I’M not a fan of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As disappointing as our loss to Bournemouth was at the weekend, I’m not convinced it merited the reaction it got. There were hugely frustrating aspects to our performance but I’m not sure we need to buy-in an entire new backline, goalkeeper and strike force.
A similar response was to be found in some quarters to our loss to Burnley. We then went on to win five of our next six, including a 2-1 victory over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, and went unbeaten in 15 games in all competitions. The goalkeeper isn’t the next Brad Jones and more than that the fella on the bench is secretly Ray Clemence, and has just been pretending to be shit for the previous three years.
Likewise Roberto Firmino hasn’t suddenly become massively over-rated nor has Jordan Henderson ‘been found out’. Teams lose games, it happens. As much as I’ve never bought into the notion of the Premier League being ‘the best league in the world’, the fact that lower-half teams can beat sides involved in a title challenge is what makes it so exciting and I’m quite sure a similar shock will present itself to one of our rivals before the campaign is over.
The only thing that did concern me, though, was the state of our defence. Jürgen Klopp knows a lot more about football than all of us, apart from a few fellas on a forum somewhere whose talents are definitely being wasted, yet I’m not sure his decision to have Lucas Leiva as our third-choice centre-back is a wise one. Especially not when the converted midfielder will inevitably end up playing alongside another converted midfielder in James Milner.
As much as Milner has genuinely impressed in the left-back slot, and made more than a few of us look foolish, having two players out of four in the backline playing in a position that isn’t natural to them will mean that things might not always go smoothly when the defence comes under pressure; something that proved to be the case at the Vitality Stadium over the weekend.
Only Klopp will know if he fancies Lucas more than Ragnar Klavan or whether he simply thought the Brazilian was the better choice in a match where he assumed the defence wouldn’t come under significant attack, but I think not looking for an additional centre-back in the January transfer window would be madness for a team hoping to challenge for the title.
That said, it’s always worth thinking about the alternatives available to our rivals at such a time. This may come back to bite me on the arse, but I’m going to say that the other teams who look capable of mounting a title challenge from the current league situation are Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal.
Since he reverted to his favoured three at the back formation, Antonio Conte’s centre-backs have been César Azpilicueta, Gary Cahill and David Luiz. Azpilicueta is actually a full-back, though it works to play him in a back-three because that formation allows for more flexibility in your players. But who would come in if one of those three picked up an injury?
On the bench at the weekend were Branislav Ivanovic and Nathaniel Chalobah. The former is now 32 and, like Azpilicueta, is primarily a full-back, whilst the latter is a 21-year-old who can play as a defender or a midfielder. There was also Ola Aina who is a 20-year-old right-back. John Terry was nowhere to be seen, with injury cited as the reason, though the truth is that he’s no longer an integral part of Chelsea’s defensive unit and won’t be moving forward.
Amongst all the talk of the problems we’ve got at the back, if Joel Matip is absent then it’s worth bearing in mind that had one of Chelsea’s first-choice centre-backs failed a late fitness test they would have had to turn to an ageing full-back or one of three youth players, none of whom are out and out central defenders. It’s not exactly the strength in depth you imagine for a club that has more money available to it than a small nation.
For City the story wasn’t all that much different at the weekend. Nicolás Otamendi is clearly a classy centre-back, but has John Stones yet turned into the player everyone expects him to become? For all of their millions the bench featured defensive options in the form of 33-year-old Bacary Sagna, 31-year-old Pablo Zabaleta and Gaël Clichy who is the same age. Obviously age isn’t the all-important factor for defenders, but I’d hardly be excited if the Reds went all out to buy any of them in January.
So how about Arsenal? Are they packed full of defensive options that put our decision to depend on Lucas Leiva to shame? It’s long been a problem position for Arsene Wenger. He’s always had decent full-back options available to him, with Nacho Monreal and Hector Bellerin impressing whenever I’ve seen them. There are also options to replace them in the shape of Rob Holding, Carl Jenkinson and Kieran Gibbs.
When it comes to centre-back, though, things aren’t quite as rosy. I think Laurent Koscielny might be one of the best in the league, actually, and I’ve also been impressed with Shkodran Mustafi so far this season. Gabriel Paulista is OK, though Wenger’s been employing him as a full-back recently. Mathieu Debuchy is another who has been used in the centre but is actually a defensive midfielder by nature and is often deployed as a full-back by the Frenchman.
The only players Arsenal had on the bench for their 5-1 win over West Ham at the weekend were Kieran Gibbs and Rob Holding. Per Mertesacker is hoping to return in the new year, just as Kurt Zouma is on his way back from injury for Chelsea and Vincent Kompany may be able to play two games in a row at some point in his career. Are any of them defensive saviours for their team in a time of crisis, though? I’m not so sure.
I suppose my point in all of this is that it’s natural to assume that other teams have much stronger squads than you and that they’d be able to cope with an injury crisis much more easily than your side. Yet if you took Cahill out of Chelsea, Koscielny from Arsenal and Otamendi from Pep’s Manchester City side, are their replacements significantly better than Lucas Leiva or Ragnar Klavan? Perhaps they are. Perhaps they aren’t.
I’m still very much in favour of us buying a decent centre-back in January and can’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed to see a story emerge recently that said we’ve got no interest in signing Virgil van Dijk from Southampton. Yet I don’t think things are as bad as others do and I’m far from convinced that we’re in a decidedly worse position than our title rivals. You can throw the baby out with the bathwater if you want, but then you’ll have neither a baby nor water and you’ll be left with nothing but an empty bath.
