Performance is imo all about who stood up at 0-0 and wanted the ball and who did not. For most of the first half Lallana was utterly anonymous. Wijnaldum was nowhere, firmino did not get on it.. clyne back passed, can waved his hands about point where to pass it. Who did stand up? Matip, coutinho, sturridge. They wanted the ball and tried to get on it even if they didn't do well. You know what was annoying..... lallana gets no 3, done nothing all day and crowd are singing his name. He froze, did nothing just like Europe league final but once game is won and Boro stop even closing down he is the darling of anfield. Sturridge might be a **** and a selfish one but he was there trying to make something happen. No song but the panic on players faces when he sat down was hilarious, just a ball in the bone... they knew where their hope was. It all just goes to show... The first time wijnaldum took a risk he scores.... amazing fame isn't it.
Lallana is normally always showing for the ball and trying to make things happen when we're ****ing up... Take it easy! We won comfortably and got what we wanted, you can't have 11 stand out performers as they wouldn't be standing out would they!?
You could see it starkly. Milner for example. Basically just pushing lads over and fouling is his idea of commitment it seems. Once the game was won the pace of passing and more one touch football game... It's all bottle. If you freeze you will keep freezing, I was listening tonight to 606 and savage and Flintoff were banging on about fight or flight with some ping pong Olympian. Savage was on about freezing the first time he did MOTD and the ping pong lad was on about losing in Olympics to a German. Flintoff was saying he had balls of steel basically cos he was too pissed to notice. But I just hark back to looking at lallana after 10mins of Europe final and looking at the sickly pale face on him as klopp was shouting at him to just do something... he just vanished today til the game was won...
I didn't think Studge was great. Didn't really make any movement, his first touch was a bit meh as well. Appreciate Boro sat back and was no where to really go, but that makes movement even more important otherwise they can just mark statues which is easy. I didn't think anyone played well first half, not sure how you can praise Matip first half. He wanted the ball but was under no pressure so all he did was get the ball and pass it sidewards to Clyne or Cout who was playing as a CB at times!! Not digging Matip out for that, kept it simple and gave it to better players, but same could be said for Lovren as well I that case. We certainly looked a lot better 2nd half, wasn't even because Boro came out more. We just upped the tempo 2nd half, passed the ball a lot better and quicker and drew Boro out of position a bit more. Any other game of season, you go in 1-0 up at HT and win the game within 10 mins of 2nd half and you say perfect performance job done. Only got nervous because of the situation and Arsenal putting early pressure on. At least unlike in previous games where we haven't broken through after 30 mins, we didn't go and concede and make it twice as hard for ourselves!
He wanted the ball. Whatever else he did he did that. Amazing how a goal can make the sunshine boys come out though
On Mario. He carried it on, he took responsibility when others didn't. I never said he did anything with it though. That's my point. Others smirked the job the 3 I said tried. The fact is in the 45th minute suddenly one flick from firmino and one run finally taking the risk = goal from lads who did nothing else... it's a funny game.
The commentator kept trying to crank up the pressure as well - saying how the tension was palpable when we hadn't scored after 10 minutes, how we were out of CL places "as it stands" and some utter crap about how Arsenal were in the driving seat. I couldn't tell whether it's just because they hate us or if they're just trying to heighten the drama as usual. Probably both.
Your previous post just shows you fully blame him for the Europa league defeat, extremely harsh. What about the semi-final second leg to get us there? Didn't freeze that game did he... MOTM if I remember rightly
I looked at clock. When city scored he started and when the news arsenal scored both went full bore into crisis mode on all of 8mins played and continued it. I recall the as it stands table flashing up yes. It was a bit rich cos really all it was ever taking was one real chance to fall and it was game over. We ended up scoring 7 goals in two games with two clean sheets in the end....
I'm merely pointing out what I saw which stuck with me. He was an absolute deer in headlights on the big day.
They were a double act. It was like the other games were fixed and they'd written their scripts before hand they were so smooth. The way that first city goal went in was hilarious. I swear the keeper pulled his hand away to let it in.
