Think that was the best i've ever seen Cissé playing as a target man, holding up the ball etc. De Jong had some nice close control, still a bit off the pace however. Colo was still ****, didn't win any headers, two footed tackle on someone when the ball was miles away, no other tackles to speak of. Sissoko looked much better, Wij back on form. Well done Steve!
Give cisse his dues, that was a hell of a shift he put in. Gini too. Colback and Anita were snappy today, we need that. Thought they were all excellent. Sissoko was lazy again but did come up with assists
Not sure about sdj mark either. Perez should learn from it. Sdj getting beyond cisse was what has been missing. Instrumental to a change in mentality too. Dummett surprised me but proved once again he is still way better than haidara at defending. Ibe was lively. Over the long term though let's not kid ourselves. Not the answer.
The real test is when we next go a goal down in a game. How would they have reacted today if Benteke had put that chance away from 3 yards in the first half?
i worry about the fact that our only league wins are when we are on telly, players showing up for the shop window? wouldnt say it with all of them, but lets see how we do in a non televised game and when we go 1 nil down, delighted with the result but one swallow doesnt make a summer, if we can build in this then we truly have a reason to be optimistic.
Only caught the 2nd half. But I thought the entire team put in a great shift against a tired side. We didnt play their best players , still not an excuse for Bin Dippers but good win.
SDJ also managed to drop back too to link up the midfield, but quite a few times managed to use dropping back to flick the ball forward rather than knocking it further back. Showed a lot glimpses of real ability and a great football brain. No doubt he is still not as sharp as he needs to be, but fully deserves a run in the team IMO. As for Dummett, he did defend well. I think the game suited him though as a lot of the defending (not all) required more CB defending than FB, which is a much more natural game to him (as in he was defending behind the ball rather than chasing it). Not using that to knock his performance as he did well, but shows there is defensive ability there to be used if he can be played in a position that suits him.
Not letting this result affect how I see most of our players. I don't like them. It's telling that generally our best performances have been against the top teams. Where's this energy and work rate against the smaller teams?? Nowhere because they don't care. Watch us throw the towel in again when Villa go one up against us in a couple of game's time.
I would knock a point or two off of Tash's rating ..We wernt that good, a huge improvement on the last 2 games but still not in the 7/8s level of performance..luckily for us Liverpool pool where worse overall SDJ played better too. .. as people have said ..He linked the MF and attack well ..Still rusty as hell mind