, he should be blocking off Carroll on the second. The foul would have to be extremely conspicuous for the ref to ping Clyne in a physical confrontation with Carroll. Opposition defenders employed this tactic all the time when we had Heskey, who was repeatedly (and incorrectly) hauled up for attacking fouls as he sought to compete.
More generally, agree that Klopp has to get our three amigos to work for Benteke rather than the other way around. Until such time as our 3 (non-)tens / false 9 combo demonstrates it can deliver goals, you have to put your trust in the 1-in-2 striker. That doesn’t mean lobbing in any old ball any old time (which accounts for the vast bulk of our 32 crosses). As I wrote elsewhere, Ross Noble hit two crosses himself that were better than anything our entire team came up with. Benteke will take quality over quantity any time.
The Americans have a saying about sports: to win things, you need your best players to be your best players. Tell me after a game that our MotM was Can or Lovren, and I’m likely to guess that we didn’t win the game. We need to find a way to work that gets the best from Coutinho and – in this present team at least – Benteke (this is why managers like Klopp get paid the big bucks) and I don’t see how this happens in a 4-2-3-1. Firmino has to be pushed up alongside Benteke or the season will continue to frustrate, punctuated by the odd unlikely win here and there.
Did I mention what a great show this is?
I really don’t know why I listen to you fellas. Your Friday night predictions are always wrong and you were all rattling on about playing Benteke tonight. Much better without him!*
Sent with lightness in my heart, not fume :-)