I saw the full match, but haven't seen the highlights so I don't know what impression they gave. Sakho was bullied several times by Gestede, not just the time that resulted in the goal. He had a 'mare by his standards. I'm not having a go at him, because I do rate him usually- just pointing out the facts. If Skrtel or Lovren had played like that everyone would be calling for their blood. Let's hope he's learned from this game and got the bad performance out of the way in a match where we won anyway so no real harm was done. It seems the defence is shaky no matter who we use. I've said many times I'm not a big fan of defence orientated football, but we really do need to find a solution to this, because great though it is to see Sturridge back, we can't rely on him to pull us out of the fire all the time. Can is being played so far out of position it's untrue.
The defence is not a new problem. Either Rodgers is aware of it and cannot sort it or he is unaware it is a particular problem. As long as the defence is not sorted we will struggle to get near top 4.
I know it's not a new problem, but for a long time people have been promoting their own suggestions to cure it. It just seems to me that no matter what permutation we use , it has fatal flaws.
Love it, why don't we play you lot in defence then? Did you ever come up against a trained 6 ft + built unit of a player who's speciality is heading? Oh no? No just fat Tim from auto repair? Fair enough!
Well if we apply that attitude to the whole forum then we might as well not bother coming on here, because none of us have played professionally and even the worst professional footballer in the premier league would wipe the floor with us,
I'm merely pointing out the massive differences between nudging someone off the ball in Sunday league and trying to impede a tank of a player who has a run on you in the top tier of professional football.
No, but if I was a 6ft+ trained defender and heading was supposed to be amongst my specialities then I'd expect to be able to make a decent fist of it. If it was impossible to effectively defend against the likes of Gestede then teams with players like him would be winning more games than they do.
A fair point - if we're saying how Sunday league, unfit, non-athletic defenders would deal with Gestede. I thought we employed trained, skillful athletes to do that. obviously not.
Sakho had his worst performance since joining imo. But there's not much else he could have done for the second goal. Gestede was running at full pelt and he's one of the best headers of the ball in Europe. The bigger issue is that we should be preventing the cross coming in in the first place.
Every systems as flaws. I'd prefer to play to our strengths. Problem is, I'm not entirely sure what our strengths are atm but with Studge coming back, lets hope its attacking
Certainly not effective defending. As you know, I'm a fan of attacking football, but I still want the defence to show a reasonable level of competence. Sturridge has already brought the attack to life, but how long can we rely on him? I'm hoping his problems are cured, but I'll take some convincing. I hope he's fit long enough for our entire attack to start to gain confidence and get back into the habit of scoring so they might cope with him being out again if the worst happens. I still hold out hopes for the likes of Benteke and Firmino to come good, and I've been impressed by Ings' attitude- still not sure about Origi. Just re-read my post, and there's a lot of hoping going on in there.
Studge needs a six month run without injury for those concerns to start easing imo I think Ings can be the difference too. Studge and Ings work very well together and offer lots of movement up top, with Coutinho behind them it makes for good reading.
Been very impressed with Ings. Needs to start taking his chances, difference between being a mid table striker and a top level striker is scoring those goals undr pressure. His movement is very good and chases down lost causes which we've not had since Suarez. His is first touch is very good as well! Think it's twice I've seen now where ball is on the air going over his shoulder and his brought it down perfectly. Once against Bordeaux where he then shot at the keeper and again at Villa.
Ings has been one of the few bright points of this season. Just shows you how that type of striker is what we needed - not a Mario/Benteke target man. But Ings is not the answer. He's a very good 3rd choice striker but no way should he be starting if we have aspirations of being top 4.
