The final look at a game a lot of us will not want to look at again – Liverpool’s 5-0 defeat away at Manchester City.
What about the game will have annoyed the manager? What could he have done differently? What can you hope to improve on?
Sean Rogers, Paul Cope and Neil Atkinson pick the very last bones of the carcass.
Just a note that last year Klavan played both games v MCFC.
At this level mate, the difference between a good defender and an excellent one is consistency. If you play for Liverpool you have to be at an elite level. You will have good games. I judge on how many howlers they have a season rather than how many good ones.
Genuinely nice to listen to people who know what they’re on about. I’ve heard 1000 different reasons what happened on Saturday rather than say the defending was atrocious. To say schoolboy wouldn’t be fair on some of the young lads I watch. Horrendous. Positional play should be almost natural at that level. Very odd.
It was a red. I’ve read what all the refs have said. They’ve had the benefit of every angle and they’re all unanimous. It wasn’t the kick in the head. If it was the laces it may have been a different outcome. It was the studs flying horizontally, at head height, into the keepers head. It’s endangering an opponent. Nothing else matters.
With Klopp’s pressing style positional play is more dependant on individual dynamism and recovery pace than a players starting position, as it’s a very aggressive and fluid system. This is fine in theory but when you have midfielders and defenders that are prone to making the wrong split decisions then it’s a big problem. Against a team with the quality of player that Man City has, ball watching and allowing players the space and time to pick out runners with nobody tracking them is criminal. Whether it was through balls or crosses from the flanks we were totally asleep. Hope it was a glitch but I feel the damage is done as teams know we are vulnerable after conceding eight in two away games already with the usual suspects in midfield and defence. That was reason enough to bring in some new faces in the summer. As the soft goals against column grows sadly the criticism over the summer transfer window will only grow. And rightly so. Bringing in some new faces if only for competition was the pragmatic thing to do.