Have we dropped off that much ?. if it was Liverpool next for us then I'd expect a similar scoreline as last weeks debacle. Liverpool pressed and harried Chelsea all game ,no time on the ball and took the game to them ,something we used to be were good at .A great game to watch for a neutral though .
I said the other day that Brendan has turned things around and now they look a far better team. credit to Brendan for that.
Looks like Eden Hazard has finally realised that the prime objective in a League Cup semi-final is to score a goal and not kick the ballboy to death....
Liverpool made Chelsea look very ordinary, we on the other hand made them look like European Champions? We used to play with that high tempo, but our passing and possession game was ruined under Laudrups reign, and Monk has still not yet got it back, I hope he does as it was that high tempo and passing that got us here.
Players get older and slower, players leave, new players come in and have to get up to speed, the opposition figure out your strengths and weaknesses and learn how to play against you to nullify your strengths and exploit your weaknesses...there are lots of reasons why a football team is continually evolving. By the way Laudrup's teams consistently had higher possession stats than the opposition and the football in that 1st season (in which key players that he brought to the club played such a big part in) was sublime. We had never played such beautiful football ever. In that second season though we had the Europa and a massive injury crisis to contend with, which might have had something to do with some bad results and some deterioration of the football ey? but even then when we couldn't buy a win we consistently out passed the opposition and enjoyed the lion's share of possession. What is Monk's excuse? Tell me it again it was a good one...what was it now, something like Laudrup beat good football out of the boys and now Monksey's having some trouble teaching them all over What happened in Laudrup's 2nd season was that his most creative players spent a lot of time injured at the same time he was trying to integrate a new striker (a striker he brought in who has made us millions) so we stopped creating as many good chances as previously....add this to some very costly mistakes at the back by all of our defenders and goalkeepers (for some reason Chico is the only one who gets any blame!?!)...which might have had something to do with tiredness from the 2 games a week and deteriorating confidence from less goals being scored up the other end and you have yourself a barren run of results. Something like 6 out of the 10 games were against top 6 clubs as well!!! Laudrup, his coaches and the players who were loyal to him were nothing but scapegoats.
All very well and good Terror, but Laudrup was the one that stipulated he did not want a big squad, so you cannot make excuses over the injuries if we didn't have cover.
