suarez and sturridge didn't play very well today, both looked like they didn't care. gerrard was ****ing atrocious - and when he doesnt play well the rest of the midfield don't. henderson was okay, along with flanno. toure had a shocker. skrtel and sakho and migs were average. lucas was ok. coutinho was our best player in the second half. overall i'm not too bothered about the result as arsenal fully deserved it however their defence was shaky and we could have got a goal or two. like i said suarez and sturridge didn't look bothered and if they did i feel the result would have been very different.
Migs - not really at fault for both goals. Skrtel - made some decent interceptions and won most headers Toure - made some bad mistakes and gave the ball away too much Sakho - played well Lucas - awful. so one dimensional it's criminal. he doesnt create goals and is always caught out of position gerrard - awful. supposed to be the captain and influence the players. hendo - was okay. didn't do much. had a decent chance in the first half but ****ed it up badly cissokho - terrible performance. absolute waste of a loan flanagan - did okay considering his age. doesnt offer much going forward suarez - played well but lacked end product sturridge - awful performance, nothing else needs to be said coutinho - very good in the 2nd half. made some great passes and was our best player moses - same every week tbh. average
Lucas was ****ing dreadful: he was lucky Cissokho was on the pitch to take the derision away from him. But anyway, we lost three points to the league leaders, who are a better team than us. What this does is put in perspective the criminal two points we threw away against ten-man Newcastle. Over the next eight weeks we have Everton, Spurs, Chelsea and City to play away, and the best we're realistically looking is four points, if lucky. The games in between, such as Fulham and Hull home and away, we have to ****ing win if we are to even get close to that fourth place. Today we came up against a top team for the first time this season, with the exception of Southampton. That didn't go well either. IF we can get though till New year within 6 points of the top I still think we have a chance of fourth place, as, Soton excepted, we have them all to play at home. Got to do better than today though, and we can't afford ****-ups like throwing away two points when we play ten men for 50 minutes.
Another thing that I noticed.. Our distribution from the back is terrible. Now this is another problem with 3 at the back.. Well not so much 3 at the back, but having Skrtel in the middle. We have Mingolet and Skrtel both being part of the spine of the team, they're both horrendous on the ball, it's becoming an obvious tactic to push in to certain areas forcing either one of them on the ball, for it to be just hoofed up the pitch, we either need to find an alternative middle defender or change to a flat back four.
I agree but TBF to Skrtel, he rarely hoofs it, he does try to play the ball out. The problem is, his passing isn't good enough so its either into a dangerous without enough juice or the receiving player mis-controls it. I wouldn't mind seeing Agger in the middle of the three but Skrtel doesn't deserve to be dropped
It's a really tough decision, Skrtel deserves to be in there but since we've reverted to this 3 at the back we haven't kept a clean sheet. There is something fundamentally wrong back there. We need players who can pass the ball, Sahko is going to be a great player but I personally don't think he's ready yet, and I think Agger should be ahead of him. In theory Johnson, Toure, Agger and Enrique is a really solid unit and I'd like to see us move back to the formation that worked so well for us towards the end of last season.
As you may know, I'm not a fan of three at the back. The four you said is very strong and I'd be much happier to see that instead with Henderson and Lucas protecting them. Push Gerrard forward into the AM role, put Luis on right and Ford on the left. Studge up top. IMO, that is our best team. It has energy, balance, trickery, pace, power, height, width, goals and passing composure.
We weren't bad. Arsenal were just better... don't think it would have taken much to even things up. We just found ourselves two paces away from where we needed to be at key times. Cissoko hasn't started hid Liverpool career too brightly and today was disappointing. Toure wasn't bad but made several mistakes. Lucas was... well the Lucas he was before he got good. Flanny did OK I thought... nothing special but held his own. The team as a whole didn't look bad... we didn't get the ball forward enough to capitalise SAS... had we got the ball to them more the score line would have been different. All it would take is putting gerrard in a time machine back three years and we would have won. Finally... coutinho... he is just as bad as gerrard at corners... when taking a corner it helps if you beat the first man... just a thought. Despite all my criticism... we weren't bad... Arsenal just too good today.
