they have to close the gaps and have discipline. what I've seen thus far is each player is on their own. trent goes wherever he likes whenever he likes. left side, right side, up to a 10 slot. right wing.. etc. konate is in 40 yard so space all on his own so if he makes any tackle there's nobody close enough to even claim they could cover over. he will get a red card fairly quickly in this. I have so far seen no line I'd call an offside trap really and you never know which defender might be deepest at any point. in short we can only hope this is all going to go away when a real game kicks off.
Never! A draw is 2 points lost. A loss is 3 points lost. There's not much difference. Unless we were facing certain defeat otherwise, I'd never settle for a draw on the first day of the season. Whereas we might not be confident of a win, it's certainly not a certainty we're going to lose.
no team has a right to any points. you win what points you deserve. you never lose points. you can by all means feel that for the level of talent and investment put on the field that anything less than a win is poor but you only get what you deserve on the day.
Whether you look at it as points gained, or points lost, it's still the same end result. A draw is much closer to a loss than a win.
and right now in an away game against super league scum opponent with very little defensive stability is a massive ask.
Jones will close the gaps, as will Elliott or Thiago, but you usually moan that none of them can tackle
You really think it's a guarantee we'll lose against a lower half team from last season before we've even kicked a single kick in a competitive match? Let's wait and see how we do first before assuming we're relegation fodder before the first kick of the first game.
**** sake, will you zero all stop with the lower half bullshit. they've got massive resources. it's an away game against super league scabs. we did not best them last season.
As of last frame of reference, we were 5th, they were 12th. Until the first games are played, that's how things stand. Impossible to tell how much either team has moved in which direction... but from the last frame of references it's absurd to assume we're most likely to lose. Maybe we will, maybe we will draw, but beyond pessimistic to assume we have no hope. We've not got as much depth at the moment as last season, which will impact us over the course of the season, but our first XI is now arguably a little stronger. In a one-off game, assuming we play our strongest XI, we should be better than we were last year. Our lack of depth shouldn't be a problem for day-one.
We've no idea if Chelsea be a rival / challenge for top four. We've no idea if we'll even challenge for top four. That's a general we btw, I know we'll ****ing smash'it
If you want to take that attitude then today's table has them above us. Alphabetically speaking. It's an away game, no amount of supposition negates home advantage for a side.
It's like this; Before the quad season effort (we got close on a good season there) you could tell looking a the players they were intense and pressing well in preseason. there was a consistency between players coming in and out. Last season you could tell a mile off in preseason we were undercooked. What I am saying is that unless we are just sandbagging here, or not actually caring about much bar running about for fitness, that there's not a sharp system and there's a lot of disarray at the back. If we play 3223 in this game then I would have expect to see 3223 working consistently over the past couple of games. The focus seems to be pressing up on teams passing it about at the back rather than getting good shape and recovering good shape. There was an eagerness in the early games to put the hand up as forwards due to the level of competition but even there i think players have now seen exactly who klopp's choices are and I detected a bit of heads dropped v the no hopers Monday. The defensive line looks absolutely all over the place. If thats not helped by not having a consistent no 6 stood there I don't know but being able to see the offside line and understanding that the inverted full back drops to CB when ball is played out side seems alien to our players right now. It simply doesn't look right so I am just hoping to see this suddenly appear when t he real game starts.
