Liverpool post match 1-4

[ian_marshall]

Poor performance today and Liverpool thoroughly deserved the win.

 

I'm not going to get too downbeat after this result. Liverpool are an excellent side and tactically brilliant. Their midfield 5 will cause many a good side problems this season as they interchange positions and mix up runners into the box. It makes it very hard to pick up a man as you don't know which is going to make the run, and if you man mark they draw you out of position to create space for their teammates to run into. 

 

Admittedly we looked poor in centre midfield today but that was more a tactical issue as opposed to personnel. Yes, Kante is a huge loss but his presence today wouldn't have made any difference at all. He played in midfield last season at Anfield when we were well and truly overrun and outplayed by Liverpool, and although the result wasn't quite as high on that day as today's scoreline there really wasn't much between the two performances. We really needed to operate with a 4-5-1 defensive formation that could transition into a 4-3-3 in offensive situations. This would have allowed us to be more compact and limit the space for Liverpool to play their intricate one touch passing game. It also would have enabled us to spring the counter without leaving us too exposed on the turnover. We have to learn from today.

 

What frustrated me the most today was our reluctance to keep the ball on the floor and play our passing game and retain possession. The ball over the top was far too predictable and Liverpool read us like a book, which meant possession was handed straight back to our opponents everytime we attempted to break. Again this was tactical and should have been addressed as it was unacceptable. 

 

I understand why people are critical of Mahrez, but I actually feel sorry for the lad. Teams are doubling and tripling up on him giving him no space whatsoever to work in. We desperately need another focal point in the team to prevent this from happening.

 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Hopefully today has been a bit of a reality check for all concerned and it acts as a catalyst to change things up a little inorder to prevent us becoming too predictable. 

[Donut]

8 minutes ago, ian_marshall said:

Poor performance today and Liverpool thoroughly deserved the win.

 

I'm not going to get too downbeat after this result. Liverpool are an excellent side and tactically brilliant. Their midfield 5 will cause many a good side problems this season as they interchange positions and mix up runners into the box. It makes it very hard to to pick up a man as you don't know which is going to make the run, and if you man mark they draw you out of position to create space for their teammates to run into. 

 

Admittedly we looked poor in centre midfield today but that was more a tactical issue as opposed to personnel. Yes, Kante is a huge loss but his presence today wouldn't have made any difference at all. He played in midfield last season at Anfield when we were well and truly overrun and outplayed by Liverpool, and although the result wasn't quite as high on that day as today's scoreline there really wasn't much between the two performances. We really needed to operate with a 4-5-1 defensive formation that could transition into a 4-3-3 in offensive situations. This would have allowed us to be more compact and limit the space for Liverpool to play their intricate one touch passing game. It also would have enabled us to spring the counter without leaving us to exposed on the turnover. We have to learn from today.

 

What frustrated me the most today was our reluctance to keep the ball of the floor and play our passing game and retain possession. The ball over the top was far too predictable and Liverpool read us like a book, which meant possession was handed straight back to our opponents everytime we attempted to break. Again this was tactical this should have been addressed as it was unacceptable. 

 

I understand why people are critical of Mahrez, but I actually feel sorry for the lad. Teams are doubling and tripling up on him giving him no space whatsoever to work in. We desperately need another focal point in the team to prevent this from happening.

 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Hopefully today has been a bit of a reality check for all concerned and it acts as a catalyst to change things up a little inorder to prevent us becoming too predictable. 

I think youre absolutely right about the ball over the top.

 

Its a strength of ours obviously, but we are completely overdoing it at times. There is a time to retain possession and build progressively, too often i just see us bang a ball over the top hopefully.

 

We are much better than this. We are capable of using this as one weapon, but also playing good passing football too.

[Fox 4 Life]

I can't stand the people saying "we won the title last year what more do you want". **** that, how about we defend it and not just settle for mid table. Let's not be a Blackburn FFS. Yes we lost kante but the whole team looks a complete shadow of last year, sort it out Claudio!

[foxes_rule1978]

1 hour ago, HighPeakFox said:

 

[shen]

The negativity in this thread is mind-boggling. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. How can fans, who realistically expect a top 10 finish, be so furious at us losing at Anfield against a team tipped to finish above us? Of course we wont fight for the title again, but the fact we won has absolutely gotten to people's heads.

 

Yes, we were soundly beaten, but there was effort and will to get back into the game, epitomised by the high-risk rush up the pitch by Kasper for their last goal. Getting beaten by two or by three matters not a jot. Instead, he gets lambasted after having kept us within reach for 88 minutes. Wow.

 

we'll hopefully get this sorted and learn from it, but why are so many getting on the players' backs? They won the ruddy title less than four months ago and we lost there last tim too.

[foxes_rule1978]

1 minute ago, Fox 4 Life said:

I can't stand the people saying "we won the title last year what more do you want". **** that, how about we defend it and not just settle for mid table. Let's not be a Blackburn FFS. Yes we lost kante but the whole team looks a complete shadow of last year, sort it out Claudio!

I agree, why settle for less, in the summer we had a chance to serious step up and now I think we didn't take that opportunity. We needed to risk spending serious money to consolidate our position, step up from just hoping to be a mediocre pl team.. 

