Lillehamring

To be fair we made numerous mistakes today - JJ played them in three times with terrible passes, ricardo at least once which really should have been a goal - fortunately we're now much better at responding to these than we were last season.

Agree - and their goal (according to their own OS) took a deflection - whilst our 'fortuitous' goal was vestergaard being in the right place, at the right time - not a beauty but far from lucky.

28.57% of the league goals we've conceded this season have been deflected shots (today & hull)

Any excuse.... (wish i had the gif)

It's also impressive how easy we make it look - apart from the assist, none of the passes are 'difficult'. Ricardo ends up in acres of space - in part due to the defended chasing nacho's decoy movement towards the ball

Especially impressive compared to the entire preston team last week who finished on 161/233

Guy at the start that said 'yeah, i suppose Stoke are just about the underdog' amd followed it up with 'yeah, possession seems to have even out now' as the stat pops up showing us with 82%

I noticed that Coady seemed to be playing a lot of passes with his left foot - certainly he looks much more comfortable than JJ or Hamza. I feel like we could do a lot worse than faes/JV/coady until doyle returns.

Highly debatable. We wouldn't have been able to rely on loans to bulk out the squad, and we've spent 50-odd M just to build a championship standard squad. The 'cliches' you mention would be apt and are phrases that i've been using since spring, and appear to be prophetic - and even if we don't go up we've revitalised the entire club and fanbase, which many people never imagined happening.

I argued at the time that relegation, though not exactly desired, was certainly not an unwelcome outcome - given the rebuild we needed to do - a tactical retreat i called it. People failed to agree, but it feels like the more i see of the rebuild the more I feel like relegation was actually something the club decided to embrace.

I think it's also telling in the blackburn game, generally our passing around the defence was the worst i've seen this season - ricardo looked jaded and JJ is a poor alternative to Doyle. If it was going to happen, combined with blackburn's press, this was the game it would happen.

I'm not sure sure this is actually the case (the performances, not the comments). I think the way Maresca plays will never see us playing what i suspect people imagine top gear to be. I think the way he plays is that for much of the time we sit in cruise control and then, when it opens up, we go into sports mode. Effectively, this is it, this is the mixed tempo pace we'll be paying at. That's not to say that every game we'll be at our best, or that we' won't be more swashbuckling at times, but those expecting a sea-change to some wild, up tempo game, i suspect, are going to be waiting a long time.

I've said it numerous times elsewhere, but JJ seems to still be really struggling with his confidence, and i can't imagine his terrible performance against liverpool will have helped things. I guess, with doyle out, he'll have plenty of game time to try to claw some confidence back.

Felt to me that JJ offered far less as an option for JV than doyle does - JV seemed to be stranded in the middle - am I imagining this?

Mads Faes/Coady/Souttar Winks/Hamza Fatawu/Casadei/Nacho/Yunus/Marcal

Exactly my thinking.

well, they had three cleared off the line, but the second and third goals would have registered very low

Gave them a foul on the box when gakpo dived after justin had run past him. He literally had his back to gakpo and was running away from him and the guy goes airborne!

I think we all know how that foul would have been judged if it was a liverpool player on the ball.

I've tried to be positive, you'll find me regularly saying that i hope he comes good, but when he puts in performances like that i'm going to call them.... It's hard to discuss a match and be complimentary to a defender at fault for two goals. I don't think he's a bad player, i've said, in most discussions, I believe he's just fuched confidence-wise and that his abilities (even his position) don't lend themselves to the type of football we're playing.

I mentioned four fuching players! But do you honestly think Justin was good tonight? At fault for two goals and contributed little either defensively or going forward. If i 'dig him out a lot' it's because i don't rate him, and when i do criticise him i'll always explain and give examples of what i believe he lacks. But, in the spirit of fairness: Casadei: looks unfit, got caught often in possession, didn't contribute much defensively or, given his size, in the air. Nacho: Did little, poor decision making, poor passing, poor touch - looks disinterested. Albrighton: Too slow, caught often in possession, poor distribution in the final third.

He was responsible for the first and second goal through simply being poor - first playing the goalscorer onside (no excuse), second getting pushed off the ball to open our entire defence. But beyond those mistakes he got beat several times, watched the ball go over his head a few times, either overcommitted or just stood watching, and he was lucky (given the ref) not to have given away a pen with a sloppy challenge. But even if we accept that he just had a bad game, it's just his confidence and awareness, everyone else is making one touch passes, while he dithers and then goes back to the keeper. I thought he'd improved the last few games, but tonight he was just terrible. I can't see Maresca accepting that sort of a performance, especially with souttar and coady coming back and looking far better on the ball and defensively.

What? Leicester is about as Labour as you can get, isn't it?

I swear i've never before heard a home support audibly groan every time a decision (and there weren't many) was given against them.

I have to say, apart from a few of really poor individual performances - i'm really proud of the team tonight. To go up against a team of that quality with 10 changes, including Souttar, Coady and Daka who haven't played a minute of football this season, and not get humiliated, to stick to the game plan and to match them for fitness shows just how much progress we've made. Annoyingly, a lot of the liverpool pressure came from us misplacing passes, which is inevitable when you have that many reserve or occasion players involved - so we didn't help ourselves in that respect, equally messing up numerous counter attacks for the same reason. But the fight and awareness to make, what, three goal line clearances - wow - such a difference to last seasons indifference. Four players for me just don't look capable of playing the Maresca system - nacho, casadei, justin and albrighton - they just don't have the control, the speed of action or the awareness to play such intricate, touch-based passing. Granted they all put in a real effort, but nothing they did came off.