And breathe - halftime. What a crazy half, shocking defending, ridiculously high tempo pressing and great goals!
Our defending and pressing has been atrocious. The hairdryer needs to come out. In spite of scoring two goals we shouldn't have conceded those goals. Real slack defending.
Crazy crazy half. Our defending is dog ****, we keep losing on the second ball, we are too slow, lacking proper awareness, we need to wake the **** up in the second half and tighten things up and start winning the second ball.
And we NEED TO ****ING CLEAR THE ****ING BALL instead of dallying on it so we lose it in dangerous positions!!!
Defending has been all over the place at both ends of the pitch, we need to keep putting pressure on there back line.
Frantic first half. Credit to the lads for getting us back in this, but we need to ****ing defend ! Get to the ball first and if you don't then press the man. We have given Liverpool FAR too much time on the ball. They are there for the taking in this game, but we need to stop handing them chances on a plate.
Wenger has to counter their tactic,s in the second half,they are getting at our back line way too easily.
Walcott two times was guilty, ****s sakes, the amount of times we have conceded goals like that, we just did it VS Sunderland, and then again tonight.
The problem is I don't think we have the players to counter Liverpool's tactics, without Coq-Sanchez, our pressing game is severely lacking, and unfortunately, as hard as Flamini and Campbell may try, and I'm sure Wenger will tell them to press more, they're just not that good at it as the other 2. So that's why then it's more important to keep our shape, like we did VS City, if we keep our shape, Liverpool won't be able to keep coming behind us and finding lot's of space.
We are missing carzola in this game! And also coq! I would get the ox and remove giroud. Ox can run at their defense which have been ****e (like ours).
Completely off topic, has anyone seen the amount of empty seats at the Etihad? I got confused and started thinking if this was the League Cup game!
It annoys me that we always struggle against teams that employ the high intensity, pressing style because we never seem to have an answer to counter the tactics. That being said, the defending on show has been horrendous. When the whistle blew for HT, I was praying it was FT. I think it goes to show just how badly we miss Coquelin's presence in midfield. Flamini's lack of mobility and strength in the middle of the park is getting shown up.
Could still go either way in this game, I expect to see Liverpool get tired as the game gets into its final moments as they have players just back from injury and play such a high tempo pressing game, oxo may have a big part to play coming on to run at tired legs.
I've said it before, Flamini looks good in games we sit deep and he can shield the back four with another player alongside him or sit on a number 10 to stifle the opposition, but when he has to play as a mobile DM/CM like in more fluid games like today he just doesn't look anywhere near as good. He has his uses but I personally think he is only effective when used in very particular ways, he can't play week in, week out regardless of opposition or tactics.
