The most frustrating thing about the current run of form, is that the players are better than the results, but the manager will not use the best options on the pitch at the same time. There is always a Shaqiri, Oxlade or an Origi in there to water things down.
Yesterday was understandable as we needed to consider the CL game, but hence forth Klopp needs to do the following;
Play Fabinho in midfield, the side is just not the same without either Hendo or Fabinho in midfield.
Pick midfielders/forwards based on quality and form, not regardless of quality or form just to fit a preferred style. Bobby should not be in the side.
Tweak the style to fit the best players who are in form. Go 433 only if Jota, Mane, Salah are available. Do not play Origi, Shaqiri or Bobby or Oxlade.
Play Salah down the 9 channel, in a forward 3 put Mane on the right to help TAA out, Jota down the left to help Robertson out.
Play two from Phillips, Davies, Williams, Kabak in central defence, accept the defence wonāt be perfect, but that dominating midfield and scoring more goals matters more.
Alisson in goal, TAA and Robbo at full back, two centre backs, Fabinho at 6, Salah at 9, should be the spine of the side.
Four other players to make up the 11, from Thiago, Gini, Milner, Keita, Jones, Mane, Jota, the other three would then be excellent options off the bench.
Keep Fab fresh by taking him off when a game is won, and occasionally resting him. Same with Salah.
I think most teams are just aggressive enough to force us into either losing the ball or going backwards. We are too soft and have lost our bite. This may be down to a loss of intensity through fatigue from playing as we do these past few years, it is tough to keep up Iād say, it may be down to loss of fans in stadiums or it might be down to needing to shake things/players up a little but I think it has been with us since January last year and has completely imploded this year.
Still, there needs to be an alternative when our usual style of play isnāt working.Teams no longer fear us and when that happens theyāve figured out how to get at you. We need to counter that with something different, which we currently seem to be lacking.
Agree with all of your post bar this last sentence. The lads are burnt out indeed, and before they get a well deserved rest, there wonāt be any major change. A push from the home fans in order to get an adrenaline kick would be most welcome, but as this isnāt an option, āhomeā is just an empty word. If anything, playing at āhomeā, with the expectation of a positive result, adds to the pressure already on the lads, hence maybe why they perform even worse at Anfield than elsewhere.
Anyway, the lads are obviously finished as we speak, and only a good rest, followed by proper training up from the ground, will help them to get up to speed again. Thus, next season, not before that.
Yes, itās clear that pressure on the ball and pressing in general has dropped to below acceptable levels. But itās not because of Klopp telling them to stand off. Pressing is just another aspect that has completely broken down. Like you said, it was particularly bad against Chelsea where you had one or two players pressing while the rest were watching.
You could argue that he should drop the high line then and itās a fair argument. Itās just not that simple though because a deeper sitting backline means that the entire team has to sit further back at a time when transitions from defence to attack already take too long.
When you think about it, these lads have shouldered the burden of ending a thirty year hoo-doo, and done so against an oil rich mega club, which has necessitated going at perfection level for two years. The way we annihilated the league last season was something to behold, and had someone put up a bit more of a fight we crack 100 points easily.
That on its own would cause a bit of an āafter the Lord Mayors showā effect, but then you add in that the people youāve undertaken this monumental achievement for are not allowed in and you canāt celebrate with them. You were promised that these mad bastards would roar you onto the pitch as champions, and there would be a parade youād remember all your life, and itās now never going to happen.
Then injuries, mad fucking refereeing, every little bounce of the ball going against you, and youāre just so, so, so tired.
Is there any wonder why weāve seen this drop off. Their hearts have gone, the poor fuckers. Mine would have gone in September, so I canāt fault them really.
Iām not sure there is much that needs fixing, that a bit of rest, fans back in the stadium and a proper pre-season wouldnāt fix.
But the main thing we can do, and Iām sure Klopp is doing all he can to do, is make these boys understand what they did was incredible, and if they are suffering the fall out from the last two seasons thatās OK. We recharge, take our medicine this year, and go again.
Weāve dominated possession in games for a long time now and right throughout the period when we were practically unbeatable. I can only really think of City as being opponents that had more of the possession than us and when we were content to play on the break. All other teams weād completely dominate. So having a lot of the ball isnāt the problem.
A lot of wins over those two seasons when we were top dogs came as a result of grinding teams down, not blowing them away. Suffocating teams in their own half and just building pressure until we broke them. So many late winners, games where weād come from behind, winning games āuglyā.
