Fair play, you stuck to your guns throughout and backed yer man. Full credit to Conor Bradley, he hit the heights with that performance and showed everything you could possibly want in a modern fullback, against the highest level of opposition.
The issue for me, with Bradley, was never his quality, but his fitness. I was wondering if he would be able to get it together for a sustained run, and put his injury problems behind him. I think I read that most of it was growth related, and was a case of maturing into his body, so here’s hoping.
I’m really pleased for Slot and the last two performances. I feared he might be stubborn, which would’ve been his downfall, but he’s actually got us back to very energetic and more structured performances. Seeing some players actually drop back into midfield when we attacked to ensure we had bodies in the event of a counter was so encouraging, which makes our gung-ho Bagel FC approach against Man Utd all the more confusing. I’m hopeful he’s learnt that even with the wealth of riches in the side this year comparable to last year, we can’t have that approach in a game ever. We need to see it consistently after the international break.
I want to see these performances away from home, and then the longer term aim is to integrate Isak, Frimpong and Kerkez into this style. I don’t want to see Kerkez being narrow and inverted, but bombing down the left flank.
Yeah it was a much more coherent performance and its really difficult to look past the reality that we back to what previously worked. Individually there should not be much required to integrate each of those 3 missing players…maybe Frimpong the most challenging because of his more attacking/running style, and so maybe you concentrate on pairing him with Robbo who can balance him better than Kirkez can right now.
But the challenge becomes once you try to integrate them AND returning Wirtz to the middle. This is nothing about my faith in Flo to deliver, but about the shape and the ripple effects of that. The difference in this side between having 3 legit mids vs 2 and a 10 has been night and day. It’s not just about having more players behind the ball when we lose it, but we possess and use the ball far better with more options to use in the middle third. I get Slot’s thought for wanting to move in that way, but it has had the opposite effect than he envisioned. Doesnt mean we drop it entirely, but maybe that is something we put off until next year when we can have another summer rethink of the personnel required for it to work.
Just a quick point re Bradley and not to take the thread too far off topic… Maybe he is at a stage when his skeletal body has finally slowed down and stopped growing, which would help fight against the stress and strain of a footballers life.
If I remember back correctly, Stevie G had the same problems with his body in his early days, funny enough, when he was also playing at RB… If the lad can get some fitness consistency into his game, the RB spot looks nailed down for seasons to come eh
You know I love you to bits but it’s “Kerkez” and “Gakpo” - and in your correct spelling of their surnames lies the key to their turnaround in form. Please, for the sake of everything, type them correctly, otherwise I’m gonna fade away with sadness!
I never mentioned Cody. And just like Utd only upgraded Schmeichel from a wire coat hanger to a plastic one once he’d got through a season, Milos will get more spelling consideration once he’s settled down and established himself.
The problem with a few players that we have signed in recent years, is that they are easy to mistype, and once they are, they are stuck, wrong, in predictive text.
Szoboszlai has caused me all end of grief that way. Great player, lethal in Scrabble, hard to pronounce, and impossible to spell.
Against Bournemouth Cherki was immediately looking to release Haaland as soon as he got the ball. Make sure he hasn’t got the time to look up and you’ve greatly reduced the threat straightaway.
I was reading an article in the Athletic last week about the trend by teams to invert their left backs and it mentioned that Kerkez was prolific in doing that last season at Bournemouth, so I imagine a big part of why we signed him was to do the same here?
That really surprises me to hear because I never saw that. But I guess that is another example of sometimes you pick up in a game only the patters you went into it expecting to see (Kirkez bombing down the wing)
Yeah, same here. It’s admittedly a small sample but I’ve never seen him play in a narrow role. I really, really don’t like it when he does it at Liverpool. That said, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Trent doing it either.
From what I remember, he was used more or less as a classic full back at Bournemouth. Not too deep, not too high, but certainly used wider than in the games we’ve used him as the 3rd CB in build up (a role in which I didn’t like so far).
For Hungary, he used to play as a LWB in a back 3, but in their last 4 games, they’ve switched to 4 at the back. On paper. In average positions, I see their RB stood back more, which allowed Kerkez to push up more.
One can miss many differnt details when you don’t watch a team as regularly as Liverpool. Maybe there were some instances in some phases of the game when Kerkez did something different when Bournemouth had Adam Smith (in his early to mid 30’s) at RB.
It’s more his his attributes, qualities and potential where I wonder. Because not everything in ex-club vs new club relation needs to be perfectly aligned. It’s impossible, anyway. He was apparently our first choice and then our alternative was Hato. Two different players.
We’ll see how it looks when (or if) we try it regularly.
Klopp saw the potential with Gakpo centrally as some sort of a false #9, there are many successful and unsuccessful attempts at changing or adding a new position to a player.
