I struggle to understand losses like Saturday. Arrogance? Inability to travel? Or was it bluff watching the bloody game! I have to fess up myself here.. i failed to wear my lfc home strip i wore for the last two games so that's now a trend... 2 wins with, one loss without... its as scientific as bluff anyway. So if you know of any other things that jinxed us this weekend please let Chris know so he can add these to the top of the match threads to eliminate the disasters from now on.
We certainly don't perform with the same zip away from home, I know against Wigan we ended up tonking them, but it could have ended very different. When we go 1-0 down it has such a disastrous effect on us, and this is what separates us from the teams above, we seem to completely lose control of the game. Perhaps part of it is arrogance? I'm not sure, is it just a coincidence that Rodgers and the players hype the team up before we lose a game? Maybe. Nothing wrong with a bit of optimism and positivity as long as it's measured. We seem to turn the corner only to find it's a dead end. Doesn't take away that despite that bad loss we're starting to look like a good team, it's just that last step forward is going to be the hardest, and the question is; what needs to be changed?
That game was the final straw for me this season, I'm just trying to be positive and hoping next season will be better.
I actually feel partly guilty here. I was feeling we'd broken the vicious circle and had indeed 'turned the corner'. I'm going to keep my gob shut on predictions from now on, particularly while the LHC is in shutdown mode. How do we silence Lawrenson? Form an orderly queue here
It's difficult to tell, one loss isn't the end of the world we'll just have to see how the last 8 matches pan out. As for Lawrenson.. Say his name backwards and sprinkle holy water on him. That'll do the trick
I've been away in Malaysia for 2 weeks where I enjoyed us beating Wigan and Spurs. First game back against Soton and we lose ... I take full responsibility.
Simple answer is when you keep giving the opposition the ball you lose games. Simple answer 2 is when you pick the wrong team you lose games. Simple answer 3 is when you pick the wrong team AND they pass like a bunch of ****ing girls (apologies to girls because they can pass better than that) you will lose games. At least against West Brom we all knew it was as simple as not taking chances but as with the Villa game this was far more worrying because we were out-fought, out-thought, out-worked and it could and probably should have been a whole lot worse. I'd say 5 or 6- 0 would have been a fairer reflection and that's just not good enough. Hearing Rodgers then go on to tell us how good we are and how hard we work was a ****ing insult too (especially after making a 500+ mile round trip ). They deserved a rocket for that performance and I hope to god he gave them what for...unfortunately I suspect he didn't.
I was looking at the table and saying to myself 'so if Everton lose to city, we beat Southampton....' We always **** it up when I do that
Confidence: We have some players with low confidence and a start like the last game exacerbated that dip in confidence which was apparent in Allen's performance and others too of course, he has not been playing well and the tactics used by both managers ensured Joe would give the ball away repeatedly, it is so obvious from that performance by Joe that he felt he had so much less time to make decisions on the pitch. Downing & Johnson also look short on confidence. Skrtel and Agger are suffering the same, Jones? possibly, certainly there is a wee shortage of confidence in the partnership between keeper and defence, Brad has not played many games and that has it's effect on confidence to boot. The way we were squeezed by Southampton helped players short on confidence in themselves and team mates feel there was less and less time on the ball. When you are confident everything slows down and you feel you have much more time, time to choose better passes, take up better positions and anticipate better, improved awareness. We played so many rash passes to the wrong players at the wrong time in the wrong areas and flapped when they applied pressure on our midfield. I think not one of our players believed we could win that game after the first 45 minutes. Brendan looked totally surprised by Southampton's performance, maybe his own confidence was a little shook too. That lack on confidence hinders your ability to asses the situation in a calm way and dissect what is going wrong quickly and apply a fix, if only even to just stem the flow, a quick fix until you work out what can turn it around but instead we went straight to trying to completely reverse the situation, sometimes you have to stop the rot before you recover and turn it around. I am of the opinion that if Southampton had allowed us time in the first 20 minutes and sat back or showed any fear we would have went on to punish them, if they allowed us to have any confidence in getting a result we might have, they did not, they applied pressure and increased it as our players struggled with their own confidence as much as Southampton's energy and discipline. If they allowed us to get the ball down and pass it they would have suffered. Southampton's manager's tactics gave his team more and more confidence as they game went on. Our manager's tactics had the reverse effect and hit ours. It even spread to Gerrard as we know this of a lack of confidence it's contagious. Right now there is some mental weakness in our team that needs to be addressed. Winning does that, hell even not losing does that. 5 0-0 draws does far far more for confidence in a team than winning 3 games 4-0 and losing 2 games 3-1. The belief teams won't or may find it very difficult to get a goal is important. right now, no-one believes we can shut out teams for 90, we have had a decent few clean sheets but lets not see something that is not there, against all the decent sides we've conceded, a lot were silly goals too. I would rather we were solid and went from there, I wanted us to go to Southampton and play as an away team looking for something, not going there to expect a win as we were certainly set up that way, sometimes, especially with low confidence, you gotta just grind it out and shut down the opposition and we have the players that can get those goals when playing like this, and 0-0 would have been infinitely better for the team's confidence than the hammering we got, and the point would have been better too.
