LIVERPOOL qualify for the next round. They progress. Without progress.
Repeatedly Liverpool should put the football match to bed. Repeatedly they don’t do so. Many passages of play have some glorious touches but only Milner’s early penalty offers us a taste of glory.
Frankly, it has to improve. If the Liverpool manager decides to make the contest a game of tennis then he needs his lads to serve some aces.
Instead, there are endless rallies, each stroke ratcheting up the tension, never the release of the winner.
Player ratings: Liverpool 1 Augsburg 0
Klopp is well within his rights to encourage an open game. It is a valid way to play and Liverpool should have got themselves out of sight vindicating his decision.
As I used to say about his predecessor in the Liverpool job, he can’t kick the ball in the goal for them.
There was no single offender.
Roberto Firmino, Philippe Coutinho and especially Jordan Henderson really should score — the captain getting on his own back about the miss five minutes later. Which is fine as I am on his back now.
If he is doing all that third man running with the risks that ensue then he needs to look like a double figures midfielder across the course of the season. The time ticks on for when he adds these goals to his game. That time is now.
There was much to admire in Liverpool’s performance and much to worry about, too, especially in the context of the final.
Football matches are rarely definitive but Sunday should be. That should be the special, joyous nature of a final. It is itself. It leads to nothing more. Normally.
The final hung over the game. Coutinho goes down, what about the final? Has Lucas Leiva played himself into contention for the final? Daniel Sturridge gets the hook on 60 because of the final.
If you know that, then don’t the players?
And so in a sense, they may well reflect on a job done well rather than just a job done. The win is in the bag, Liverpool are in the hat.
But the only way Liverpool put a run of results together is to genuinely put a run of performances together. No matter the personnel or how settled the side, they don’t look like doing that.
To Sunday. Klopp’s Liverpool may well win. They may well lose. They may play well. They may play poorly. They will all be committed, that’s all we do know. They are a football team determined to offer no clues to their true identity.
Hence Sunday isn’t as definitive as finals usually are. It, and the two league games which follow it, are a diagnosis of these Reds. It’s time to take the mask off — time to be the football team they are.
It’s time to win, win well, keep winning. It’s time for progress.
Up the weirdo Reds.
Klopp needs to order Can to sit in front of the back four and protect them. He runs around like a headless chicken to little effect. Why isn’t Klopp shouting at him to stay put?
Midfield in an area we need to buy quality because neither tactically nor technically are our midfielders capable of controlling a game.
If our midfield played against the likes of Dortmund or Seville as we did tonight, we’d be picked off on the counter-attack very easily.
If we’d been 4-0 up after sixty mins no-one could have complained. And yet had we drawn 1-1 at the death, going out on away goals, no-one could have complained. Weird indeed! At times we look fantastic going forward and every now and then we get a City, Chelsea, Southampton, Norwich & Villa. Scoring 3,4,5,6,6 away from home has to mean something. However too many times we’ve looked 80% great then failed to score more than one and by the 90th minute we’re all a bit fed up, including half the team. And we draw or lose. Hopefully the return of Sturridge and Coutinho reminds this team that 80% great can easily become 100% great when you have some people finishing those lovely moves. Let’s hope Sunday is proof.
We are in the eye of the storm – It will come and I think the next 6-7 years will be the best 5 years when looking back in 2023. YNWA
Pleased with our play in the two boxes tonight:
~ Mig played well. Rescued our crispy defensive line on a few occasions with decisive action. (#NoMoreFalse1 :)
~ A joy to watch the movement and link up play among the front 3. Keep doing that and these 3 are talented enough to give us goals consistently.
(was thinking to myself whether Lallana would improve our game tonight if he starts instead of Milner or Firmino?)
“No matter the personnel or how settled the side, they don’t look like doing that.”
Without Sturridge it`s impossible , with him it is possible but it`s only been 3 games, give the new trio some time before we make this kind of conclusions. Firmino and Sturridge are clearly still trying to figure each other games out, we will be blowing teams away with this trio , just must not be so impatient.
You’re exactly right. These really are the weirdo reds.
‘The Liverpool Way’ since 1990 by my understanding is making everything look as hard as possible and doing everything in as nervy a way as we possibly can at all times. We do my head in.
Winning a final in normal time in a game shorn of drama (say 2-0 or 3-1) would be a watershed moment but that’s probably just wishful thinking.
