Domestic cup Kings online news and tweets and stuff

Love it.

Jota will not be happy.

Start playing mate.

 

Is there anything you don't moan about ffs

 

Could easily do another one of those with the amount of times he’s got the ball stuck under his feet and put us in danger with a poor short pass.

Can’t argue with his long kicking (most of the time, occasionally he’ll scuff one along the ground). Just a shame his short play and ball control is a bit iffy at times.

 

he has just one bad habit. He dicks with the ball by putting his foot on top of it and dragging it back and smart forwards should be triggered by this and sprint to close him the second the foot goes on the ball. Few do.

Most of the time what I see is us being just a bit lazy and the defenders getting really poor body positions in presenting the options he needs. We have shut down mentally a lot last season and just gone into a negative pass back, don't turn ,don't play forward mindset and we end up deep and deeper until Alisson is the guy under pressure.

I put a lot of errors down to just poor team play and lack of position more than anything. CBs facing their own goal receiving it rather than being smart about getting facing the right way to play it wide. CMs only offer for the sake of being seen to be doing so. Not on the turn. Most of the time these guys then just play it straight back at alisson who's got guys too close and hes then under pressure.

Mentally speaking we seemed to develop a really bad blockage after scoring 1 that we suddenly decided " control" meant not attacking, IMO the inevitable outcome of this is the ball going deeper and deeper and errors starting to be forced out of players.

 

Not sure on your last bit. Was only 8 out of 38 games that we scored 1 or less and 4 of those were 1-0 wins. Think one thing you can’t say about this team is we don’t attack.

 

we do when we want to.

What i mean is we have fairly consistently stopped playing forward and invited trouble last season.

what i was calling "dicking with it" 3 to 4 one touch 2 yard passes between two cms rather than play forward then back to the cb who has nothing on as the whole pitch is closed down and it has to go across the pitch etc.

remember when klopp got up off the bench and read the riot at to van dyke in one game after HT cos the were dicking round knocking it about and not being positive.

theres a balance between being mentally shut down to going and making an opportunity and actually controlling the game. I felt we did way too much of this side to side and back stuff while forwards ran about offering for balls that were never coming.

The aim off the passing shouldnt be to kill time but to pull the opposition around the park and tire them out. control then go for the jugular.

 

How often does that happen though? And it never causes any problem. It just gives the team a bit of a breather. Takes sting out the game. Potentially draws the opposition out s bit, get them frustrated.

 

A lot.

its not a breather when you invite pressure on rather than run people about. Its not taking the sting out of a game, like say when city come at us etc.

As i said look at any game where the 2 yard silly passing starts happening and we stop playing with intent. the difference is night and day.

you've got a fair number of examples like the second half in the fa cup semi final v city, coasted that after 3-0. no intent inviting city to take us apart. Benfica, villareal.

the reality is that we are actually too good for a lot of sides in the prem (currently) and it won't actually matter as you say but its a bad habit. Brighton 2-2, Brentford 3-3... things start happening.

IMO getting turned the right way is a lot easier to go do than having to sprint back chasing lads and scrambling to defend and thats what we end up doing.



Our other issue is diametrically opposite to it, being too risk in transition having half won the ball back. We want to go quick but have not got control or are trying something that isn't on. examples of this would be chelsea 2-2 where we turn it over 5 second after winning it.

Its all fine margins yes but if we close or eyes to it when whats the point of talking about football at all? we are talking that final 2% to catch and beat man city here.

 

Yet we won all those games?

 

errrrr.

lost the second half v city mate 2-0, yeah we were 3-0 up but it invited pressure. real control kills them off.

benfica 3-3? not a win

villareal 2-0 up before we started playing after HT. they got tired.

Brighton 2-2? 2-0 up there. not a win.

etc etc

I'm trying to make the point this is the fine margins of improvement here but you are not really taking that part on board?

 

trent really is addicted to redbull.

he's always sucking down down before games as well.

 

Man City… we won
benfica. We won the tie
villareal, we won the tie.

we could lose every second half 2-0 if we’re already 4-0 up at Ht.

Your suggesting that passing the ball to each other isn’t the right thing to do and we should attack teams more. I’m saying, we do attack, we lost 2 prems game last year and were 1 point and 1 poor finishing performance away from winning 4 trophies.

Like I say, there is obviously a reason we slow the game down and pass the ball around.

Yes we could go gung ho for 90 minutes, and we might win a few more games 4-0 rather than 2-0… but we also might tire/injure our players and end up losing more.

Game management. When you’re winning there’s no reason to rush it. Pass it around, keep the ball, force the opponent onto you which exploits space for the front 3

 

I find it frustrating tbh. Back off a bit when 2 or 3 nil up, not at 1-0. It invites pressure and unnecessarily risks the result.

 

Look like Luis is buzzing for the new season

Ramsey a bit awkward cos hes new, robbo will sort that