SirBillShankly
Joe and Holly's Dad
santana said:
You and your formation talk. It's getting a bit tiresome/tedious/mind-numbing/boring now. Why don't you try and talk about something else
Coddite84
disaster isn't it... he's clearly no good anymore.
I disagree with Klopp when he says that this season will only be judged as a success if we win the league. I think we just need to win something to remind the club and players what it's like to hold up a trophy. After their decades in the wilderness City started with an FA cup win, and it changed the mind set of the club and gave them a positive charge. Like it or not we have been in a similar wilderness in the league for nearly 30 years, and have won nothing for the last 13 years. While coming so close to trophies (league cup finals, CL last season, Stevie's slip) should be treated as positives (which of course they are), it must also be tough for players to put it behind them straight away. Maybe there is a bit of that in our CL performances this season. In terms of the premiership, some perspective is important. We are going toe to toe with a City set up that is possibly the best that the premiership has ever seen in terms of squad, training facilities, manager, budget. Despite that there is not much to choose between us at the moment, and with a tail wind we can still beat them to the title. If however they edge us by a couple of points, it is difficult to say that the season had not been successful given that the gap from last season should have closed by twenty odd points. Surely that is progress? I think the differences of opinion on forums at the moment are more about the yardstick that people judge results, and that everyone's yard stick is different. Personally I would take an FA cup win and top four finish this season in a blink, as lifting a domestic trophy would do more for club morale than falling at the last hurdle in the CL last season. I'm in this for the long game. Confidence is the ingredient 'x' that takes players and clubs to a new level, and confidence comes from winning big matches and trophies.
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Had Fulham actually faced up instead of allowing themselves to be distracted
I would think that thinking you had scored a goal is quite distracting and that the ref would blow the whistle for a goal. A very understandable distraction.
I was still screaming at how stupid our defense was when I noticed that instead of it being 0-1 it was 1-0 on the score board. I was a lot more distracted than those poor Fulham players.
i saw fulham match
formation 541
1- team can make many chances with one in forwards
2- team can not prevent goals with 5 defenders
3- if formation not working try another
4- if liverpool think a bout trophy then forget it and don't waste time .
5- liverpool should try 442 with mane and salah in front and firmino as playmaker in midfield and replace trent with fabinho to make solid defense .
fabinho gomez vvd robertson
keita gini firmino shaqiri
salah mana
6- never afraid to try a new play style because there are many formations and maybe liverpool get better result and best performance with 442 or 352 so it is time to take the step !
There is a level of pedantry with the rules that it's not necessary to enforce. If the ball was moving, it was moving so little I don't think it makes any appreciable difference to the outcome. Same with the correct positions of throw ins and free kicks. There is a point at which it's taking the piss, and a margin within which you go 'fuck it, let's get on with the game or we'll be here all day'. How many throw ins are correctly taken? How many times does a keeper hold the ball for more than five seconds? How often does the correct added time get added on?
With officiating I think it's important to acknowledge that there are some things that come down to incompetence and ingrained bias. The disallowed goal at Arsenal being one - the only explanation for that is that the assistant doesn't know the offside rule.
And then there are some things that come down to the simple fact that it is often beyond human ability to make the calls that we expect of the officials. Had Fulham's goal stood yesterday, I'd have had no complaints. It would have been the wrong call, but the margins are so small that the linesman to some degree has to take a punt on it. Well done to him for getting it right, but there is obviously a lot of guesswork in it.
As Jürgen highlighted yesterday, the only reason there is a debate about offside is that Andy's heel is trailing and pulling the line back a few inches. And the reason for that is that seconds earlier, a Fulham player cynically held him back to prevent him getting back in time. Klopp's view was that is was a clever little tactic from Fulham, and it nearly came off for them, so you win some you lose some?
liver1
Theres no games until the 24th now and after that theres almost a game every 3-4 days until after the New Year and they come thick and fast.
So weve finished the prologue and now were about to start the main act.
We have a great platform to build on.
Reactions: SBYM
I'm sorry, mate, but you keep saying this and it's bollocks. It's pure video game mentality.
Football at this level is played at such fine margins. You can't just change formation every week until something sticks. New ways of playing need time to bed in and players have to learn new roles to exacting precision.
We're getting (ridiculously) cross that the team doesn't look fluid and aren't connecting properly, and you want to keep wiping the tactics board clean and starting again every time we don't batter our opponents? How do you expect Mane, Salah and Firmino to start playing that telepathic football again if you give them new instructions every week? They won't know where they are, let alone each other...
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Just watched the highlights again
- In the run up to the Fulham 'goal' the Fulham player does slightly pull back Robertson to prevent him getting back in line. Very cute, and something we'll need to watch.
- Alisson throws the ball on the floor to take the free kick, and if the ball is moving when he takes it, it's only doing so very slightly. I stand by my previous point, that if we're going to half the rules applied that pedantically, it's going to take three hours to get through a game of footy.
dockers_strike
Red Eyes said:
I think that 'champions' quote was misinterpreted by Dom King (massive evertonian football writer on the Mail) to mean league champions when Jurgen didnt mean that at all. I dont think Jurgen is stupid enough to say if he doesnt win the title, the season will not be a success. European people do not necessarily mean league winner when the talk about being 'champions,' they mean winning a trophy be that a cup, CL or league title.
Some years ago, the BBC tried to call the FA Cup Winners the 'FA Cup Champions' and were roundly ridiculed in England for doing so. Hence King putting his interpretation on Jurgen's comments.
