The Reds had chances to clinch a crucial away goal in Russia on Thursday night; however, an unstoppable effort from Hulk followed by a simple tap-in by substitute Sergei Semak sealed victory for the home side.
Sorry, but I'd have preferred to see us go for an away goal possibly lose 3-0 than settle for a 2-0 loss! That, IMO, is a lack of European experience!
Ya, and as I said earlier thought Lucas could have been brought on earlier. Don't think Hulk runs through our mids like that for the first if he is in the game.
Hulk shouldn't have had the ball to run.through, Hendo shouldn't be losing possession so easily in that position! (or was that the second goal?)
Of course the tie isn't over. It only takes "6 crazy minutes" to score three goals; however, statistically and as useless as we are under Rodgers at the moment, I think it would take us "6 lazy months" to put three past the Russians. Not over... will as always support the red and of course Rodgers should say we're still in it... but realistically its about as likely as RHC consenting to Bluff dating his daughters.
look sometimes when you go set up really defensively it works (rafa v barca for example) and sometimes it doesn't we tried in the first half v utd to do the same and got a chasing. we did the same here and looked quite poor. lesson? do we have the mentality or players any more to play this sort of game? should we have not stuck with our own game? who knows. utd played 10men behind the ball and got their draw but a combination of luck and good defending. their goal was out of the blue and totally against the run of play... thats what i mean by sometimes it works. But all in all nobodys going to be happy looking a tthe week that was to define our season turning out to doing exactly that... defining it as a terrible season!
Youve gotta say so far, it looks like BRs footy is pretty on the eye but doesnt have that killer instinct, and imo i dont see things changing too much.The game is about PUTTING THE BALL IN THE GOAL, and we aint been anything like clinical in front of goal for 4 yrs,we need to work more on set pieces I suspect we dont work on them at all, we need to be INFINITILY tougher mentally, if we concede first we crumble I heard someone on the radio say that BR was a middle third manager, i am stating to think thats right, we are too soft on theplayers, there should be more rollickins, we xcept defeat too easily.On paper for ability we arnt that for off United, mentally we are f**kin miles behind them.We need to toughen up quick, of BR could be gone in the summer
Is that what it was? 10 men behind the ball? Didn't look like the players knew what to do in the first half. Less so in the last 20 minutes. It was a strange set up, when we wanted to counter, we slowed down play....no support for suarez when the ball was played up quickly....all very strange. We cannot keep a clean sheet atm. Game over.
Unless we play another Russian team at this time of year we are not going to see a game like that again. We had nobody apart from Skrtle who had any relevant experience of those conditions. If you noticed Zenit changed their whole approach in the 2nd half as the temperature dropped even more. The pitch was boggy at the start which didn't lend itself to our passing game and then cut-up terribly in the 2nd half which nigh-on meant that passing on the ground was a lottery. However, when Suarez manages to miss 4 golden chances AND you only play with 9 effective players (Allen and Sterling may as well have sat on the bench) then you are going to struggle. So, it ain't over but it's going to be very very difficult to progress.
Worried for Rodgers. Hes looking lost and running out of ideas and I sure FSG are watching his every move. Testing times
The problem was it looked like we would concede more, although I agree with the approach you are suggesting but we should have been more attacking at 1-0 I was saying this on the match thread after about 30 mins, it was obvious that we were vunerable through the midfield without Lucas.
If BR was genuine in his pre-match comments then Lucas should have started the game! The strongest eleven will contain Lucas in every Liverpool fans mind, Agger too although I can understand him being benched after recent performances!
No Hoke. A 3 goal win is massively more likely than the other scenario you allude to. That would just NEVER happen
It's annoying how we still play our best players i.e. Gerrard, Suarez etc in the 'lesser games' and we still lose.
When the team was announced, I posted "What? No Lucas? I thought we were taking this game seriously". That is all.