[ian_marshall]

Just now, Donut said:

I think youre absolutely right about the ball over the top.

 

Its a strength of ours obviously, but we are completely overdoing it at times. There is a time to retain possession and build progressively, too often i just see us bang a ball over the top hopefully.

 

We are much better than this. We are capable of using this as one weapon, but also playing good passing football too.

I agree. That passage of play against Liverpool at home last season where we sliced through them with fantastic one touch triangles showed how effective we can be when we keep the ball on the deck. 

 

We are a very good technical footballing team when we put our minds to it, but I feel at times like the player's don't fully believe that they are as good as they actually are which is a real shame.

[shen]

2 minutes ago, Fox 4 Life said:

I can't stand the people saying "we won the title last year what more do you want". **** that, how about we defend it and not just settle for mid table. Let's not be a Blackburn FFS. Yes we lost kante but the whole team looks a complete shadow of last year, sort it out Claudio!

How about not jumping on the players' and managers' backs four games into the season?

[tsintskaro]

it was 70 minute and liverpool had ran 6 kilometers more than leicester

and also:

fourth game - four injured

 

[SA1971]

LFC Fan here

 

Please don't slag me off.

 

For many reasons I'm was ecstatic Leicester won the Prem, they deserved it hand over fist. You created another worthy entry in the history of football and stuck two fingers up at the established teams.

Today - 10th Sept 2016  - was not a good day for you. I am worried that this season for Leicester will not be the best. Im not here to gloat but to say

i hope Leicester can quickly find their feet again and quickly. I was expecting a draw for LFC at best but alas. Keep the faith you foxes. Im rooting for you.

 

[HankMarvin]

4 hours ago, foxes_rule1978 said:

Vardy is the one player that deserves a lot of credit, he is feeding off Jack but still got two goals so far and looks a threat 

When did we sign him ?

[UPinCarolina]

2 minutes ago, HankMarvin said:

When did we sign him ?

Oh, Jack Shite? You had your head in the sand then, eh? Like an ostrich? 

[foxes_rule1978]

3 minutes ago, HankMarvin said:

When did we sign him ?

Haha, When we decided to not sign another midfielder... 

[Fox 4 Life]

23 minutes ago, shen said:

How about not jumping on the players' and managers' backs four games into the season?

Why though? Because we won the league? How about looking like we fancy defending it rather that being a flash in the pan. Yes it's 4 games but let's be honest we have looked avergae at best. 

[Donut]

2 minutes ago, SA1971 said:

LFC Fan here

 

Please don't slag me off.

 

For many reasons I'm was ecstatic Leicester won the Prem, they deserved it hand over fist. You created another worthy entry in the history of football and stuck two fingers up at the established teams.

Today - 10th Sept 2016  - was not a good day for you. I am worried that this season for Leicester will not be the best. Im not here to gloat but to say

i hope Leicester can quickly find their feet again and quickly. I was expecting a draw for LFC at best but alas. Keep the faith you foxes. Im rooting for you.

 

No slagging off from me here, thought you were thoroughly good value for your win today.

 

I think the early results have shown we have to adapt. We need more to our game than the quick counter attack, and we have to be flexible enough to change our formation because we are persisting with 4-4-2 and its just not working, and without mentioning the K word, our reluctance to change our formation is limiting us quite badly.

 

Weve still got good players and its early days, i still think we will be around the Europa League spots if we get our mojo back, but i think tactically, and in our style, we arent giving ourselves the chance to get results at the moment. And thats frustrating.

[BenTheFox]

I wonder if it's worth giving three at the back another try. It could help us not as exposed through the middle as we were today. 

[Guest Col city fan]

1 minute ago, Fox 4 Life said:

Why though? Because we won the league? How about looking like we fancy defending it rather that being a flash in the pan. Yes it's 4 games but let's be honest we have looked avergae at best. 

Come on mate. Average don't cut it (even though you did say, at best). Today we could have conceded 6 or 7. Today we were distinctly below average and dare I say it, worse than anything we saw really under Pearson in the Prem.

Its been a long time since I've seen one of our central midfielders (Amartey in this case) look as completely out of depth as he did today. It was literally like a Prem side playing a side from league two at times in the game today.

[kingfox]

Reflecting on earlier & calming down a bit, I think it really depends on how teams move the ball against us so far this season.

 

Liverpool's movement was outstanding today and we simply couldn't contain it, the likes of Firmino were finding pockets of space all the time, and it didn't help matters that our defence were exposed, because the midfielders weren't doing their job. Liverpool's ball movement & the movement of their players were too hot to handle, they did exactly the same against Barca in Pre Season, Arsenal in the first game and we saw it in patches against Spurs. When their front four are on form, they can carve any team open.

 

We played exactly the same formation against Arsenal and we managed a 0-0 draw. Their movement was nowhere near the quality of Liverpool's until Ozil came on, then they created a few chances. For 70 minutes they were slow, they relied on crosses which played into our hands and when trying to play it through the middle, they kept giving the ball away. Liverpool didn't do that today, they were quick in their play and their movement was outstanding.

