In football, you cannot make every one happy, but there must be a balance and fairness. I know some fans prefer Sakho to Lovern or sometime Skrtel. Brendan Rodgers have a hard decision to make. If you are the manager who are going to be your regular centre back (assuming there is no injury) As for me I would not play Can as a Centre back, but as for Rodgers you never know. Hard decision because Sakho is not happy.
Rodgers wants Lovren and Skrtel. Only Sakho gets back into the side is if Lovren is injured IMO. Unfortunately, there is no debate.
The annoying thing is that Skrtel is pants yet seems to be undroppable. Put Lovren next to someone who isn't a headless chicken and we see a whole new player.
I've defended lovern a lot actually. He's not as bad as made out. Skertl dropped too deep imo after he got his card and that affected the game but Stoke also targeted him deliberately too. Lovern never put a foot wrong and headed just about everything Stoke put in away.
If that's the case, and it does seem quite likely. Sakho should move, a player of his quality deserves to be playing week in week out. Shame if that happens but you can't blame him if he decides to go.
We have two okay LCBs in competition with Skrtel. Unfortunately both Lovern and Sakho are aggressive front foot defenders thus fail to complement each other. It would be good if ilori or Gomez can step up and give Skrtel some competition thus it would be Skrtel and Lovern vs Sakho and ilori /Gomez. L
Lovren didn't f*ck up against Stoke which is a positive but it wasn't a great performance. It was good. Just to put it into context:- - He had a defensive full back next to him in Gomez who didn;t venture forward which gave him more protection and less space to cover. - Our defence only had one striker to deal with and Diouf spent most of his time on Skrtel. - Henderson was on the left side, and he played a deeper holding role which gave him added protection. Now this isn't a dig at Lovren - as I say, he did well and didn;t much wrong in the game. But I'm not convinced he has 'silenced his critics'
I agree. Not many actually appreciate his quality. Defensively, one of the best in the league when he played last season and his inclusion was synonymous with our good run. But take him out of the defence, leaving Lovren and Skrtel, then we have no ball playing defenders and we will struggle to build from the back,
And contrary to popular belief - Lovren and Sakho have both been out injured for the same amount of time over the past 2 years.
Or you could say the formation change and can co-incided with our good run we are playing 2 at the back so i hpoe that puts can in fornt of the two and helps him play even better.
The 3-0 at Tottenham last year was one occasion: http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/28917060 Not sure if there were any others; that was just one that immediately sprang to mind.
Both out far too much then. Can't vote for Sikho as he's missed as many as he's played since he's been here so give Lovren a run and let Sakho get his head together. If he's moaning about not playing then he knows where the door is If he's willing to fight for his place then good on him and all the better for us.
Yep - we kept a clean sheet but Lovren made some horrendous errors in that game which almost cost us.
I think would be harsh to drop either after both were solid against Stoke. I think the same back 4 will and should start against Bournemouth as none of them did anything wrong. Going forward I'd like to see Lovren & Sakho and see how the get on after a prolonged period.
Performance based selection and real competition for places is supposed to be how it works at a top team yes? Unless you can point to a previous season where you were fit for the majority of the season and played well you aren't a shoe in. So initially it goes on pre season, training and then the manager selects. If you get selected perform or be dropped for the competition chasing at your heels. If you do your job, in this case not let any goals in then you stay in. If you want to be a certain start no matter what, go to a smaller team with no aspirations. Same goes for any position on the field. If the manager himself doesn't follow that path and results are poor then he gets criticised. So far, one game in, the manager is right.