I disagree. At this point Andy isn’t really doing the business and it’s been a while now. It’s not slight on him, he’s played immensely and dips do happen. Kostas has been playing better than him and again, that’s no slight on Andy, it’s just the way it is. It was a mistake to play Andy ahead of Kostas purely on the form stakes. I see no reason why one of our strengths is not a way to beat West Ham when it’s obvious how compact they were set up, space in the box was at an absolute premium and the chance that came for Mane to equalize in stoppage time came from an absolute peach of a cross that he should have buried.
Could Kostas have provided more quality into the box? It’s impossible to say and we will never know but on recent evidence I’d say that it is likely.
While I want to see Tsimikas get more minutes, I don’t think it would have mattered. We are all talking/thinking in the hindsight. It was a peculiar game, every player from the starting XI struggled.
Nah, I don’t think that’s right. They played very narrow so the space was in the wide areas. We created a number of good chances when we worked our way there. Crossing into the box doesn’t necessarily need to be floaty crosses for Salah to compete with Zouma.
Robertson got in good areas 8 or 9 times but only put one good ball into the box.
Considering the quality Tsimikas has show so far, it really isn’t a massive leap of faith to believe he’d have done better with those opportunities.
100% West Ham had basically 11 players in their own half in a low block.
Jota has excellent in the box movement and especially once Dawson came on, no way he could cover him everytime.
Guess the fact our best chances were both crosses is missed… The first Mane one for example was a sitter based on an excellent first time cross.
And we struggled on the right as Trent was deeper and Henderson the primary wide overlapper… When Trent got to the byline he always caused problems, only happend twice though.
We didn’t create enough. Ball was in the air a lot from our point of view. Being the better team, we need to have more control than that. Possession alone isn’t enough. Plus the poor set-pieces defending, which is the only thing I was afraid of (okay, West Ham’s approach, but especially set pieces). When Dawson came on, I especially wanted us to hurt them on the floor in that channel. Like Klopp said, we played the “last pass” too early, too wild.
On paper against a team like West Ham, starting Thiago would’ve made sense, but in reality and the context of moment, not so much. I’m not saying Tsimikas starting would’ve been such a surprise, but I think we had other more serious problems and even if he does show a bit better ball manipulation than Robbo and some nice crosses, I don’t think it would’ve made a big difference to our performance.
I’m fine if we agree it was a tight call. However I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as tight for Klopp as on forums. If someone thinks it should’ve been 55-45 for Tsimi, I’m okay.
I have zero problems with Klopp’s team selection. Sometimes, I have. Yesterday, no. It was what I expected in the pre-match thread.
So far this season Tsimikas has been in much better form. Robertson has been arguably the best left back in the world in recent seasons.
But so far this season he’s looked burned out. Tsimikas has been a better offensive outlet, both moving the ball down field into dangerous areas and then creating clear cut chances and assists.
You’d think that Robertson would be the better defensive option but he’s not been quite so forceful and switched on this season. Just ran hard the ground probably.
At the moment. On form and merit Tsimikas should be playing and in that game, where we had the ball plenty in those wide areas but did very little Tsimikas would have been the better option. And I don’t actually think it’s a tight call.