We canāt do that now because we donāt have the personnel. For example, Gini, Thiago and Jones as a midfield three has its merits but theyāre not going to hassle the opposition to death in the same way that Henderson and Fabinho do. Right now we have a lot of the ball but we donāt create any pressure.
You could see the difference immediately yesterday when Fabinho came on. Winning the ball high up the pitch. Fulham barely got out of their own half in those last 15 minutes. First time weāve seen a team genuinely hanging on against us for weeks.
The loss of pace at the back is another major factor. With VVD , Matip and Gomez you can keep teams pinned back and not worry about the counter because their collective recovery pace is so good. None of the available CBs we have now have any pace. Also without VVDās height we no longer threaten from set pieces. This has been a major source of goals when weāve been unable to break down teams in open play but we donāt look likely to score from corners and free kicks any more.
Finally there are just so many players not playing very well. Trent is our main creative outlet but has been poor most of the season. The whole attacking dynamic at one time revolved around Firmino but he has been dreadful for ages now. I love Bobby but he has become a liability. Jotaās form and goals covered a lot of the cracks in our attacking play in the early part of the season. I expect us to start scoring more now he is back in.
I think JKās options are limited simply because he just doesnāt have the players to experiment with. I tend to agree with @wyld.at.hrt in that everything can be traced back to the CB debacle. Yes, dropping off a few yards might make it easier for us to defend but itās not as though weāre conceding many goals despite that being an obvious area of weakness. I think if weāre going to persist with the current approach then Fabinho has to be put back in midfield. Weāve dropped a lot of unnecessary points because weāve had midfielders filling CB slots. Williams and Philips are a Championship level partnership at best but we canāt continue to have players who are critical to our style of play playing out of position.
I agree with most of your points. Would like to see Fabinho back in midfield, preferably with Jones and Keita or Gini. But if JKās only option at CB for the foreseeable future is Williams and Phillips, then dropping back a bit and/or putting someone just in front of them might help. We may be conceding few goals, but as we are scoring none it still matters. As mentioned previously, I did wonder whether Thiago could play more defensively and fulfil this role, but I donāt know whether such a position would suit him. His passing could be an asset coming out of defence in the transition phase.
I wonder what the issue with Ben Davies is? Is it injuries, or is it just too much of a jump from Preston to Liverpool to expect him to slot straight in? It too Robbo a while too.
No I agree, I honestly am not saying like āKlopp outā, or that Klopp is instructing his players to be the agents of their destruction. Not at all. He clearly is a very astute manager, he brought us gengen pressing, which he evolved to the suffocating football Billy mentionsā¦ I have no doubt that the Thiago/Jota signings were to counter the fact teams were sitting deep i.e. His next evolution.
However we didnāt always play a high line, we were actually a very effect transition/counter attacking team. Using the same front 3 we currently have. So why not drop slightly deeper, condense space between each area (giving the tired midfield less to cover) and play on the counter?
And thatās my main frustration is the lack of pragmatism shown before and most certainly in-game. Neco was being utterly destroyed on Sunday by Lookman, and thats down to him doing what was asked of himā¦ He was playing like a right winger, but the space in behind wasnāt covered by neither the midfielder (not even sure who was meant to be covering they were all awful defensively) or Phillips. Yet Robbo on the other side was largely untroubled defensively yet reserved in attackā¦ Why didnāt we get instructions out to them both to swap rolesā¦ Get Robbo forward, Neco stay back and keep shape (we even did this vās Sheffield Utd, Trent operated deeper and controlled play).
Thatās on Klopp and his coaches, they must be seeing the play unfold but changes come late. The Mane/Fabinho/Trent subās were 15 minutes too late for me, they came when Fulham had retreated deep and thus had a near impossible taskā¦ Thatās another area Klopp could do better for me.
We actually started well vās Fulham, we got Salah in behind several times and were causing a lot of problemsā¦ Yet they score an easy goal and we just go back into our shell, we go back to the same monotomy of sideways slow passingā¦ As others said once Fabinho came on he forced the play, he won the ball high up, he fizzed the ball to forwards and got us playing fasterā¦ Why others players cannot do this is beyond me.
Hopefully the likes of Jota, Keita, Fabinho coming back allows Klopp to drop the players who are tired or have their heads elsewhere. The 3 week break should help also.
Kabak and Firmino are supposed to be available for the next game, so hopefully we get to see Kabak and Davies lining up soon, Iād even perfect Kabak + Williams or Phillips and keep Fabinho in midfield. The net result is better. He just has to play midfield was clear yesterday when he came on how much we miss that level of control and tempo setting.
