Well, it is time to refresh this thread. Referees, stretching rules, splashing cash, respecting current squad. Unfortunatelly Jurgen is one leg on the Brendan territory.
LOL.
no hes not.
he may have problems, but if we start putting him in the Rodgers catergory after everything hes done here, and im not just talking about the shiny pots…
allowed to discuss his mistakes? yes.
one leg in BR territory?..cmon.
Speaking about latest rhetorics in the interviews and post-match speeches, not the overall assessment of the job done.
its still a comparison best left alone in my opinion, JK deserves better than that, and it certainly does the conversation no favours.
lets talk about his current issues though, for sure.
to me his biggest issue is it looks like the passion has gone out of the squad, the momentum has left the building, that feeling of being on the upward curve is over, is this an echo of his own personal position, or is the squad genuinely in need of an overhaul?
a signature of the Klopp era is a team that has self belief, runs the extra mile and never stops rolling the dice.
this lot look like they are just going through the motions, and have done for a fair chunk of last seasons (quad challenging) run in.
i think its a mixture of quite a few things, but yes, the juggling act has seen JK make a few judgement errors of late, including that midfield…maybe too much faith in Harvey Elliott who has naturally levelled off.
maybe big virg is cooked. TAA looks like hes stopped worrying about progression as a player.
all these little things, i personally have no issues with believing we have gone about as far as we can with this generational team… id be looking at an overhaul, with the likes of Salah, Tiago and maybe even big Virg offered up as sacrafices…along with the usual suspects we all know who they are…thats a massive overhaul, about an 8-9 player change up, which shouldnt happen in one window.
interesting times ahead.
Is it coincidental that this came the season after a quadruple chase that ended up disappointing on the 2 biggest fronts?
We had a similar hangover in 2020-21 with the huge injury crisis. City had one the season after they had their 2 wins too, and don’t look too steady this season either.
probably its no coincedence.
the continual need for fresh blood to provoke motivation could be an answer to that though… which is where im headed with my ‘overhaul’ assessment.
you could mix up any players i may have mentioned, but the ongoing point is the spine needs to be hungry.
i look at big virg, Henderson, TAA and especially Salah…and i genuinely question that hunger to do it all again.
any coincidence that the guys that do seem more motivated, are the newer lads…Diaz(when on the park) Nunez, Konate…
ive got a feeling a race has been run for some now, and past performance is no indication of future performance.
for me, id love to see JK get a second great team up and running, and he deserves the window to do it, so thats why im leaving him alone to make what seems like odd mistakes…but id hate to see him drag himself out too far, id rather he go on his own terms… for that very reason, i think thats why i bristle when i hear Rodgers name anywhere near Jurgens.
My biggest fear and reasoning behind comparison is that he doesn’t want to accept that it is the system, that needs to be adjusted. Yes we have lots of injuries, yes the form of majority of the squad is shambolic. But I kinda expect some adjustement to at least try to mitigate some glaring problems.
This season it is not about TAA being found out, not Fabinho being exposed, not Nunez/Salah struggling to find the net. It is something deeper - and the more I read about players form/referees/world cups/fixtures and so on - the more I am being worried that it would be impossible to turn the corner.
I think we are between two stalls. We seem to have been recruiting for a 4231 and look to be moving in that direction, but it’s not there yet.
Either way, the midfield is lacking, but I absolutely do not expect Klopp to be talking about that in his interviews.
A new team is emerging. This will prove to be a transitional season to the next great Liverpool side. My hope is that while we go through this stage, we remain a CL side and don’t drop out for a year. At present that is touch and go, but still very doable.
I know what you’re saying but not sure it’s about hunger. They were at the peak of their powers, playing with incredible consistency for an unprecedented number of games. Impossible to maintain that level. Seems like they’re running on fumes
We look like a former champ boxer that has taken on a few too many grueling fights. One of my earliest boxing memories was watching Duran win the middle weight title in something like his 90th pro fight, some 5 years after he’d suffered one of the all time most brutal KOs by Tommy Hearns that most thought, including Duran himself at the time, would be the end of his career. Yet 5 years later he was able to still beat the young guys. His talent even then was undeniable, and his track record one of a legend, but by that point he was just as likely to lose to a guy who wasnt fit to lace up his gloves as he was to put in a title winning performance like that night he won the middleweight title.
I am not convinced what we’re seeing with this team is just an issue of the legs of the midfield. I’d like to think it is because 100m on the right player and you can go a long way to addressing that. But I see things that are more systemic and affected too many areas of the pitch. Our midfield being too slow isnt why we simply refused to defend crosses into the box today. Our midfield isnt why our forwards arent forcing the play into the small areas of the pitch the midfield is able to win it back in. Im more inclined to think this is more along the lines of psychology you are describing. The team has been strengthened over the past few years to a degree you’d have hoped would help keep things fresh enough that the staleness we’re seeing didn’t kick in. But maybe its changes in the wrong areas of the pitch. Maybe to go back to Klopp’s old point the train has slowed down and we need a new batch of players able and willing to push it and we’ve only been buying those who thought they were hoping on a moving train.
This has been clear for months. I don’t know why so many focus just on the tactics or the midfield when nothing is working correctly with the most senior players being the worst culprits. They are committing childish mistakes every game and they don’t look capable of snapping out of it.
