I ENJOY an unlikely part of the internet.
Not the mad 4chan, alt-right, hate the world stuff. But the lighter madness. Flat earthers on YouTube, teenagers writing fan fiction about popstars, vloggers with millions of followers for no obvious reason. That sort of thing.
It has recently come to my attention that there is also a part of the internet reserved for the Zeljko Buvac fan club. Well I say recently, it first came to my attention a few weeks ago now. When we’d ask for topics for our Wildcards show on TAW Player and people kept saying Buvac. He’d become the new season tickets versus members as the hot topic of the internet for Liverpool fans.
I couldn’t really understand what anyone wanted me to say. I’d never heard him speak about football, only had a mild idea about what the specifics of his job were at Liverpool and had no idea why he had left. And, just to remind everyone, Liverpool had also just won their first seven games of football. So I really didn’t give a hoot who was sat next to Jürgen Klopp in the dugout.
But then we started winning less games, although again to remind everyone, we still haven’t lost in the Premier League, and the “bring Buvac back” campaign went into full force. It is now everywhere. Don’t believe me? Go onto Liverpool’s Facebook page and find the announcement that the club will have a poppy on their shirt this weekend to mark Remembrance Sunday and then look at the replies. “FUCK POPPIES, WHERE IS OUR BOSNIAN NUMBER TWO?”
I think it is the “where is he?” element that is feeding a fair amount of it. We love a mystery, adore the chance for conspiracy theories and gossip. My favourite is that their wives fell out. Just because it is a throw back to the Kenny Dalglish times (first time around) when wives were said to be responsible for half the decisions Liverpool Football Club made. They were the original super agents. Wheeling and dealing AOTS.
But they are also genuine feelings, it seems, so let’s have a look at the evidence. The stat trotted out the most is that Liverpool have lost four of their last six Champions League games since Buvac left. Although true, it should be said that this includes an away trip to Roma where a narrow defeat was fine, and a Champions League final, which is hard to win at the best of times, but especially when your goalkeeper basically decides to throw two in. This season, in a tough group, we have won two lost two. Not brilliant, but certainly not a crisis.
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The other criticism is that all our attacking fluency has been lost. But again we are dealing with the specifics of a role we don’t normally know. From the limited amount of Liverpool training I have seen it seems to be Pep Ljinders running the attacking drills, with Klopp overseeing. Wouldn’t it be more likely that the man Klopp described as his “brain” was more involved in shape, tactics and opposition analysis? Again I am guessing, but so is everyone else.
Regardless, are we not in danger of judging the difference unfairly? Like an old summer romance or the one who got away, we are just choosing to remember the good times but none of the bad.
Yes, Buvac was there when we were ripping teams apart offensively and beating Manchester City 5 -1 on aggregate in the Champions League. But he was also there when we were struggling to get results against the big sides in the Premier League last season, including thumpings at City and Spurs.
A fair comparison would be the same period last season. Where Premier League results were nowhere near as good and the attacking play wasn’t as scintillating as we remember either. By this time last season we had scored four or more goals in the Premier League twice. Exactly the same as this season. It was only in December when we suddenly did it three times in a month, as well as a 7-0 demolition of Spartak Moscow in the Champions League.
The mind can play tricks, and what Man City are doing doesn’t help. I understand that. But if Liverpool don’t win the league this season it is very unlikely it is because we changed our assistant manager in the summer.
Besides, if this season is like the last one, the real fun and games are still to come. And unlike last season, we are in a much better position to capitalise.
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Bit of perspective at last. One think I look isn’t is a narcissist, so he wouldn’t bin Buvac if he knew it would GENUINELY harm the club’s chance for succes
*Klopp, not i look!!
“A fair comparison would be the same period last season. Where Premier League results were nowhere near as good and the attacking play wasn’t as scintillating as we remember either. By this time last season we had scored four or more goals in the Premier League twice. Exactly the same as this season. It was only in December when we suddenly did it three times in a month, as well as a 7-0 demolition of Spartak Moscow in the Champions League.”
Great analysis.
So we should be thrashing teams left, right and center starting with Fulham then since Buvac doesn’t seem like he was relevant to LFCs progress last season.
Bring on mighty Fulham!
Well said Gibbo!
It was a strange time to part ways.If it was amicable, then it would have happened at the end of the season. I had a bad feeling at the time.We haven’t played as well since. Hopefully he isn’t as important to Klopp’s team as we thought.
I was hoping for some juicy gossip on what had gone on. However agree with Gibbo’s article. Those games we have lost can be answered easily as we were shite in them and this was down to players being shite and had naff all to do with not having Buvac there. Short of Buvac having some sort of control device, like my sons’ Xbox/PS thingy and is steering the players round like they do on their FIFA game, then the ability to not be able to pass a ball 2 yards to a team mate or even failing in trapping a wet bag of cement has fuck all to do with tactics and knowledge of the Oppo. This comes down to players just being bollocks at that moment in time, even when Sergio Ramos tries to knock some sense into one of them who happened to play in goal for us.
When it’s not going so well we all look for reasons why.. buvac was klopps brain, ox was the only reason we got to the CL final, we were much better with coutinho etc etc. Last year we didn’t miss coutinho.. amazing really how fickle we can all be
FACT Klopp has openly said on countless of occasions that Buvac is the “BRAIN” of his team.
Therefore how can we lose our brain and still expect things to move on smoothly
How does a team function without its “Brain”?
FACT He left on the 29th of April couple of days after the first leg of the Roma match at Anfield and we’ve not won any match away in the Champions league doesn’t it speaks volumes about loosing our brains?
Liverpool has now played 20 games since that afternoon against the Potters and have won 11, drawing three times and losing six.
.
.
It’s exceedingly clear we “Liverpool” are missing the service of our former first assistant coach Zeljko Buvac, the brains behind the high-octane style of play.
.
.
The current management team are bankrupt in ideas when it comes to attacking the opponent.
It’s evidently clear in this seasons form of our attacking trio Salah, Firmino and Mane they’re lacking the cutting edge and clinical finish
.
.
They are underperforming because they are missing the tutorials of the Brain former assistant coach Buvac until we get him we can only rely on beating the terms from 7th to 20th on the league table but when we play against the top 5 teams we can only win by grinding results I don’t see us winning any big match with tactics we should forget about Europian competitions
It is with heavy heart I dare say Liverpool is now tactics-less we are just playing normal football and if a team sit back tight against us they can easily run away with a point.
Selective stats.
How about you post the win % while Buvac was at Liverpool and compare it that way instead of pointing to only the games he wasn’t around for.
It’s like you want to pretend we didn’t lose numerous times and struggle for goals occasionally when Buvac was around.