 

What other teams are we going to play against this season that move the ball as well as Liverpool? Man City probably, Chelsea maybe, Man Utd maybe, that's about it.

 

Wanting to scrap 4-4-2 after getting trounced today is a pure knee-jerk reaction, it will obviously work in some games but it definitely won't work in others, hence needing a Plan B against the likes of Liverpool.

[BenTheFox]

A reason I was so keen on the idea of signing N'Zonzi is that he retains possession very well. He'd help us to be able to build through the middle, which is something we are lacking in my opinion. 

[biggs]

 Amartey as a solid replacement for kante lasted less than one game. I'd like to say I'm shocked at the melt down but I'm not. All those calling us into the relegation fight will have us title contenders after a 3 game winning streak. So bloody fickle! 

 

We were poor today but it's not that we can't rebound from this. Claudio will sort this out and the sheer pride of the players will have us in good order I'm suggesting very quickly. No player at this level wants to be embarrassed so expect a new level of energy and performance. We are a good team that needs to adjust to how other teams play us now. Losing Kante made an impact but this team is so much more than the player we no longer have.

 

Maybe I'm in the minority and still believe we will do extremely well this season. Time will tell but overreacting to the start is unfair. My thought is Ranieri and his staff will get it right very quickly and the team will come through to all our liking. Have some faith in the manager, our captain, our team leaders and the rest of the players. No rah rah just how I see it.

[Harry - LCFC]

Refuse to get too negative about things.

 

I'm confident that we'll look back on this start as something that didn't really reflect how the season went as a whole. Whatever the issues are, an unhelpful pre-season, finding a way to play without Kante or the lack of form from our best players, I reckon they'll be temporary problems.

 

We've got a title winning squad minus one exceptional player, we can't be that bad.

[sdb]

1 hour ago, ian_marshall said:

Poor performance today and Liverpool thoroughly deserved the win.

 

I'm not going to get too downbeat after this result. Liverpool are an excellent side and tactically brilliant. Their midfield 5 will cause many a good side problems this season as they interchange positions and mix up runners into the box. It makes it very hard to pick up a man as you don't know which is going to make the run, and if you man mark they draw you out of position to create space for their teammates to run into. 

 

Admittedly we looked poor in centre midfield today but that was more a tactical issue as opposed to personnel. Yes, Kante is a huge loss but his presence today wouldn't have made any difference at all. He played in midfield last season at Anfield when we were well and truly overrun and outplayed by Liverpool, and although the result wasn't quite as high on that day as today's scoreline there really wasn't much between the two performances. We really needed to operate with a 4-5-1 defensive formation that could transition into a 4-3-3 in offensive situations. This would have allowed us to be more compact and limit the space for Liverpool to play their intricate one touch passing game. It also would have enabled us to spring the counter without leaving us too exposed on the turnover. We have to learn from today.

 

What frustrated me the most today was our reluctance to keep the ball on the floor and play our passing game and retain possession. The ball over the top was far too predictable and Liverpool read us like a book, which meant possession was handed straight back to our opponents everytime we attempted to break. Again this was tactical and should have been addressed as it was unacceptable. 

 

I understand why people are critical of Mahrez, but I actually feel sorry for the lad. Teams are doubling and tripling up on him giving him no space whatsoever to work in. We desperately need another focal point in the team to prevent this from happening.

 

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Hopefully today has been a bit of a reality check for all concerned and it acts as a catalyst to change things up a little inorder to prevent us becoming too predictable. 

 

Very good post and thanks for saving me a load of typing! Disagree slightly over Mahrez though. If you include last season I'd say of our last 15-20 games he's been poor for half of them. Appreciate he is targeted as our main source of danger by opponents though. 

[Vardinio'sCat]

 

Thought we really wobbled when Wes pulled up badly in the first half, and I'm not sure he ever quite recovered. Then Simpson got a strain in the 2nd goal, which I was kind of glad about, because I was furious with him for not following up and making a goal line clearance. You can see on the replays he just stopped, then started again, when he realised the ball was only slowly bouncing in.

 

We looked like we had half an eye on the CL game to me, and didn't quite want to work too hard, along with many other issues.

 

When we overrate the importance of the most recent events, it is called the recency effect, which is a type of cognitive bias . Hopefully it will pull us out of our misery on wednesday! 

 

 

 

[DeadFox]

6 hours ago, Buce said:

 

How long do you intend to dine out on that?

 

We were fvcking clueless today and couldn't have complained if we'd lost 8-0. And it's not a one-off - this started in pre-season. The defence is horribly exposed without Judas in front of it, and the entire team seems unbalanced and completely lacking in desire. It's beginning to look like the pundits were right about last season - a freak season where mediocre players all exceeded their natural ability. So, so disappointing.

Even the pundits weren't that brutal!!

 

But hey, we are in champions league man!!!

[erlee]

6 hours ago, FireFox said:

Simpson shit. Morgan shit. Schmeichel shit. Fuchs poor. Amartey poor. Huth reckless. Musa average. Vardy average. Mahrez absent.

schmeichel saved at least 2 sitters..  would have been 6-1

 

Huth has slowed & Amartey was poor the whole duration