As poor as he has been, I'm willing to give him a go but only alongside Sakho/Toure. There is no point persisting with players who simply aren't going to be here for much longer (Johnson, Skrtel and Gerrard). Re. the Tony Pulis shout - it's awful. It's easy to defend when you have 2 banks for 4 and you're sole aim is to lump it into the stands. Might be suitable for a mid table/relegation team, but when we want to try and play the ball from the back and launch counterattacks, it's useless.
I agree with you. I want to see a Lovren Sakho pairing. Since hearing that Sakho has struggled with English things have made a lot more sense with him. At the world cup it was clear that he is a natural leader and organizer, but that is difficult with a language barrier. Given time Sakho could still be a star for us, and if he can master the language he could be a captain or vice captain. Lovren then does not have to panic about the extra pressure on him to lead at the back, which I think is whats messing up his game ATM.
One thing that Sakho certainly does bring is game intelligence. He actually covers his partner - Skrtel is braindead in that respect. A back 4 of Manquillo, Toure (take Lovren out of the firing line for a bit), Sakho, Moreno would be my back line. 3 of which have good pace, 1 real leader in Toure, and all 4 who know how to play on the front foot and cover one another. Johnson, Enrique, Skrtel should be dropped just for their lack of covering the other defenders. Awful defenders.
skertl was like a frightened little lamb. Johnson was a disgrace.... and gerrard was doing anyhting but.... mingolet had not one but 2 blockers on him and not one lfc player bothered to get i nthere and dig the ehads off them. that on its own tells me all i need to know about rodgers organisation skills. they are non existent.
The title of this thread makes me smile every time I see it. It suggests that now is the time when in reality, it was two years ago I heard a caller on TalkSport over the weekend who was defending Brod. I don't mind this normally but he was saying Brod needed time to build his own defence; obviously oblivious to the £9m on Migs, £17m on Sakho, £20m on Lovren, £16m on Moreno and whatever we paid to take Mankiller on loan
I posted this in the manager thread, but probably more relevant here: The back 3 triangle (Migs, Skrtel and Lovren) simply do not communicate at all. You watch them, all of them get in each others way, its mayhem. Migs is a right pussy and Lovren and Skrtel obviously have a language barrier issue. All 3 of them have talent to a degree, but together (and without a dedicated defensive coach) they are the perfect s**t storm and all of their weaknesses become greater than the sum of their parts. There are only a few solutions 1) Get them all to speak fluent f**ing English, including Sakho - I'm sure his English is mush 2) Get a dedicated defensive coach, we were solid when Clarke was in the set up 3) Drop/replace the weakest link.
The system is at fault. Not the players Even Baresi, Maldini, Costacurta would have struggled playing in this system i.e. high line.
The system that possessed mignolet to hoof a simple distribution out of play, which then lead to us conceding
The system is at fault when Lovren can't read the flight of simple balls. The system is at fault when Johnson can't be bothered to get run back into position. The system is at fault when Gerrard hasn't got the legs to track runners. The system is at fault when Skrtel wants to wrestle with strikers, or get caught of position.
Our defence found wanting again. We should have kept Reina. Goal keeper error resulted in the first goal. Someone tell me why we are unable to keep a clean sheet and hold on to lead?. It is getting embarrassing. The only joy is that we're still in it. !
I cannot see where our next win is going to come from. Whenever a team falls behind to us, like at Palace, they will (if they've got any sense) just attack us non stop until they equalise. Most of the time our defence is so vulnerable and our GK so unreliable that we will concede that goal. Last season, they themselves will be scared s**tless of a counterattack, but this season this is not happening. Luogorets attacked us until they scored in the end. We could have made it 3-1 but didn't, did we? I hope I am wrong but I can see that scenario repeating against Stoke...
My theory is that our defence would not be much better even if we had Chelsea's back four playing for us, mainly because Mignolet is the biggest problem, as is Rodgers' insistence on him being a sweeper keeper, which he plainly is not.