Buy a TAW Player subscription for Crimbo: Three, six and 12-month options, plus a special Anfield Wrap card!
Recent Posts:
[rpfc_recent_posts_from_category meta=”true”]
Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda Photo
The other fella isnt Clemence, you’re right, but he’s ten times better than this fraud we’ve got in goal now.
Much Love
Paul
Yeah you’re right, Paul. All those times he conceded basic shots, didn’t save the first shot on target and completely missed crosses were just him giving the opposition a chance….
For the record I’m not convinced by either and if we bought another keeper in January I wouldn’t be complaining. But the idea that Mignolet is some brilliant goalkeeper is laughable and completely ignores the fact that, for whatever reason, the defence looks much happier with Karius behind them.
The trend of players’ ability improving in their absence continues. For the record I like Mignolet but I think Karius has more to him.
Adam, I don’t want to make this into a long running saga. I was only joking on Twitter the other day when I said ‘a new keeper in January’. Just a bit of a wind up.
I do have another take on this though and one I’ve been excessively banging on about on here since Sunday.
You say ” completely ignores the fact that, for whatever reason the defence looks much happier with Karius behind them”.
I think this comes down to the ‘for whatever reason’.
Mignolet has only ever started 4 games with Matip.
Clean sheet at Burton was the first, the 1-1 draw at Spurs in the league, the 2-1 win at Chelsea and the 4-1 win at home to Leicester. A review of those games would suggest that while we did concede poor goals in 2 and probably 3 of those games, and all defensive errors, I think it’s unfair to blame Mignolet direct for any. There could be a shout for Spurs despite the poor marking but I can’t fully remember it now.
For balance, if we look at the games Karius and Matip have played together there’s 9 and in those Utd, Sunderland & Southampton didn’t offer anything for us to judge on. We can say that in the Utd game Karius nearly cost us and it was far worse than the ball to Lucas v Leicester. I wasn’t convinced with our defence v both Swansea and Palace. In the other 4 (Watford, Derby, West Brom and Hull) Andy Heaton could have gone in goal and the result would have been the same.
So, I’m not necessarily down on Karius, obviously I want him to be the best in the league but Matip is key to our defence. If he goes to the African Nations now he has an olive branch we’ll all be more aware of that. In the interest of debate though I think it’s only fair to say the defence hasn’t looked better or more comfortable with Karius then with Mignolet when Matip has played. Personally, I think Mignolet more than shades it this season (with Matip).
The motivation to achieve the desired result will be high on Sunday.
I wouldn’t want to be West Ham.
One game at a time.
Perhaps playing a “weakened” defence is a carrot on a stick to teams who might park the bus.
Just a theory. I would never question Klopps wisdom, but try to understand it.
“Teams lose games” yes, but it’s the manner of the defeats that show what teams are all about. Remember Utd a decade ago? Losing games maybe but all out trying to get something from the game. Us? Winning comfortably but all out trying to hang on. And not doing it. This team are fine when things are going well but put a little adversity their way and they crumble. Neither goalkeeper is anywhere near good enough. The centre backs bar Matip aren’t good enough. The left backs aren’t good enough as full backs. And Klopps preferred 3 in midfield don’t offer enough protection to a dodgy weak and leaky defense. Gung Ho might win a league in Germany but it wont in England. The ONLY way to win a league here is solid at the back and take it from there. Not conceding practically 50 a season eg 13/14 , which we’re on course for again this season . It simply proves impossible
Hold on we went on a 15 game unbeaten run only drawing 2 or 3 after the last defeat that’s what championship winning teams do.
We had a few games when we were 2 or 3 nil up pushing for more conceded a goal and then completely shut the game out for the last 20 mins. Thats what championship winning teams do.
Sunday was a blip aided by the missing Matip but he’s not the only reason. We havent been giving the opposition a sniff of goal, that takes a whole team defending to acheive not just Matip so slagging the midfield is well of the mark for me. They collectively shit it last half hour against Bournemouth but the previous 20 odd hours of football the team was doing an excellent job of shutting teams out while still carving the opposition open on a regular basis.
We wont concede 50 goals this season i would put good money on that.
Greetings from Mainz. I’ve said it before, Karius does not look at all the keeper who left us. Obviously, he needs a little more time to get settled. The mistakes he made are very atypical. To me, it’s nervousness rather than a lack of skill – which is also a rarely seen side of Karius. Don’t forget he’s a young lad. I therefore plead for a little more support from the crowd. Have some patience and belief, he’ll reward it I’m sure.
It’s a shame that Mama Sakho can’t work his way out of the doghouse. He’s always appeared a better bet than Lovren for me. Does anybody know what crimes against humanity Sakho has committed, even Pep forgave Yaya. We may cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Hello from Philadelphia. So far much has been said about the two goalkeepers, defense and then some.
Has anyone ever wondered if the goalkeeping coach, John Achterburg is really that great at his job? Have goalkeepers improved significantly towards (what many fans often cite) world class?
I agree that when the going gets really tough, then Liverpool need to have an answer. So far they have shown they have potential to, but haven’t been consistent. It will take time.
My vote is to replace the goalkeeping coach first and go from there.
I am glad to hear Karius has given an interview in which he digs at Neville a bit. Why shouldn’t he? Neville is a good pundit but too often he sits there sneering away like his approval is the definitive one. Karius gave a timely reminder that Neville very recently found out management was fucking difficult. Carragher has been just as bad towards Karius.
He comes across as quite mentally strong which is nice to see. He also mentioned how supportive the lads have been. He has the support of those that matter, so good as Neville and Carragher are, they can both fuck right off on this one.