As for Klopp, I’d say that he and his staff are also struggling. The injuries, the tactics, the team’s awful mentality, that’s also on them. And the worst part is that Klopp might have developed a massive blind spot when it comes to these players and their ability to bounce back.
Time to back this man FSG, he’s earned that at the very least.
Before he walks away and we fade to black like the 6-7 year period we had before he came.
What irks me the most from yesterday is anyone with half a brain could tell you how Brentford would set up… They’d be compact in the middle/back, keep their wide players wide and on the last man, looking for balls into the channels and then overload our back right post.
It’s a carbon copy of the 3-3 last season. Not sure if it’s arrogance or what but we didn’t learn a single thing from that performance. Where is the pragmatism? We appear to ignore our opponent and just set up the same way (which isn’t working either).
Last night would have been perfect to have Gomez at right back and push Trent into midfield (where he seems to play all game anyway).
To watch that performance, based on really our own short comings to then hear excuses about how our players got man handled in the box is pretty embarrasing from Klopp. I get not throwing players under the bus but sometimes you need to hold your hands up and accept top to bottom we got it wrong (again).
We’re at a tipping point here, the loyalty v’s ruthlessness journey Klopp is currently on he needs to learn quickly, accept with some humilty whatever tactical structure he and Ljinders thought up has failed and get us back to basics. Make us hard to beat, make us the team every other team hates to play because we hound you for 95 minutes… Fuck fancy attacking structure for now… Drop us back 10 yards, become compact, play on the counter, get back to solid structure, solid pressing, proper counter pressing… And any player failing in your tactical instructions be that due to no legs or no brain fucking drop them.
Yeah that’s the issue. No real pre-season break because of this stupid world cup, and then an incredibly condensed schedule. And that on the back of an extraordinary previous season, which could have gone into history, but ended up in huge disappointment instead. Also, lest we forget, they almost witnessed a tragedy akin to Hillsborough or Heysel in terms of victims. It was an incredibly close shave, even if FIFA have done all they could to minimise what happened. They feared for the life of their beloved ones at some point ffs. But instead, the club and the fans were officially vilified and accused of hooliganism before some late and unofficial backing off.
Beyond the sheer physical exertion, all these rollercoaster emotions must have taken their toll on the players and the coaching staff, how could it not? They aren’t robots, and that’s why they deserve a huge cut of slack when judging their current performance levels.
As for Klopp, he’s obviously no fool and knows this all very well. He has talked about a lot at the start of the season, and is now protecting his players as well as he can. He’ll turn it around with some time and appropriate reinforcements given to him, as he has already done countless times since he’s at the club.
But still, there are some fucking idiots, even here, readying themselves to spill the baby with the bath water ffs.
Agree with every word
Without doubt last seasons endeavours and the way we fell at the last hurdle will have hit us hard and seems to have impacted us in many differing ways. The fans, the management, the owners and finally the players. We seem to have just fell of a cliff… Last thing we need on top of that is for any in-fighting to begin and start to fester leading to the inevitable amputations rendering us floundering as mid-table mediocrity at best.
Many posters have rightly so put forward theories of their own judged upon their perspective in this differing world of football experience that is then brought to the TAN table and other similar forums. All these snippets and points of view is what expands our knowledge as a supporter. Hence, have we got one major problem at the club…? Have we got lots of smaller niggly bite-sized problems that culminate in the overall situation…? Is the problem/s spread across a single area or diluted across many others…? etc etc
Exactly this… None of us know for certain why we seem to be struggling in getting results… and we are, no doubt about that… but we are only struggling when compared to our sky-high consistent performance levels of the last few seasons… We are all disappointed with present events… but in footballing life nothing ever stays the same, we move forward or we move backward, only two directions we can travel.
No answers are going to appear by magic to what is happening to us at the moment, these will only appear at some future juncture when more pieces of the puzzle have been established and fall into place, similar to gathering all the ingredients to put into the same pot, only then will the obvious end product of intention appear… so to me, at best, everything is more or less guesswork at the moment…
What I would like to add to the mix of these ingredients is this…
If FSG in selling the club for 3.5 billion are faced with a potential ‘hard-nosed’ ruthless’ buyer that says to them…
“What guarantee can you give us that when Jurgen leaves, the LFC house of cards won’t collapse…?”
Would/Could/Should FSG provide a safety-net structure within the sale…? If so what…? If so who in the global world of football could ever fill Jurgens size 16 trainers and connect with the fanbase in the same way…? Stevie…No, Maureen…No, Pochettino…No, exactly,
there is no-one at present or in the near future that could fill the void once he goes… OR, do FSG pre-empt this question and prepare for his farewell and assure the buyers not to drop the offer because they have a long-term plan being put in place for the next best thing, and the best option around when Jurgen walks… Give Pep the reins now in an undisclosed media silent manner, and let the present wizard tutor Pep as his new apprentice…!!! Give him enough rope to play with but not enough to hang himself or LFC… so what if we don’t win every trophy going in the next two or three seasons… as long as we qualify for CL each season, we will probably win something along the route of this new journey…
End result, we have Pep prepared as best as he can be to take on the role full-time when Jurgen walks away…!!!
If there is one thing we can be certain of from the last ten years… FSG are no mugs… I just hope that whatever is going on behind the scenes at the moment… they don’t take their finger off the LFC pulse for other interests they have.