Mascherano’s passing was alright, but it wasn’t great. His main pass was a short one to Alonso.
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I mean, that’s what Grav normally does right, pass it to Macca after winning the ball. The thing Masch had was the ability to cover a lot of ground chasing after the opposition when they were in possession.
That was more someone like Sissoko, if the short one to a better player was accurate though. Mascherano’s was better than that, but of course not among the best. Alonso and Mascherano needed a few games not to step in each other’s zone, as both were brought up to occupy it and get their teams going from deep.
Back on the topic that was discussed, there is not one player who would solve our defensive aspect of our midfield. Of course, having certain skills and qualities among midfielders help. Might depend who the coach is next season, but I’m pretty sure we’re not going to sign a player who is dominantly physical and of suspicious quality on the ball.
That phase of the game needs to be improved colectivelly and recently it looked better than in the first months of the season. However, not helped by the fact that Szobo’s been playing more at RB, against City they played through us centrally more than you’d want in such a game. But that was more in pressure against the likes of Rodri.
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If you are looking for the most complete ‘destroyer’ type midfielder for us, then it’s Fabinho. He was amazing. He could do all the dirty work, but he could also pass the ball as well. And he was in there on his own - no double pivot for him. No wonder his legs fell off.
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A provocative question, where have our open play goals gone? It feels like we need free kicks or corners to score more now than we used to.
For those inclined and able, is it mainly us or are other teams also struggling for open play goals? Has the game just moved more to relying on set pieces.
Fabinho was a good player but he certainly wasn’t alone in there - he played alongside some of the hardest working players to have ever played for the club who were also incredibly well disciplined with how much they went forward.
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Lucas 
remember those wars 
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We’re way down in goals scored in general this season. We’re about 20 off the pace from last season and on target for just 60, the fewest in a season since the year it blew up for Rodgers when we were picking among Sterling, Baloteli, or Lambert to play up front in place of a perma injured Sturridge
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A coincidence or a parallel to view our current struggles?
Slot Pre Match. Did anyone watch it? Just want a bit of context to this ‘impossible to win the League with a set piece balance like ours’
My first reaction, wtf? My second? Ask somebody who actually watched it.
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Funny that I feel like our better midfielders right now all have passing problems: Szobo loses concentration easily and misses passes a lot, maybe he runs too much, but maybe he’s just not careful enough. Gravenberch is also struggling with passing; when opponents learn not to press him anymore, he looks clueless. Mac is better than both, more well-rounded but not exactly an elite passer, and especially, we lack a long-range passer – it’s almost only Van Dijk who could provide it from our backline now.
Then I think if we play both Gravenberch and Szobo, the third one needs to be a very good passer. I love both of them, but I think if we play both of them, we need to set up our build-up elsewhere 
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Or best to listen yourself:
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I use it as a marker for how bad the production has been this year if that is the comp as we all surely go cold at the thought of thinking back to how dire that season was. While some of that was on Rodgers, it was largely down to the players available as were routinely transformed as soon as Sturridge became available for a fleeting period of games. This year it feels more systemic where the team in general has not played well regardless of who is available with previously top performing players being way off form.
And that is a decent segue to the conversation here about how to right the issue of our midfield being played through with ease so often - you dont fix that with a new player when its being caused by a systemic issue of a totally pathetic and uncoordinated press. Its become so bad that there is so little evidence of it producing anything positive that lots of fans think we arent even trying to high press anymore. We are though its just completely ineffective, results in the furthest 2 or 3 players exerting a lot of energy and still being complete non entities in the defensive aspect leaving the midfield very exposed.
Fabs was always a lumbering tanker of a player, but when he was effectively hoovering everything up in his prime it was because of how predictable the 5 (7?) players ahead of him made the game for him, limiting the area of the pitch the ball could end up in. You put prime Fab in this side and he’d look every bit the Fabs of his last season here.
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A timestamp would be nice. I can barely make it through a match these days, 13 minutes of talking would surely put me off.
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I felt that press has shown a bit of an up tick but maybe the starting point was so below what is required that I’ve noticed when it has worked recently… The Sunderland game we seem to press a bit and force a turnover but again it seems to be fleeting. Wirtz is in a way wasted that way - he is so much more required to score the open goal or make that telling pass.
7:07 is when he starts talking about set-pieces, also touching on it a little bit in the previous answer when talking about Virgil.
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I did find it, more by luck. Took it to mean we need more goals from set plays in order to compete because everyone is now scoring more from them.
Not sure if that’s the correct way of looking at it. We can’t score from set pieces ergo we can’t win the league? Granted, they do absolutely have a place but kind of absolves responsibility from our general play.
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The comment was related to fine margins in games. He was pointing out that we were scoring very few goals from set pieces but conceding quite a few. Given that it is a narrow margin game, that is going to lose us points and games.
That is something that I have seen a definite improvement in since we sacked the set-piece analyst.
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Edit: sorry - just noticed that you have seen it. I’ll leave the link on for others.
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It’s odd, considering the dislike from some for the guy, you seem to hang on his every word.
I only check in for injury updates.
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