Match Day Thread Time to look at our defence 2023/2024

There’s a young kid in Benfica, Dias. He’ll be on Portugal’s WC squad and may find significant playing time. I’m going to be keeping an eye on him as I was very impressed with his play in a champions league match I caught a few months back.

 

I don’t think anyone can VVD has been perfect - there have been big mistakes. But overall, he’s been a great signing and has almost single handedly improved our defence.

We should also factor in he came back from a long term injury last season (at Soton) and was pretty rusty when he joined us.

 

I think the biggest thing to factor in is that you are bound to make mistakes when you are compensating for others while learning a new system. That besides every defender that has ever lived has made huge mistakes! An immense signing for us and our defensive form picked up the second he was played.

 

Question: Are we going to be in this final without VVD?

 

Why? Has he picked up an injury?

 

No , what I am saying is, if we failed to buy him January transfer window are we going to be in this final?

 

Unknown.

 

I remember seeing the stats for our defense pre and post signing VVD, but can't remember where. Short version, we concede less with him and win more. Simple enough. And yeah, back from injury, very little game time, no preseason with us and he's still shored up our defense massively. Can't wait to see him next season with a settled back 5 again (maybe a new CB *fingers crossed*) but from the start. I don't feel half as worried every defensive set pieces any more!

 

Pre-VVD we were only good enough for fourth or fifth in PL, post VVD we were first

 

The fact is we have not really conceded less goals and there are lots of things that add together to make the team better since his arrival.

He is due his share of credit but its not him alone.

However the phfackt is lovren is still there and highly likely to dive in stupid and get himself sent of saturday.

I'd rather he get an early yellow and not be able to make a challenge again all game than him do a stupid panicked dive in foul and give a pen and a red card away.

 

Aside from his actual defending, I think he has helped us as a team going forward. Calm on the ball, picks a pass.

 

Passes better than our midfielders

 

Our defence has improved significantly since Lovern is not playing and we have a new Goalkeeper

 

Dare I say we actually have a reasonable defense now?

 

I need to see Gomez at this level for a bit longer to feel it’s strong. Reasonable? Sure.

 

We'll find out in the next match

 

To be fair to Karius and even Lovren, our defence has improved since Jan this year - when VVD came.

Our team as a whole defends really well - we don’t allow teams to run right through us and we don’t concede many shots.

The issue is that we conceded far too many individual errors. And most of the errors led to great scoring opportunities.

By removing Moreno with Robertson, Migs with Karius (marginal improvement), VVD to break the Lovren - Matip pairing, and Trent developing further. We cut out more errors.

This season, we’ve gone one step further. Gomez has been a revelation and so too has Alisson. Time will tell if we can keep it up.

 

You missed Coutinho leaving resulting in us having a more robust midfield

 

Alisson's mistake is a wake-up call for the whole team. No one is not capable of making mistake ,
if not for that mistake we should be four games without conceding.

 

I’m glad they made the mistake tbh. We didn’t lose points so no issue there but a couple of big names who’d just spent the week having smoke blown up their respective @rses totally f*cked up. Hopefully now they’ll cut out the sloppiness.