But against 'lesser' teams,the type of teams we struggle to beat,he goes for the juggular from the off. Of course he won't do it against the bigger teams and top european teams but there is little doubt that against teams you would expect them to beat..they do.Ask Bolton if he is less attack-minded.
Weve always been afraid to be open away from home. We dont like to concede goals full stop. Fergie dosnt mind if he concedes a goal as long as he has one more than them... We just dont have that mentality... I hitnk thats the real reason for manu going for the wins more than drawing them. Were not the only ones to play safe first away from home, and granted the 'lesser teams' do seem to be our achilles heal... It was that negative dont lose the game mentality that cost us the league a few years ago... Too may draws...
Well so far we've had some quite difficult away games. Away at Stoke is always tough, as we know, Spurs are good at home when they turn up, and we hadn't won at the Emirates before. Ideally we'd have liked 4-6 points from those games, but it wasn't to be. Aside from the top 3 and the derby, we won't get many tougher away games than those we've played, in theory anyway.
Lets be honest, we've played 5 games and in only 1 of those games we've deserved to lose. If we re-played the Stoke game with the same performances then 9 times out of 10 we'd win. So ok the results haven't been good but the performances have been. Someone talks about drive and effort well apart from Spurs the drive and effort has been their no doubt. Arsenal, Spurs & Stoke all away from home. We have terrible records at all 3 grounds so 3 points isn't a terrible return.
i have to say some of the things written STAGGER me. We have a schism between guys thinking we are going to walk into 4th and guy who thing 3 points from 9 o nthe road is ok cos we've always done badly in those places. If we ever want to win a league in some future year we need to solve this timid away form. thats my opinion and i'm sticking to it... nobodys answered with something to explain why we are this way cos its not just one manager. is it lack of defensive pace, mistrust of each other, no fix pattern of play? what?
It's early days though if you were making this point later on in the season you may have a valid point. If we go on a run and win most of our away games then your point will be blown out of the water. We need to have a bit of faith but maybe I'm being naive. We'll know soon enough.
Probably have to agree with Ze. As a player, I love playing away from home, having the crowd/fans/3 men and a dog on my back, makes me feel in the game or feel like I am in a big match,etc. I love it, I feel like I thrive on it. In that same way you play well at home because you are in front of your people, you want to impress, you get that extra boost.
I think this is something that Kenny is working on - attacking teams more often and going for all 3 points as opposed to Rafa who was more concerned about not losing. And in fairness - we beat Arsenal away and we played pretty well against Stoke and deserved more. The Spurs game was just simply poor but prior to this match, I definately see an improvement.
In fairness,although we started poorly against spurs,if we hadn't gone down to 10 and then 9 men who knows what the performance or result might have been.We went 1 down to a brilliant strike but the other 3 goals didn't come until we were 2 men short. At 1 down at half time it is very conceivable we could have got something from the game. I think it will be very interesting to see how we perform tomorrow as Brighton will be no pushovers.Would like to see Maxi given a run and Bellamy must surely play.It would great to have Gerrard back.Not sure what we will do at right back,hopefully one of them will be fit. Coming from Peterborough I know the threat that former striker Mackail-Smith can cause and he is very very quick and will chase down everything so we will have to be very alert.
OK, so we're not world beaters yet. Our general level of performance, if not results, have been far better (Spurs game excepted) than under Roy's dubious leadership. What we've suffered for is finishing - against Stoke and Brighton - our last two good away performances - we should have had the game put to bed by half time. The width of the woodwork denied us the rewards. Had they gone in, would we have seen swaggering performances of 4 or 5 goal margins? We'll never know now, but at least the performances have been leading us to expect that kind of thing, rather than the stodgy, sterile hoping-for-a-point negative doze-a-thons under Roy. After 3 away performances, we've got three points from WHL, The Library and the Britannia. Which is 2 more than we had last season. Surely a reason to be cheerful...
not really.... let see how we go for longer, thats a fair point people make but i don't yet see any reason to think away form is going to improve. I'll be waiting....
