I don't think it's 'entitled' for supporters of a top team supposedly in a three-way tussle for the title to assume a home game against Crystal Palace is a three-point banker: perhaps we were wrong to think of ourselves as a top team though, at least yet.
I don't think we should look at any game as a guaranteed 3pts. All points have to be earned, no matter who the opponent is. Expectation (of our team) is another thing
of course they should be earned. Knowing what you need is one thing. It is not rocket science to know LFC need to win thier game when the rivals are playing at home v lutoin and villa. being shocked that the team can't run having watched them unable to run 3 days before is another thing. Whats "expected" is players defend like it matters. this was being done earlier i nthe seaons and i commented on it then. It felt different. It felt like they knew they had a chance. The last games we've seen some really rank defending from various players who have either not gone in to close or just have not shown the hunge ror have just plain gmabled stupidly and lost. Compare the blocks made by palace players and we find one occasion really where robertson did the job. Their goal was a mess of lack of faith in each other, lack of closing down and really indecision. you oodn't concded goals after goals in game after game without having a reason for it. Be that lack of balace, lack of desire or just plain stupid play. Palace actually missed better chances than the goal they got. Before the goal. Palace on thier right. Endo is a mile ouf of his won space in jone's space or whoevers space. They ar ein if that ball goes left. Macca is RCM and going to the ball. In short its all over the place. Look at that line and mfield. Its a shambles in terms of shape. the ball went over slowly so they've time to shuffle over. what is worse is endo has run out to where he is after papace recycle the ball so he can see the guy but just runs out to nowhere. This is really basci but good from palace Look at how they are working the overload (we never work and over load btw at the other end) They've draw the RCM to the ball. OUr RB has desiced to go out creating a massive gap between RB and RCB. Man is pointing play it even. Endo is not alive to it. So its in effect a 3 v 2 OUr Cbs are far too deep for no good reason also. Vvd ran out on his own before this and konate didn't s so it wasn't a proper line and is still not. now again palace fail to play the right ball and recycle a few more times. No challenges are coming in form us in any of this. nobody is agressive or getting close Now they are going to try down the line again. Endo has the man but has no urgency to get near him. Macca is ball wathicng. What is knoate doing where he is? VVD has his man. Konate never looks about here and is outside the width of the 6 yard zone already. This is another key moment. Jones is central and closes down eze who lays it off. jones instant instinct (via training) is not to hold shape here. no he runs off eze right at the ball. Look busy be a hero pressing. He vacases the middle and just vanishes. just before this shot you can see konate glance over shoulder so he sees eze but just ignores that danger. endo has this man. he is coming. the man danger should be the man free. VVD has thier forward to worry about. where's jones gone? he's totally vanished. endo fails to block and he just dives and it actually goes through his legs and back. a really simply ball. Where the hell is konate and why does he think defending ther eis better (in case endo is beaten?) rather than go try shut out the lane to eze who he saw? In any event this was good play by palace to probe with with real numbers and create over loads and good play by their forwards to find spaces to run front and also hold position to keep vvd central. Our shape is poor. Its really that simple. its too easy drag players around, and open gaps and when theres a gap to play into good footballers will exploit it. We need to tighten up the gaps and focus on recovery of shape. its like as if they have decided theres so many games theres no time to work the basics but plenty of time to do rondos and stuff like that.
You've done "a mito' and picked out a completely reasonable part of an argument and left out the part it was aimed at
I note nobody wants to see the actual issues with a small bit of analysis. You can really see theres something wrong with how we are setting oursevles up and working on getting reset. When we play some teams like atlanta or palace or whever the get into a shape and they stick in it. I'm looking at these goals and i am seeing peopel just randomly lashing out of position then not win the ball and not try to get back or playes being too easily pulled out of position and not recover. This seems to be not getting resolved at the moment and we are just conceding enough goals that othe rother issue of not being truely lethal up front is being exposed more. Its not "bad" in the grand schem of things as we get a lot of possession but we are coughing up those goals another side might not. Maybe if we focus more on this then we would then score less goals, i don't know, but without the ball we seem quite loos in our positions and not to bothered about getitng back in.
Don't think I need to say that I don't read the long posts . I'm usually browsing on here when I've got a spare couple of minutes so just scan through
I don't think the defence is doing anything different to earlier in the season, I think teams have just figured out how to exploit the hybrid RB/CM approach. You've criticised Konate whereas I think he's the only one in the entire team that actually played well over the last three games. He can't do it on his own. We watch the same game and see different things.
I think we all see the issues but either don't or can't analyse in the same depth that you do. You put a lot of work into making analytical posts to back up your points. I think you draw criticism from your conclusions more than from the rightness or wrongness of your analysis. (I've probably made up a couple of words there.) After this game, you concluded that we'd now be lucky to make fourth.