No one in the back 3 was particularly bad today, but as a collective unit it definitely didn't work today.. I don't know what happened for their first goal, it could of easily been avoided. Cissikho was awful, but going forward he had no support so more often than not he ran in to a blind alley.. He's a decent player but he definitely doesn't look match fit, he looked dead after every run. I agree with Dev - A front four of Gerrard, Coutinho, Sturridge and Suarez is the way forward, Henderson and Lucas is more than enough cover for the back 4.
this frustrates the hell out of me (maybe because I can take a pretty good corner myself ) but it is equally annoying when it is over hit and sails over everyone's head. I think Gerrard is often guilty of trying to do too much with the ball at corners (whip, bend, power, etc) whereas Coutinho appears as though he's not bothered (I'm sure that's not the case). I miss Alonso taking them, Aquilani was pretty good too.
the way some are talking you would think arsenal are just an average team, they are not top for nothing and it was always going to be difficult place to go. There was not that much between the sides and you would expect a top team to nullify liverpool's best players. Ramsey was the difference between the two sides at the end of the day and arsenals defence did their job superbly....A good game and a fair result..
They have a very good side. Question marks will be asked if they get injuries in certain areas though. If Liverpool can't win the league (not a very big if there ) hen I'd prefer Arsenal to
I gotta say I agree, outside of Barcelona and Bayern, Arsenal play the best football in Europe. Not only that, they've done it on pennies (bar Ozil), fair play to them and I do hope they win the league.
Sounded like we were beaten pretty fair and square. Also heard ( on radio) that our midfield looked jumbled, that Gerrard got really old overnight almost, and that was where we really lost it? Those who watched it can shed light por favor?
Sorry pal, you can think what you want but in reality the difference between the 2 sides was really small. I don't begrudge you your win as you certainly deserved that. However that was you very close to your best at home - irrespective of the players you did not have. On the other hand we certainly missed both Johnson and Enrique. However, more importantly the decision to let you come on and to play on the counter was our big mistake. When we did push you back your defence was at full stretch even though we were misfiring as an attacking force. So well done and we'll see you at Anfield later in the season.
Pretty much. The Arsenal 2nd line (the players behind Giroud) ran the show, they took our midfield apart. Arsenal were faster, passed better and were far more clinical. Suarez and Sturridge were kept relativity quiet, mainly cause the midfield were dominated and could get hold of the ball. Almost forgot Gerrard was playing at one point he was that irrelevant today, Lucas was poor and on a few occasions looked like he'd given up. Hendo wasn't as bad, but his passing was poor. The two fullbacks weren't up to scratch against a very tricky Arsenal forward line and were frankly out numbered as the Arsenal fullbacks had very little pressure and were able to get forward alot. The CB's weren't actually that bad, but the wrong formation meant they were being pulled out of position and were without the support of the midfield for almost all of the game. We were poor, Arsenal were good. Best to move on.
In all truthfulness - yes. As a team I doubt that you will improve on that performance. You played well. We didn't and therefore did not deserve to win (or being honest even draw). Looking at it from a Liverpool perspective I believe that we lost as a result of our own failings rather than the superiority of Arsenal's play. Both goals, though well taken, came as a direct result of our mistakes. Now that the game is over, my interest is naturally on how we develop from here. I still see the basis of a very good side and a successful season so I'm not unhappy about that.
I think yesterday exposed where our weakest area is clearly the midfield 3. As hard as Lucas and Henderson work they just dont have the quality Arsenals midfield 3 have Gerrard has the quality but he just didn't do anything yesterday I dont know if he was told not to get in the box or he just didn't have the legs if so I think he should sit and drop Lucas. Can't remember Henderson getting in the box apart from that one run either. I think we'll be fine against most teams but really the difference in the ability of our midfield players showed today. Hopefully we'll be sigining a top midfield player in january because I think thats all we are missing
