I'm not denying he's the best we have, and he's scored some important goals for us. But as has been mentioned by many others, he needs too many chances per goal. If he had put that header away today we could have snatched an unlikely win. People moan about defenders making mistakes but strikers missing chances are equally deserving of criticism. We need a better striker.
Happy with a point.good in defence but as with most of the other games this season we are not putting away chances,or making chances as todays match show. Think we missed tadic today aswell.also boufal needs time before he is up to speed
Clattenburg was (as usual) useless. Gave us very little - it seems that tackles from behind are valid if they get even a bit of the ball. I had thought that a tackle from behind was a foul - silly me. We were immense defensively - Liverpool are an extremely good team and played so quickly, but we matched them. Yes we rode our luck a few times but we were great. The only player I could say I was disappointed with was J-Rod, who looked at sea. Everyone else fought, scrapped and supported each other. Never has a 0-0 looked so good ..... Onwards and upwards to Prague now!
I was in two minds about it. I could forgive the miss as that chance wasn't as easy as it might initially appear. But OTOH, that's what we pay Austin to do. He's not fast, he doesn't have amazing ball trickery. He's a poacher who has to turn semi-decent chances into goals. I'm still cutting Austin some slack because he really just had that one chance all day and it is unrealistic to expect him to take every one. But overall, he hasn't been quite as lethal as I'd hoped. And considering how much trouble we are having getting him chances, I think maybe we do have to consider switching something up. Maybe that means using Long more often.
The problem was that we didn't have enough players on the pitch! We needed an extra forward and an extra midfielder. So that being the case we got a good result. If anything we maybe gave them too much respect as I always feel that their defence can be dodgy under pressure. If only we'd played with that kind of resolve against Hull.
Probably should give Liverpool and the gegenpress some credit. I think Hojbjerg does a good job, but we aren't getting enough out of Davis. And not sure Clasie or JWP are solutions there either. Boufal tried his best and did an okay job, but I don't feel like playing deeper suits his game. Would say the same about Tadic. They should be AMC in this formation. I also feel like that might be the best position for Redmond as well. No one is doing a horrible job, but it's just not clicking. If we stick with the diamond, we need another striker and another mid. Alternatively, we could go back to 4-2-3-1. Hojbjerg and Romeu as midfielders with Clasie and Reed seeing plenty of time in Cup matches and as subs. And we could mix and match among Davis, JWP, Boufal, Redmond, Rodriguez, Long, and Austin at the top depending on what is needed against a particular opponent.
