Match Day Thread Liverpool v Norwich City

Strange to see Leeds fan on here. Not a natural rivalry just some bitterness. More importantly nothing better to do on a Friday night in August. It’s like deciding one of us should spend the rest of the season haunting and taunting the Liverpool forum because we scored a goal tonight!

 

Well, if his team hadn't imploded during the last quarter of the season, it could have been us laughing at Leeds getting whupped last night - though we do tend to have far better things to do with our time

 

Can’t really judge on last night. European Champions away from home. We will have a better view on our Chances after Newcastle at home. If we defend like that first half against Newcastle, then it could be a bit worrying. But I think we will get the back line a bit more sorted in the next game. They were thrown in at the deep end with the best of the best in attacking football.

 

I'd like to see Amadou and Leitner ahead of Trybull and Mclean?
Hopefully more of a shield in front of the back four and more creativity
when we have possession. and are coming forward.

 

Actually think Trumbull might be better suited to a less ‘able’ team than Liverpool such as Toon!

 

Autocorrect issue Trybull

 

It was always going to be a tough ask and made tougher by the unfortunate OG.
Had Stieperman scored with one of his chances, it could all have been so different, but hopefully, the players are more aware of the gulf in class and that they need to defend better as a team.
Highlights for me - Krull, Aarons, TC, Lewis, Bendy, Leitner and Pukki.
Lowlights - Hanley, McLean, Stieperman, Trybull.
IMO, I think we'll survive comfortably!!

PD's player ratings - https://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/norwich-city/canaries-liverpool-paddy-davitt-player-ratings-1-6208693

 

Looks like Hanley's going to be a lot of peoples whipping boy this season, with some but not a great deal of justification.

We looked really strong going forward. Pundits were saying that we created more shots on target than any other team last season, so that's more than Barcelona, more than Man City, more than Tottenham, which for me is a massive positive. Another positive was Pukki getting a goal, as this takes all the pressure off in respect of people questioning can he do it in this league, well we now know the answer and not only can he score at this level, but he can do it against Liverpool a team that last year had the best home defence in the PL. 9 of our starting 11 had never played in the PL before and if they can show the character they showed last night after the horrendous start to the game / first half, we will have a good chance of staying up. Another positive was Krul who despite the score line had a really good game. I think Farke also did well last night, we stuck to our game, didn't panic, made some good subs at the right time and came across really well on TV. Klopp seems to really like & respect him and seemed impressed with our attacking play. This along with Webber's links to Liverpool could be good for potential loan players going forward.

Yes defensively we struggled, but this was away against the Champions of Europe, a team that put 4 past Barcelona. OG aside, I don't think any of our defenders individually stood out as being particularly bad, but collectively we were poor. I see some have singled out Hanley as being particularly poor position wise, but if anything it was probably Lewis & Arrons poor positioning which was more of an issue. After all it wasn't poor positioning that led to the OG it was poor footwork. Liverpool's front 3 attack the gaps between the CB's, CB & RB, CB & LB. In the first half Lewis / Arrons were defending too wide leaving a massive space between them and the CB's, which really suited Liverpool. The 2 CB's then had to reduce the space, but this meant the increasing the gap between them, which again suited Liverpool. A few people were moaning that McLean wasn't being particularly effective, but part of the reason for this was he was trying to cover for Aaron's going forward / make up for Aaron's poor positioning. I think for us zonal marking is ok for open play, but for set pieces particularly corners it isn't going to work, for us against most team in this division. Liverpool seemed to have a clear plan to match up their CB's against our full backs, which was perhaps most notable in the match up between Lewis & Van Dyke. Other than defensive positioning I think the main things that caught nearly all our players out, but particularly the younger players was the pace of the game. It's just so much quicker in the PL. For most of the games last season the likes of Aaron's, Lewis & Godfrey were a lot quicker than most of their opponents and this allowed them to be slightly our of position and burst forward, knowing that their speed was going to allow them to get back, that isn't going to be the case this year. All our players need to realise that they are not going to have as much time on the ball against PL team as they did in the Championship, particularly when playing out against pressing teams. On the positive side DF appear to be able to adapt things at half time and the players showed that they had the character / ability to rise to the challenge and there was a notable improvement between the first and second half. Now that may have been partly due to Liverpool taking the foot off the gas a bit, but lets face it, even is this league most teams aren't going to play with the intensity of Liverpool

So in summary

Positives - One of the most, if not the most, difficult fixture in the league out of the way, Pukki scoring, Team showed they had the character to succeed and were able to learning quickly. Farke seem competent at this level.