I think he got some niggles trying to get up to our tempo and is still not doing enough in training once fit. Iād personally throw him in vās Wolves and just give him the rest of the season.
Iāve recently learned about Sodās law and if the last year or two were the opposite of it (on the field at least), this one is just that. Every risk that Klopp and FSG took over the last three years, every challenge that they successfully worked around in that period, is now backfiring in the most ironic of manners. Players were overworked (thanks, UEFA), players lost the rhythm after the COVID-induced break, players never had a proper pre-season, players were injured, players were run into the ground (thanks, FA and EPL), the squad players proved not to be good enough to drag the club out of the mud (not that I blame them). To make matters worse, fans wonāt be coming back to the stands any time soon.
I donāt think Klopp and Edwards will be doing anything drastic for the short-term, in fact, I think that the only thing that can help the team in the short-term is actually having a proper break and a proper pre-season at the end of this one. Maybe clubās staff can clear their heads, visit their families, have a nice vacationā¦ Meanwhile, keep the players away from injuries, while they toil towards the end of the season. And make sure that Klopp has all the backing he needs, even it means selling half the squad as far as Iām concerned. I see that the bookies in England are already advertising him as one of the favourites for the sack and Liverpool-unrelated journos are already playing smart and aiming snide attacks at him.
I feel dirty for saying this but Iām counting on agentsā greed to push through the deals that Liverpool need to make this summer (itās not that Liverpool havenāt been paying them well). The team wasnāt strengthened in time, Jota and Alcantara were as unlucky as the rest of the side but I hope weāll see them at their consistent best from the next season on. Jones is ahead of AOC in the pecking order, Keita is midfielderās equivalent of Fabio Aurelio. Wijnaldum is set to leave, Milner is in the twilight years of his career. Shaqiri and Origi donāt fit. Neither does Minamino in terms of his best position.
It also pains me to say but, like you, I wouldnāt be surprised to see one of the front three sold, or even two, to fund the readjustment of this side. I donāt intend to turn this into another āwho would you buyā thread but I think the evolution of this side requires a complete striker playing in Firminoās place. Iām talking about the long term, Klopp obviously wonāt replace three or four or five starters at once - Wijnaldum is one, Firmino might be the other this summer. What worries me is Salah or Mane seem more likely to leave before Firminoā¦ But weāll see, itās a summer of big decisions for the club.
VVD was/is a master at buying time or slowing the opposition down (however you want to look at it), yes he gave up position but in such an intelligent and technically sound way. It allowed us to defend, get bodies back etc. Now teams are straight onto Becker those 3 to 6 times they manage to bypass our midfield. So yes like you I feel itās whatās pushed us to where we are.
The knock on effects have taken there toll!
Take a side with Alisson in goal, Salah as the striker with Mane and Jota either side of him, TAA and Robertson as full backs, Fabinho at defensive midfield with two other midfielders from Thiago, Gini, Milner, Jones, Keita.
Now tell me that those 9 players canāt compete with anyone, regardless of who the centre backs are.
Yes they wouldnāt win the CL or PL, or maybe even finish top 4 without a top class central defence.
But they could get to the latter stages of the CL and be thereabouts for top 4.
Our central defence is not going to be top class whoever is picked there, so why undermine every other department in trying to cover for it?
Thatās our problem. Instead of ensuring every other department is bang on, we have Bobby playing because he supposedly leads the defence from the front, we have Fabinho in defence because weāre trying to have a top quality central defence and weāre fielding a midfield with no proper defensive midfielder, just when we need one the most in order to protect the defence.
I am very confident that a side without Bobby (never mind other level reducers like Shaqiri, Oxlade, Origi), and with Fab in midfield, would achieve better results regardless of whether the centre backs arenāt ideal.
We are frighteningly slow, lethargic and predictable. Since VvD, Matip and Fabinho started missing games Iāve realised just how short and weak as a side we are as well. I think we need to get some big, tough, young, energetic players into the side in the summer. Klopp used to say he wanted people to push the train not jump on when it was running. I feel psychologically our players are mentally and emotionally fatigued by pushing that train, getting it going, they now need a rest whilst others do the pushing to keep it going/get it going again. We need a proper clear out to get some of those players in. The benefit of that is the way player sales and purchases work it will actually have a huge, positive, affect on the accounts to help recover somewhat from financial hits by the pandemic.
