I keep seeing this ‘he hopes his pace will get him out of trouble’ thing.
Call me naive, but I don’t think any Liverpool player is walking out on the the pitch ‘hoping’ anything.
There is an obvious tactical instruction to play a high line and push the centre backs up the pitch. The reason we do is likely that we have the two quickest centre backs in the league and a goalkeeper who is incredibly quick off his line.
When Alisson isn’t available I think we have to change the high line approach.
Adrian isn’t good enough to play it and defenders have no faith in him.
Sure, but that’s not on Gomez. He’s deciding where to put the defensive line. That’s on Klopp.
I agree with dropping the high line when Adrian plays, but I wonder if it is because Adrian is not comfortable playing with a high line or not good enough to play it?
I also think he may not be able to play out the same way so we may need to look at when he plays getting him to kick the ball longer rather than forcing him to play short passes which he is not as secure at
I would say with goalkeepers, its about confidence and instinct. Like some keepers are confident to catch the ball, some only instinctively loves to punch them away. I think its not Adrian’s first instinct to follow the high line as in even when the defence pushed up, he does not seem to be comfortable in pushing up outside of his own box to close the gap between him and the last line of defence. Remember Klopp always mentioned that he loves and needs players who are comfortable to play in big spaces and closing down spaces, I think at his age, Adrian is not going to change his style much but he is a decent backup keeper for a top club like ours and most of all, at his age, he is willing to be that. He made a mistake yes but we call it as it is but after all the analysis, we need to move on to the next one and be better.
For Joe, he had a disastrous outing and seem to struggle for form and match fitness and last night is indeed a night to forget for him and for the team overall. He was practically clueless and helpless with Watkins. But we have to remember how good he has been in the last 2 seasons. How many world class 23 year old CBs are there in football right now? Not many. We forget Joe is still 23 and has plenty to learn to be a world class CB. So like with the other players, we call his performance as it is, but we believe that Joe has a huge future for us and can only be better under Klopp.
Adrian’s going to struggle regardless of where we hold our defensive line. Retaining the high line is at least something that our team ought to be familiar with at the moment and in one respect it makes it more likely that Adrian will face a one-on-one if it’s broken (one part of his play he’s ok at). Better that than having balls pumped into the box from wide positions or having people take shots at him from 20-25 yards. Maybe that’s the thinking?
Problem is, Gomez isn’t fully fit and Virgil’s been off his game for ages. Those things don’t lend themselves particularly well to playing a high line if the opposition can consistently beat it. Another factor is the point made by @Limiescouse that the current instruction not to flag for offsides and allow the play to continue causes our defenders to waste a lot of energy needlessly. One of the points about deploying a successful offside trap is that it conserves your defenders’ energy but that’s now lost when play is allowed to continue regardless. That’s even more pronounced when playing a high line because that’s A LOT of ground that Gomez and Van Dijk are having to cover even though they have caught the opposition offside. When you’ve done that a few times in the game you start to wonder what the point is and when the opponent has broken the line successfully your recovery speed is that bit more diminished.
Either the way off-sides are policed needs to change or the high line needs to be abandoned, imo. Even if that means we are unable to compress the play in the opponents half. We’ll just have to invite them on to us, like old times. Hopefully in possession with Thiago we’ll be able to move them around enough to create the spaces needed for Mane, Salah, Keita etc to cause them damage. Whatever happens we need to tighten up and limit the opponents chances which, unfortunately, means becoming more compact when we don’t have the ball and giving up some possession so that we press their midfield rather than defence.
But Arsenal did break it when Lacazette missed and were close on a couple of occassions. What Villa also did was time their runs better which is the main ingredient
The other problem with the way offside is policed is that it can lead to the problem we had last night.
Villa got a corner which they scored from. The trouble is that the lad who won it was stood in an offside position to win it. That just, on any level, isn’t fair.
From memory, I think that the fourth goal, just before half time and when we’ve pulled one back. The one that really kills us.
It’s not hard to sort either. The ball goes dead for a corner. The assistant has a little word with Stockley Park that while he didn’t flag he think there might have been an offside in the build up. VAR does a quick check.
3rd goal maybe? The corner came from Barkley collecting a ball over the top and driving towards Adrian. He shoots at the near post and Adrian saves with his shin for it to go out for a corner that they then score from. I haven’t seen a replay that shows Barkley’s position (or with the offside lines drawn) when it comes to him but having just watched one angle of it it does look tight. Was he offside? I thought VAR pulled things back for that? Did they not even check it?
