I might make a list for when Macallister, Gakpo et al have a bad spell.
Wirtz best games have been in Europe so that’s more telling than saying he hates England and wants home.
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Not a great game, but good result.
Seems we have a defence now, that is good,Jaquet motm for me,certainly looking the goods.
Araujo looking like a very useful player indeed, needs hanging onto.
Bournemouth gone a while unbeaten, nice to ruin that record.
I’m a happy camper all in all!
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22, of which the earlier 18 were under Iraola who is now 23 on the trot in the EPL.
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Hard place to go against a well drilled team, but we should be beating them 7 - 0, like against other clown teams.
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Great post Sweeting.
All this bitching and sniping is putting me off coming here.
Glad we got three points in a tricky away match. Feeling much more positive than six months ago.
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I think all of us had our fair share of opinions on our players since the season started especially Cody, Wirtz, Dom, Grav and many more. They are not likely to suddenly improve overnight but for me for now all I want is for us to win as Iraola drills his ideas into the players over the season. Hopefully as we keep getting wins even through sluggish performances, as the season goes, we will see much improvement from some of these players.
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I believe Iraola when he stated his case for meritocracy in his decisions. Yes, some of our £100 million players need time to turn around and perform for the team. But if it gets to the point where playing them would be to the detriment of the team, that’s when Iraola would bin them. Our team results matter more than soothing players’ egos. I also believe if Iraola feels he can no longer improve these players and they still play crap, he will bin them. After all he is only on a 2 year contract and he would not jeopardise his coaching credentials. My two cents’ worth. YNWA.
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For what it’s worth I would bench Wirtz. He has done nothing to warrant a start anymore. But of course if Iraola continues selecting him then that’s not up to me and I will just want a win regardless who is chosen. Just like tonight, we still won even though it’s not perfect (though to be fair Wirtz did provide a crucial run and touch for the ball to eventually reach Isak)
It gets a bit tiring having single players blamed entirely for a bad bit of play.
It maybe only an opinion but I feel that it’s very rare that a a whole sequence leading to a goal can be laid on one person: one of the few I can think of is Karius in the CL.
Likewise, it’s also rare (bit maybe less so) that a goal can be entirely through only a single player’s actions, or that a player can have an entirely flawless game.
Maybe Araujo’s game last night was close to flawless, but still there were a number of mistakes to his game.
Humans are not machines. It’s fine for a player - even if they are getting paid £250k/wk - to make a number of mistakes a game. You want them to confidently try things to break through a defence. You want to encourage that. Sure, you want to minimise the risks, but any risk can eventuate and lead to a mistake.
For example, Kerkez I thought played well. Not flawless. He still made that crazy decision to take a shot on when Isak was in a good position, and the only reason he took the shot on was ego after his ex-teammates got in his face minutes before due to losing a contest of strength. He didn’t do it again so that’s good.
I love Wirtz. I love a quiet player with silky skills. I don’t think he played great last night. I think there were times he wasn’t on the same wavelength as the forwards. He still did some beautiful things, and not to mention didn’t let a poor pass cause him to stop attempting to make the next one. I don’t think he deserves to be ripped on because of that performance.
We just need to stop expecting pure flawless performances, by individuals, or by the whole team. Even in the Klopp days on our best days/nights, I don’t think you will find many flawless performances if you watched them back now. And that’s perfectly fine. Normal.
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Who’s going to do the work he does?
Without him we wouldn’t have scored against Bournemouth!
In this match we couldn’t match Bournemouth’s agression. However it wasn’t Wirtz not making the effort. He was everywhere like Firmino used to be (sure he’s a very different player but that’s not the point).
He made a ton of individual technical errors, so did the rest of the midfield and attack, as above they just couldn’t get near the aggression of Bournemouth. For me he was far from our most frustrating players in this latest match.
Even so eventually we dominated the match, due to our technical ability, and one move involving 3 players, one showing unlikely aggression, got us the win.
The important thing to take home from this match is how we defended, in general, well.
It’s hard to make a case for dropping any of the starters, what we saw is what we are. Only Nyoni and Koumas are very interesting players who should get more time and Munoz really helps shore up our right side when necessary still they aren’t plug in starters.
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I admire the faith we have in Wirtz and if Iraola continues choosing him, he will still get my support. But I wish this admirable support is consistent for ALL players.
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Not every win is going to be pretty. Id take 18 scrappy one nils away from home!
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Definitely. Nothing is more important than wins and points in this stage of Iraola’s reign. Hopefully all the players especially those still not up to speed will buy into his ideas over the course of the season.
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starting to look a bit like AI is working from the back forwards, seemingly like a much tighter defence, helped in no small part by the signing of Jacquet, and the offensive part of the system just has to ‘wait’ so to say…
thats very loosely termed though, its not like hes doing nothing with them, just hes tightening the ship before working on the flair…even the press is looking much more coordinated…
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My support for players is very consistent. I’m not fickle like some 
.
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Just on the game on general, I’m sure I want the only one but with the conversation over the last 2 weeks being about our press, I was hyper focused on it this game. I thought we did that much better than in many of the previous games.
I think the synchrony at the start of the press wasn’t exactly elite: often our man (not one player but several) protecting Bournemouth’s second pass wasn’t where he needed to be, but applied enough pressure to force poor passes in the middle of the pitch and players like Araujo, Mac, Kerkez and Jacquet feasted on that.
I’m comfortable with the progress.
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We kept getting bashed over the heads by naysayers in the media that he takes a long time to get his ideas across and “if he goes 10 games without a win at Liverpool he’ll be fired before he’s able to”.
But I agree with you he’s taking a more nuanced approach. He hasn’t tried to instill everything he wants on day one, in my opinion he spent pre-season assessing players and getting the framework for his system in place. Then after the first few games he’s made tightening up the defence a priority, which of course makes sense given where we were.
I expect in time we will see more a structured attacking game emerge once they are more settled and able to work on it. His Bournemouth team had a variety of repeatable attacks, we haven’t yet seen that for us.
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Wirtz and Ekitike were really starting to come into their own last season before it got disrupted.
Wait for Ekitike to get fit and we push Wirtz much more forward almost as a false 9 at times.
We didn’t have the liberty the last year. But if Ekitike comes up to scratch , we can have a double pivot and Wirtz , Barcola , Ekitike , Gakpo , Munoz , isak there. Plenty of choices to choose from.
We need to let the attack click and it will take some time. But the signs are there. Get the midfield sorted. No matter how dire the football is right now , we are still unbeaten in the league
Do think we’ll be much better if we face up against a team which prioritises playing attacking football against us.
Im looking forward to us playing city. Sunderland put 3 past them at the weekend.