Must admit feel a lot more confident dealing with crosses with Phillips in there than any time last season. His stats must be up there with vvd in terms of headers won. Keeping his as a 4th choice to bring on to defend a lead next season might not be awful idea. No one would win a header with him vvd and one other in our defence in last 5 mins
I Liked what I saw of kabak before his injury too. Although the emergence of Nathaniel Maldini may mean we don't make the loan permanent. Also this konate is supposed to be a done deal so who knows what we'll end up with going into next season.
I did...........although there is talk we are not interested in a purchase. Konate arriving and keeping Matip?
Virgil, gomez, konate, kabak, the god that is Phillips Would mean we where we'll stocked and God forbid could rotate. However, phillips could probably be first choice for a fair few teams, he has come on leaps and bounds in the last few months. I doubt he'd be happy to go back to being a bit part player.
It may be an unpopular thing to say but I think the difficulties we had mid season were self inflicted. IF we had just done the logical thing and replaced like with like when our defenders were falling like ninepins I firmly believe that we would have competed for the title. I said it a few months ago. It was like breaking a section of a perfectly good roof to repair a leak in another section. Probably not won it again but at least be in the hunt. It’s only when we decided to restore our whole midfield and play CBs in their positions that we started our recovery. it shows that even the best managers make mistakes and it’s a good thing that he had the insight to recognise this on time for us to get CL qualification.
I think a couple of games had us under the misapprehension that fab was perfectly fine at cb, when unfortunately the longer he played there the more it became obvious that he wasn't great. Add that in to him missing in midfield, the loss of Henderson and it really was a **** show. It seams ages ago, but its not that long past that we really only had 6 regular first team players fit. It's easy now to say we should have done this or that, but at the time it was one nightmare after another
Think that os spot on but hindsight is marvellous But totally spot on Sounds ridiculous but had we played defenders as defenders and mid as mid then some of the sides we struggled against we possibly would have won, however that said the games against the big six probably would have been different too
Boom ... have that down you! Excellent result with clear worldies from Phillips and Ox. One more and then we can forget about this mess of a season
Hindsight. I think at the time the logical thing was play Fabinho there as he’s done it before and we are well stocked with midfielders in Hendo Thiago Gini Jones milner and the lesser spotted Keita abs ox.
Ox mentioned after the game, several times that "sometimes you have to play smart intricate football not just lump it over the top.. Telling that imo. And he's bang on too.
Pretty much the perfect night! 3 points, goal difference is nicely boosted and a clean sheet. The only thing that would have made it better was if we scored another 6 more goals. But I'm not greedy ... What was really nice to see was that some of our underperforming players (from attacking standpoint chip in) - Robbo has been solid defensively all throughout the season but his attacking play has been suffering badly. And he ended up with 2 assists last night. Bobby got a goal and Mane got an assist. Fabinho, Thiago, Ali, Trent and Mo have carried us over the past 10 games or so bot it was refreshing to have other players chip in when we really needed it. Respect to Nat and Rhys as well - let's be honest, they're garbage but they've come in and done the best they can. Big respect to them and I hope they have good careers elsewhere. Let's hope we can finish the job off on Sunday.
I really didn't think we'd be in this position at this stage. Absolutely delighted. Fantastic opportunity to seal top 4 at Anfield in front of 10,000 fans. Give Woy a proper send off, the owl-faced twat
Garbage is harsh, Phillips is what he is, an ‘industrial’ defender who is giving it all he’s got, and I do think he offers something necessary for the squad (beyond just being a not injured body ). Williams is still young so who knows, probably not gonna be one of the greats but he can develop I guess. for the rest of your post