I think they are. I think the level of really putting themselves in there has dropped. you might be right. I do think all the sides have figured out how narrow we are with the ball and where players are not when to breat on us. in this example it goes on for 90 seconds and we are set yet there's gaps everywhere. we are pulled out to easy and there's too many overloads in the example above konate is the last error. Bradley goes out to open the gap. endo isn't really paying attention Jones gambles for standing at 6 as end has goen over to where macca should be. he runs off the eventual scorer to close then then continues on and ends up very wide and totally out of game. imo that's a real lack of recovery of good solid shape. we did the same twice v atlaanta who didn't even need hold the ball. both lbs ran at a man on half way and left a guy in behind them
we need to get 3 wins out of 6 now. I made the same conclusion after utd that it was OK we just need 3 from 7 and start with palace before thinking about 1st again.
No, not with this team. I'm not overly criticising them for that though, just to say that our league position is probably a tad flattering at this stage of its development. By that, I mean that we've overachieved our target of top four (I'd have taken 5th back in August thinking that would have been enough for a CL place). We are perhaps in the situation Arsenal were last year. But for the teams of 2019 and 2020 (and perhaps 2020) then yes, a home league game against 14th-place Palace should be a banker - just not for this team yet. And perhaps not even next season with a new manager.
Saying how many wins we need to secure a particular position is a simple statement of fact (as things currently stand) - the issue I had was with your statement that we are "looking nervously" at 4th. This was at a time when both teams below us were 11 points behind, both with vastly inferior GDs - the suggestion that we would fear a 12 pt turnaround with 2 clubs with 6 to go is really a bit wild.
Football being the way it is, I would never say any PL game is a banker. Perhaps we have a different understanding of the word? To me it means a sure-fire thing - you can't go wrong betting on it - and I don't think any football game at our level is that. Surely you would bet on City to win every individual game before it's played - but they don't. They are a better team than anyone, but no game is guaranteed.
Getting into semantics here, but yes, to build on your analogy, I would have put reasonably good money at short odds on the 2019, 2020, and 2022 teams to beat palace at home in April in these circumstances if I were a betting man. And no, even before hindsight, I had no similar feelings of certainty about the game on Sunday with this team given their erratic form and woeful conversion rate in front of goal. On that score, I honestly do expect us to put four or five against some team (any of them) in our final six games: but I also expect us to lose one more at least, and probably draw a couple of them as well. Not doom and gloom and slagging them off, but when it came to the business end of the season we have seen this team was just not ready. It's just a huge pity that this combines with Klopp's last season - had he been staying until 2026 as we originally thought at the beginning season, then I'd say we we a 'banker' to win at least one title or CL before he went. But then again, I appear to be entitled.
A professional gambler would see other better things to bet on. 5 or 10 years ago they were living off betting on federer, djokovic and nadal to reach SFs. just rinse and repeat LFC were played 16, won 15 draw 1 against the bottom half clubs. we were 2.6 goals per game for and 0.69 goals against. We were 7/7 for the home games v bottom half. So all "stats" outside of the reality of football being two teams having to go at each other screams LFC should be heavy favourites to win that game The table tells us that city are not in the class of a sure thing week by week. Absolutely.. 22 wins, 7 draws, 3 defeats = 1/3rd of the time they have not won and the odds you get on an individual game are very short. I'd have however a very strong view that if any club can then that club with that manager should win every game. LFC might have no right to win that game sunday and have to deliver. LFC to win and both teams to score was the favourite bet pre game. 7/5 LFC to win was 2/11, now that says the people betting we only putting money on one side. So its fine to say LFC were and will be favourites to win games. Thats just the way it is. There is just no right to win the actual game or any game. Should we expect to win? No we should expect performance from an elite side. We should expect the other teams in the league to also have a level or perofrmance and come to the table with the means to compete. Palace came with a system and a plan. they delivered that early on but TBH they were woeful on set piece so can count themselves just a touch lucky to not concede.
I would even put it this way. palace just got to 33 points. they were jsut that bit close to the relegation zone on 30 but as of now they will be thinking they are safe and imo will put their feet up and probabaly not win too many between now and the end. they have not got that hard a set of fixtures either but there you go. Palace had a reason to defend hard and go at us and they did. they did well and got their result. We did not and go what we deserved.
We've already achieved at least 5th, and that may yet just do it. Though I expect us to still drop 5-7 points (maybe even 9), there's no ****ing way on God's green Earth that both Spurs and Villa will win all their remaining games. 4th is a 'banker', and I don't feel entitled in saying that.