Negatives - Defensive positioning, set pieces, speed / fitness is not going to help us out as much this year as it did last

Oh & just to add Newcastle is not a must win game. We didn't win any of our first 6 games last season and look where that got us

 

I think you may be struggling a bit from confirmation bias

 

Trouble was when defending both McLean & Trybull to a lesser extent were being pulled away from their shielding role to cover for the poor defensive positioning of Aaron's & Lewis.

 

DDF's verdict -

#spoton

 

Yeah and to be fair to both of them (and flagged by Neville) Aarons and Lewis tightened it up in the second half.

I cannot understand why we had Lewis marking Van Dijk on corners though. Surely that’s one for Hanley. Can hardly blame Lewis!

 

Comments by both John Barnes and Klopp were very positive about Farke and the team. Of course Lawrenson says we are crap and stand a far worse chance of survival than Sheffield but then he said Pukki won't do it at this level too. Despite that Pukki scored against a side that conceded against only seven sides at home last season with a trademark clinical finish. Personally I think he could well be up there amongst the top scorers in this league.

Ok we know we are going to concede, that in many ways is part of the plan and the downside that gave us the number of shots on goal that we had last night. But against many non top six sides those shots are going to translate into goals and I can see us scoring more than once against the teams that matter to us,

 

Positives: We created chances early on and had one of those gone in, we could have taken the initiative. Liverpool didn't manage a shot until the 16th minute. We had 3 before that. Even when the goals went in the heads didn't go down. DF sorted the problems and we were much better in the second half. Pukki's goal was excellent. He worked out the Liverpool off-side trap and stepped back with them then timed his run perfectly to score. Van Dijk was furious. IMO, our fitness did make a difference in the second half and that could be a big factor this season.

Negatives: It was naive to play tika-taka passes in our own area, leading to the second goal. Lewis shouldn't have been marking van Dijk, he'd have been better against the strikers. Aarons stayed too far up the pitch and was often caught out, pulling McLean out of position to cover and leaving us exposed in the middle. All of these aspects improved in the second half and we were much better for it. Lessons learned hopefully.

 

You played well, both full backs are impressive and of course the striker. While the game was open like that we were always going to score more than you but against other teams I see you having some joy. Just one game but on that evidence you're not going down.

 

The OG in the first 10 mins knocked the stuffing out of us followed by another unfortunate deflection handing the second on a plate.

From the first few minutes we had a mountain to climb.

I would much rather approach games looking to win and play our quick passing free flowing game than Hooton ball, turgid defensive defeatist boring crap.

Zimmermann was immense last season we need him back , the zonal marking has been iffy and we always concede alot of set piece goals this needs tightening.

After half time we were brilliant and I am still confident we will be better than 3 sides .
Pukki scoring was magic and the monkey on his back got kicked off silencing all the moany detractors and pundits.

Some of the off sides were harsh V.A.R not used of course.

Sky will be very unhappy that we banked most of the money and this is being reflected by the media writing us off for lack of ambition.

We have a tough start playing both European cup holders and between Liverpool Chelsea and Man city they hoovered up all the domestic titles too .

Expect a difficult August but I would rather get these games out of the way and target points against the lesser sides.

All in all we were unlucky but soundly beaten by a great team last night .

We need to raise the roof next Saturday and try to get something from Newcastle.

 

Given our start - Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City - I would be very happy if we could pick up a win and a draw in the first five matches. Four points on the board and those three out of the way would be pretty good IMO.

Long-term, I just pray we survive because that way we stand a much better chance of keeping most or some of these players.

But for me this whole season feels a bit like a free shot. As long as we don't withdraw into Hughton-style negativity, I am not going to complain whatever the results. Webber, Farke and the players deserve our patience after what they did last season, which was probably my happiest ever as a Norwich fan (or at least up there with the very first Premier League).