Lol our little men(didn’t realize Moreno was actually shorter than Coutinho, did you?) are full of such artful fuc*ing madness. But it rolled on. Rather, crashed along at a bit of pace we attacked. And that’s what beer does sometimes. I looked into this game and saw one of those “their keeper gets an 8/10 because he was superman”. But the youth, they are young remember. They’ve been young for awhile,aye that’s a problem, I won’t pretend otherwise. But Moreno and Can weren’t here in 13/14, they never felt that. Henderson isn’t 100%, I think that may be an American expression, but he’s playing through pain. I hope he can really do it, I think so, we forget how much we rely on that man, collective ADD I guess. I’ll mention 13/14 again and relive that City game. No not Coutinho and that moment of glory or The Battle cry. The Red shown to Henderson. It’s possible our challenge ended right then and there. But I recently bought a Lucas jersey and I’ll be damned if I don’t puff that lad up. He’s red through and through, and I think he could do Kolo out of a job. But I’m going to ease off and remember that 4-1 and pray for a Lazy Toure, but a fit Daniel Sturridge feels all old time. Like a fit Fernando Torres running at Vidic and the chaos that ensued. Coutinho it seems has become City’s worst bloody nightmare. He’s fit. Boy can handle it. Firmino, they seem shy on him too. Well I’m watching a brilliant Seinfeld and I’m tired of trying to talk myself into a false sense of security and postpone the nervous breakdown until Sunday. I’m shooting for Saturday night.
Thought we did everything pretty well until the final ball which is always the hardest bit. Sometimes all 6 go in, as they have done and sometimes they creep round the post or you just don’t put enough on it. Last night was really about those couple of inches that make the difference to taking the foot off the gas at 60 odd. The encouraging thing though is that we’re creating good chances and to be fait their keeper had a blinder.
Played well enough but can’t put the damn thing in the net. Some unbelievable misses there. And this Augsburg side really had nothing on us. Showed them way too much respect at times. Or fear of “the usual” happening. The lads need to calm down, slow down (in the mind) and have some belief.
Funnily enough, I think City will suit us much better. Might concede, of course, but attacking wise definitely prefer playing City’s footballers than a low block of six to eight battlers.
Initial thoughts after the match:
Pretty uninspiring stuff tbh, though Augsburg gave a good account of themselves. Daniel Sturridge is so much better than his teammates, played some lovely passes tonight only for Coutinho, Firmino et al to be caught on their heels. Kloppo has given the players a year to impress him: much of the current eleven are making his decision for him. Firmino could go either way. I can imagine the data guy looking at his stats: ‘wins the ball back more than any other player in the Bundesliga’, without reading the next bit ‘after losing it’.
We could do worse than signing (Smash) Hitz and Stafylidis. Imagine a goalie who can catch, kick and command his area and a two-footed left back. The latter looked a really good player, good with and without the ball.
All a bit harsh I know, but these were my initial thoughts. Agree with Neil about moving Coutinho back. But we need some magic dust. We’re more solid under Klopp. I just feel, watching this team, that too many have too low ceilings. Henderson’s development has been stalled by injury, Milner isn’t really good enough nor are the full backs or centre-backs. The less said about the keeper the better. Can, Gomez and some of the youngsters (Origi, Ings, Stewart, Ibe, Ilori, Smith) have potential. Coutinho’s at a crossroads: he really needs to start delivering more consistently (he has the ability), same with Firmino. Sturridge is our only world class player. We need an injection of quality to support him. Torres had Alonso, Gerrard and Mascherano. Suarez had Gerrard, Sterling and Sturridge.
Hats off to the Ausburg fans, they were as well drilled as their team. particularly impressed with their silence until we kick off routine at half time, real German engineering !! A
lways difficult winning these type of games, we won it and that will do, we can all move on to Sunday knowing who we have in the the next round from noon today.
This team needs two more world class players and it does not matter where they are. If its a goalie and defender, we concede less, if its up front we score more if its in midfield we do a bit of both and control the game more, but more importantly it just takes the pressure off the rest and they all look better.
I think you are 100% right -> 2-3 top class players and we are fighting for the title. Because ones things start clicking everyone else raise their level as well. It’s always like this!!!
Agreed it was a strange game. But the most positive thing for me is that its now 3 consecutive clean sheets for the first time since August. This bodes well for the idea of putting a run together because if we are to put a run together then, with our ‘issues’ in the final third, it is going to have to be built on clean sheets. Another one on Sunday would be nice!
Augsburg fans were and are absolutely brilliant. Agree with the earlier comment on Hitz and Stafylidis, both really impressive. I think Stafylidis was once released by Fulham but these things are just insignificant nowadays.
Its sadly slightly better with Sturridge than without, at least now we have a focal point but it’s like the side has got that used to giving a goal away they play the game half heartedly. Has Klopps move from pressing left them all baffled, going back to his arrival he spoke about defending, are we now (that he actually has time) starting to work with the GK and defending as a team.
For me I’d pull Henderson, he’s doing half a job, I’d move Coutinho back so those long range toe bongers become long range passes. I go two up front, Sturridge and Origi, Firmino in behind, let’s go down in a blaze of goals, because with the glory comes.