Hi luv. I'm having a bad hair day, but I agree with you. MITO, you're a little pessimistic. We'll be OK.
Oh, your cup doth runneth over, MITO. We've got rid of your favourite floppy N'gog, and still you don't crack a OK, I get you don't think the form will improve, but have you not seen an improvement in attitude? or in performance, if not the result? Do you think Stoke got what their performance deserved? After all, their only threat on goal was the pen they scored?!?!
I am simply saying i do not see any evidence out there to suggest this. compare and constrast second half of 2009 when we finished 2nd and now..... thats just a example. sure we've only played 5.. i understand. we beat arsenal but lets be frank on that we cannot call that a step change as arsenal are in crisis. I am happy we won there but cannot that that result points to a trend breaker. But lets then talk about performance. there are only two games to talk on but they match up more to last year than a new dynamic. 1 . we were unlucky to lose to stoke I can see that for sure but if it were 0-0 i'd call that fair! whats different there? (and i have to say stoke are very hard to play at the brittania for anyone) 2. we got hockeyed by spurs and were maddeningly bad and stupid individually. people have said we always lose to spurs at WHL... so what on earths different from the pattern from last year? I am not actually being pessimistic by the way. I'm simply pointing out that our away form has held us back for years and am trying to be objective about it. Examples; Hodgson whinged about it and said it was bad before him as well! Dalglish despite having a terrible team could win at home last year but got some really poor results away from home and was let down by players to played great at home then went away and just don't perform. If in ten games you can say hey we won 5 out of 10 away then that would be a change! And yes someone should also point out utd were awful away from home too.... ....................... So with that in mind how on earth can we change 7 players, get i nsome really good talent then repeat the exact same form away from home! how? is it like some have said o nthis thread that the clean sheet is the first thought?
Obviously, the first thought should be three points; the second should be three goals and the third should be three clear goals...
so the question still has to stand why are we not strong away from home. what does lfc, outside of individual personalities (given a pletora of players and 3 managers) do that makes our away from so poor? And poor is a relative term. i'm putting a high standard on us and that high standard is top 4 and league challenging.
It's perhaps too early to say we've been poor this season. Ok, we were **** against Spurs, but we probably played the best football we ever have at the Britannia. We've never been there and dominated possession like that. So there are promising signs, despite the results away not being what we'd like.
2010-2011: (6th) Home form; won 12 drew 4 lost 3 for 37 against 14 away form; won 5 drew 3 lost 11 for 22 against 30 2009-2010: (7th) Home form; won 13 drew 3 lost 3 for 61 against 35 away form; won 5 drew 6 lost 8 for 18 against 20 2008-2009 (2nd) Home form; won 12 drew 7 lost 0 for 41 against 13 away form; won 13 drew 4 lost 2 for 36 against 14 2007-2008 (4th) Home form; won 12 drew 6 lost 1 for 43 against 13 away form; won 9 drew 7 lost 3 for 24 against 15 there are the stats, our home form has been consistent! win 12-13 games. away form has determined where we finished, 6th, 7th, 2nd, 4th. If you purely look at it our defense has to be singled out as one major issue. what has occured? carrgher getting older. hyypia leaving? alonso leaving? Johnson joining? Injures? No left full? Mascherano leaving? We are leaking goals left and right. where's the evidence this year thats thats been corrected yet? not preseason anyway! home form is still ok but god we are tossing goals away aren't we? so last 2 times we finished 4th we lost TOTAL 2 or 3 games. we've alreadt lost 2 games away this year. I hope this explains why i'm not seeing evidence yet of our away from improving to get us back to the top. Are we "progressing" thats a spearate question.
So we need to be winning around 10 away games to finish 4th looking at those stats. We've won 1 already at Arsenal, and here are 9 more we should win, realistically: QPR Swansea Norwich Blackburn Wigan Sunderland West Brom Bolton Wolves. And that's leaving out teams we may well beat like Aston Villa, Fulham and Newcastle etc.