The 4th is from a free-kick played deep to the far side of the area that is then squared for an easy finish. One Villa player is in an offside position on that play but he’s not interfering. That was just terrible defending.
The only problem was that the free kick was not taken from the correct position. It was at least 4 metres nearer the goal than where the foul was committed, not that (tw)atkinson minded.
Here’s a sympathetic take on Gomez’s plight by Rory Smith writing for the NY Times. It was written before last night’s debacle. Basically it amounts to “Cut the guy some slack, will ya. What do you want? Perfection?”
Both of these players are very good at their jobs. Only the one of the left seems to get a pass on his mistakes.Julian Finney/Getty Images
By Rory Smith
It is surprisingly easy to feel sorry for Joe Gomez. It should, of course, be all but impossible. Gomez is in one of the most enviable positions in his sport. He is only 23. He is emerging as a cornerstone for England’s national team. He is a central part of a Liverpool side that has, in the last 15 months, won domestic, European and global honors.
More than that, as a central defender, he has the immense privilege of learning from and playing alongside Virgil van Dijk, generally regarded as the finest player in his position in the world, a $90 million security blanket. That is not to say Gomez is in some way undeserving, a lottery winner brought along for the ride.
He is not. He is hardworking, bright, richly talented. But he is, to most eyes, blessed. And yet it does not take long while watching Liverpool to start to feel as though to some extent, Gomez’s blessing is a curse.
Arsenal’s visit to Anfield on Monday night was as good an example as any. Mikel Arteta’s team arrived on Merseyside with a plan. Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were given instructions to try to isolate Gomez, to hang on his shoulder, to lurk in the channel between Gomez and his fullback, Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Those on Arsenal’s supply lines, meanwhile, had been instructed to search out the space behind Gomez. When Arsenal went high and went long, that was the area targeted; when it went short and neat, that was the pressure point exposed. Arteta wanted his team to turn Gomez, to disorientate him, to drag him from his post.
It is the same plan Gomez faces, on balance, once every three days. More often than not — as he did on Monday — he handles it adroitly. His focus does not wane, his positioning remains intelligent, his timing is impeccable. Should he need bailing out, as he did once against Arsenal, Alisson Becker tends to be on hand to help.
But occasionally, of course, the opposition’s plan works. Gomez does not track a run. He mistimes an interception. He is beaten in the air. Liverpool (sometimes) concedes a goal. On each occasion, it is seized on as proof that whichever team has profited was correct to see Gomez as Liverpool’s weak link. All the other games, the hours of composure and assuredness and calm, are forgotten.
There is an element here, though, of self-fulfilling prophesy; it is here that Gomez’s privilege becomes a pain. Gomez is no more error prone than any of his teammates. He just has more chances to make mistakes, because he is the one singled out by Liverpool’s opponents, the one asked to bear the brunt of their attacks. That is his lot because the alternative is trying to pick a way past van Dijk.
Van Dijk, of course, makes mistakes too. Not many, and not often, [but they happen]. There have been two glaring examples in recent weeks: at Arsenal, toward the end of last season, and against Leeds United, on the first weekend of this one.
What is intriguing is that his reputation is such that those momentary lapses are shrugged off as exceptions, rather than as evidence of some fractional weakness in his game. In the same way that Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola is the only coach who loses games because he is just too clever, van Dijk is the only defender who makes errors because he is too relaxed, too confident, too good.
The reason for that feels too intangible to be taken seriously in an era when soccer has, at last, embraced data and science and reason, but it is nevertheless true. Van Dijk’s mistakes can be dismissed because, basically, he has an aura.
It is one that is common to all those considered the finest defensive players of their generation: a sense of immutability and impermeability, that there is no way through and no way past. Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi had it; so did Lilian Thuram and Fabio Cannavaro, John Terry and Vincent Kompany and Sol Campbell.
Like van Dijk, none of them were flawless (well, apart from Maldini). But like van Dijk, their aura was such that their mistakes did not impact their reputations. It would be (rightly) considered heresy to describe Peter Schmeichel, the great Manchester United goalkeeper, as error-prone, but flick back through his career and he, too, occasionally lunged from his line or allowed a shot to slip from his grasp. His aura, though, carried him through.