It's my opinion that people settling for an FA Cup win are settling for second best and also run the risk of derailing the chance we have, however small it may be, of winning our first title in 29 years. I wont settle for an FA Cup win and finishing top 4 and certainly not in a blink. Im all on winning the title ahead of the CL and FA Cup. Will I be disappointed if we fail? Sure, but Im not about to settle for 2nd best now. It's got to be the big one or nothing for me.
dockers_strike said:
I agree, this season is all about challenging for the title, even a CL run is not so important for me.
We may not get these opportunities that often. If we win the league just once it will lift the club back up to another level.
Ill happily sacrifice all other competitions if it helps to improve our chances in the league.
Agree on his defense... Coming on as an impact sub is probably his best role against the top clubs, depending on the scoreline... A more rounded player is needed but given our lack of creativity in midfield, im not opposed to a couple starts here and there against the tougher competition.
SBYM
Who's the fella owns this shithole?
liver1 said:
Hear hear!!
A fecking GREAT platform. It's time to thrive or shit the bed. Can't wait, personally!!
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I watched the city game against manure and they had so much space it was unbelievable almost as if they couldn't care less if they lost, I firmly believe that if they do the same against us we will trounce them 8:0 but I am absolutely sure they will play a lot better against us and their tackles will be to try and maim and stop us at any cost.
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Flobs said:
What would I do if I didn't have you trying to contradict my posts ...... ?
Reactions: Flobs
You're persistent if nothing else .........
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I think we will get opportunities like this in the PL regularly going forward, and for the next few seasons the title will interchange between us and City like it did between City and Chelsea a few years back. This season though there are two things holding us back. The first is squad depth, but this is improving and by 2019-2020 we could be on a par with City after the winter and summer windows. The second is a much bigger disadvantage, it is that City know how to win. So did Real Madrid last season. If we went into next season with equal squads and managers, City would still have an advantage in this respect. You saw it yesterday against United, at 2-1 they could have panicked but instead they strung 44 passes together and scored a third. The FA cup is of course a third choice trophy, but the boost that our players, club and fans would get from winning would mean we start next season with a mindset of confident winners. It would be an important building block to win the PL next season and for many seasons to come. Hopefully we win the PL this year as everyone desperately wants, but if offered I would stick rather than twist this season if offered the FA cup / top four. I dont think it's a defeatist approach, just another building block for a club
Wilkored08
Again, did the ref disallow their goal...yes...did the ref give our goal....yes...have we got 3 points...yes...for months and months we've never much luck with ref's decisions...so this time we have. Take it as a bonus!
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Wilkored08 said:
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epsomred
Give yourselves the chance to be heros
Fulham had a good goal disallowed, we scored probably from a free kick that should have been taken again because the ball was moving but still people claim that refs/The FA/The rest of the world conspire to undermine us. Maybe they are giving us these odd crumbs on purpose to throw us off the scent, maybe the odd decision in a game we would have won anyway is a red herring. My God, that's the answer. The fact that we are occasionally given decisions in our favour proves that refs are conspiring against us. It's all clear to me now. I was blind but now I see.
Quagmire81
TIA Regular
We're now undefeated at home in PL since april 2017, 27 games - 18 wins, 9 draws
#ForstressAnfield
We have come a long way.
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LFC7NH
epsomred said:
Why is it a good goal when he was offsides?
shachart
"You're supposed to help people that need a bit."
FGred said:
Unfortunately I need to disagree.
Utd for some wierd reason gave City a lot of space for their midfielders to exploit, which Silva ( both of them ) happily used.
We don't have a Silva in our midfield. Klopp is trying to transform Firmino to being that person, and neither is Shaq.
The interesting thing was that City kept both Mendy and Walker back to help the CBs move the ball and break Utd's sttempts to press. Klopp's system calls for the midfielders to come down while the FBs keep pressing up field.
There shouldn't be anything considered 'lucky' about a goal scored due to a ref being correct in his decissions.
What is the world coming to?
LFC7NH said:
A good offside goal that most referees would have allowed after talking to the linesman and deciding Lovren had touched the ball even if Lovren isn't on the pitch at the time.
And no Gomez is not a lucky omen it's just this time the ref was correct.
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Must really suck to be a linesman. They get nothing but shit when a tight decision is incorrect, and then when they actually do get the tight ones right, it's always "well it was really tight, probably shouldn't have flagged".
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
Hopefully by the time we play them again we have Fabinho fully up to speed. He sticks his foot in and seems the closest thing we've got to our own Fernandinho. On the latter, he gets away with murder game in game out. But because they have a lot of "pretty" footballers it seems the refs are blind to it.
The way Man City approached the game at Anfield tells us what they think of us. They set their stall out to contain us, which they won't do against anyone except us, and it was a new development. They still obviously have the CL bombardment fresh in their minds, and they don't want us to play a devastating 20 min spell against them that puts the game beyond reach.
As it happens, our style has evolved and we're not blowing teams away in the same sort of way as last season... so far at least. But we are racking up the points at a fair old rate so it's going to be fascinating to see how the season unfolds.
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"pretty" footballers
So what they are all going grey.
PS - I'm a bit fed up of the Fulham bleating.
Their "goal" was offside. Close, yes, but still offside.
As for our first goal, the ball was slightly moving when Alisson passed it out. It went the length of the pitch and wasn't the reason for the goal, but on a technicality they can claim it shouldn't have stood.
On the balance of play we battered them. And had either or both of those incidents gone the other way, we'd have still won the game. We were well on top, and our only problem was a bit of wastefulness. On another day we'd have scored 4+ goals. If Fulham think the difference between the sides was a moving ball and an unlucky offside decision, then more power to them!
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I saw Aguero and thought he's aged since last week. Then on reflection I thought it was a poor attempt to be like our very own Bobby, who is cutting edge in his style and beat Aguero to the silver surfer look a while ago!
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