Aye they do so - very limited - that's the best use for them. And I did attach a limited meaning to the one I provided - didn't claim that the stat meant any more than "lallana & Balo saw little of the ball". As for the reasons why... I suppose it is a mix of bad set up, bad width, good Villa defence, wrong players in wrong positions, little fluency/chemistry/speed of play...
All/any of the above plus the number of new players in the team or even just a bad/good day dependant of which teams point of view you take. Cheers Liv, proper debate/conversation compared to some in the past
only thing for me we learnt is we still havent worked out how to break down stubborn 10 men behind ball type teams, which is worrying as its something more and more teams could adopt. as far as league goes, not sure it shows anything yet, if i had to say it would simply be what we already have a fair idea of anyway, Chelsea,City,Arsenal would be my top 3 then one of Spurs,utd and us, with maybe saints or everton thrown in. spurs ,utd ans us havent played great, but then with everton and saints its the consistency factor. 4th place will be interesting this year, think it will be a hell of a lot closer than last season.
I see we had a visit from the Man Utd board and quite a successful one at that from their point of view. please log in to view this image
We could have signed balotelli, lallana, lambert, some **** spanish defender and have mighty red as a mascot i suppose. So yeh, much worse.
Imagine we win today. I bet livtors stocked up on supplies, lucass is building a fence and mito is poised with her rifle.
sorry, I just don't buy the "we haven't found out how to break down......" argument if it is so easy to shut us down why can so few do it? it happens once in a blue moon. It happened to City last week. It happens to every side every now and again. are all the managers out there complete idiots who just haven't figured it out?
IF. A 0-1 score line like ours with rio scoring from a corner in the 10th minute and 80 mins of fruitless United attacking is a very plausible scenario.
I'm putting this one on Rodgers which I rarely do. I'm assuming Sterling received the same treatment at the hands of hodgeson as Sturridge I.e. training when should have been resting. So I understand why we rested him. With Sturridge injured we can't have both crocked going into this busy period. And Can injured reduced options but I dont think Rodgers would have made the decision that needs to be made anyway as he got out thought by Gerrard. He thought he won the battle when he insisted on Gerrard quitting international football, instead he guaranteed him a starting place after each break. And did that rest do him any good? Not one bit. For God's sake Sky pointed out how villa targeted Gerrard last year before the match. So what was BRs response? Shackling Henderson Hodgeson style beside and even behind Gerrard at one point. He just shouldn't have been on in the first place. But Lucas wouldn't have inspired confidence as his replacement I must admit. All other issues flows from our disjointed midfield who coudnt pass a ball to save their lives. Defence yet again exposed and therefore nervous. Attack throttled and frustrated. It didn't help that the ref allowed our forwards to be assaulted all first half so even the limited ball they received was snuffed out with fouls. They then just shrugged their shoulders and gave up. all of them: Balotelli was only joining in. Coutinho is quickly making my Glen Johnson **** list. But only one game and lots of newbies properly blooded
The front 4 and the full backs had never played together before & the centre backs only played with each other once before. I'm not sure why people fail to take this into context when judging the performance and criticising the likes of Gerrard & Balotelli.
I think your first statement was correct. Yesterday's performance lies squarely with BR. I do not agree that Gerrard should not have been on the pitch. I would have made Villa's plans for him work against them by pushing gerrard 10 yards further up the pitch leaving Henderson to play the DM role. Villa were nothing more than organised and workman-like. There was nothing there to trouble us apart from our own mistakes. At the back we looked a complete and utter shambles on corners and set pieces. This is a problem that has plauged us since Rafa was in charge and we still haven't found an answer!!!!!! So I'm not going to castigate Lovren or Sakho as they were merely the latest in a long line of useless LFC systems. It was just so easy yesterday to take the ball to the halfway and play a straight ball to the feet of a Liverpool player 10 yards outside of the box. We then somehow managed to play straight into their hands by either turning the ball out to the wings or looking for a killer pass to a player further forward. Not once did any of our players turn and attack their defenders on the edge of the box at pace. Free kicks and penalties were there for the taking if we had done that! I could not understand why we played the game so slowly - there was no advantage to us in so doing. Yes the players under-performed as did the manager and coaches. So if we actually learn't anything yesterday, it should have been that we have to both work and think if we want to win.
You have a point Dave. It would be interesting to know who takes the defensive training/coaching. I understood last year basically giving up in that area but I thought through transfers it was an idea to face the issues this year. As Lucaas says it's maybe just a lot of very new faces. And yes, every time I criticise Gerrard I always doubt myself and feel a bit guilty......
Frank, I do listen to what the other boys say about Gerrard and I honestly believe this is his last season, but yesterday was not his fault. Sure they targeted him so the smart thing to do would have been to make their plan work against them. By pushing him 10 yards further forward would have pushed their mids, attackers 10 yards further back thereby giving Hendo more time and space to spray passes.