Van Dijk is at a similar stage. It is to take nothing away from his abilities — his reputation, after all, has been forged by his performances — to suggest that his mere presence is now enough to convince teams to train their fire on Gomez. Van Dijk, like Schmeichel, looms in opponents’ imaginations. He defends not so much zonally, or man-to-man, but by aura.
Only a handful of his peers can do the same: Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly, certainly, and probably still Giorgio Chiellini of Juventus. Thiago Silva did for a long time, though his unfortunate debut for Chelsea may cause it to blur a little.
How they acquired it is some confluence of ability and age, experience and image, plus a little sheer physical presence. Not all great defenders have that aura: Gerard Piqué has been unmatched for more than a decade, but teams have long felt he can be exploited. Sergio Ramos has an unparalleled track record of success, but there is always the suspicion he is about to be sent off.
But all great teams — partly inspired by van Dijk’s impact on Liverpool — recognize that they need it. It is why, for example, Manchester City, paid $75 million to sign Rúben Dias from Benfica. City’s attempts to strengthen its back line, to replace the aura of Kompany, have become an obsession in recent years: Guardiola, thus far, has spent the best part of $500 million on defenders.
Dias seems to have all the characteristics required: He is, by all accounts, intense and driven and “charismatic,” and his former teammates at Benfica attest that he is not afraid to issue instructions. Those are valuable qualities, of course; doubtless he is a talented, impressive defender.
But that is not the same as having an aura. He may yet develop one — though he will need an impressive start and an immediate impact — but it is a daunting challenge for a player who is still, by the standards of his position, in the development phase.
Soccer now demands a lot of its defenders, asking them not only to possess the tenacity to withstand attacks but the imagination to start them, too. To excel, they must play high and take risks, particularly in Guardiola’s system. It follows, then, that there are more ways to fail, more ways to seem weak, more ways for an aura to evaporate.
Dias must sidestep all of those potential pitfalls, and he must do it immediately, or City’s rivals will sense blood: The impression will start to form that he, too, can be singled out and examined in the most minute detail.
And then, as Gomez would tell him, no matter how well he does, no matter how talented he is, he will find himself having to deal with the same questions every three days, and getting the impression that no matter how many he gets right, all anyone is waiting for is the one wrong answer.
I actually thought he was playing reasonably well and rehabilitating himself from Villa. Left a bit gape-mouthed on the DCL goal. Can’t be leaving that guy to Robbo, though the free cross didn’t help. We’ll need him to gain confidence as it seems he’ll get a run of matches now. Hopefully, he can remain healthy.
Dreadful performance. First few challenges against Calvert-Lewin showed it, he was nowhere near aggressive enough. Bad positioning, too. This really gets on my nerves, he just spent two bloody weeks training with/against that guy. He does have pace, he does have technique, but boy there are also some other very important aspects for a defender.
Not sure if I would prefer low confidence Gomez to Lovren who was a bad player but never lost confidence 
Will be interesting to see now, I don’t think Matip and Gomez played much together. That was possibly the partnership that played the least out of the 4 CB’s we had until Lovren left. Interesting that Matip was always the RCB with us, I think even when Fabinho played against Bayern. So it means Gomez is now shifting to LCB.
Isn’t Joe left-footed? I remember he started to play for Liverpool as LB.
No, he’s right footed.
Also, continuing from my post above, when Gomez played with Lovren, Dejan was the LCB of the two. When Fabinho played with Matip against Bayern, I think he was the LCB.
The circle was complete when vdBerg came on for his debut in a friendly match in the last minutes and he went to LCB, but we shifted Dejan to RCB!
It wasn’t a world class performance, but he was alright. He played OK.
From every situation there is always opportunity…
Look at the captain that Henderson became once out of the shadow of Gerrard, one of our very very best.
Gomez is a fantastic defender, he is however massively inconsistent… For me I wonder is that because Van Dijk bails him out? Does he lose concentration because he is always deemed the no.2 in the pair… When you have a safety net of the collossus next to you, does that mean you are 99% concentrated v’s 100%.
I truely hope Gomez grasps this opportunity and takes on the responsibility to lead that defensive line and steps up to be our rock in these times. He has all the natural ability, the mistakes he makes are bizzare mainly because some games he doesn’t make them…