Post Match: Everton v Liverpool (EPL 17/10/2020 12.30pm)

I personally don’t think calling that as one thing which could have been done better is criticizing Adrian. And the sequence of play will always have a hand in majority of goals conceded. Just think the reaction could have been better and he could have got more on the ball. Also Gomez has been criticised for his performance as well and rightly so. Keepers’ mistakes do get scrutinized way more and is an unforgiving position and I give Adrian benefit of doubt more often than not. But somewhere these shots directly at him shouldn’t be fumbled.

Just an example of the one Migs saved from a close range header. He ofcourse would have fcked many other and there’s a difference of context of a corner and a cross, but there’s a nice hand there to put the ball away there. This is just for an example purpose, coz Migs was not the best either.

And goalkeepers will get shots from a very close range, that’s where their reaction time, understanding of the attacking play and anticipation and positioning matters a lot as well.

Again this is not a fuck up or something which gets mentioned a lot. But an aspect of the game I expect the keeper to work upon and be good at.

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I’m completely on board with the notion that the keeper could have done better. Stronger hands, parry away or push over. But there were other players who fall into that category too, and they could have done better.

It all feels a little too forensic on Adrian at the moment, which is why my inclination is to defend him. He has made mistakes, and a couple of them have cost us, but he wasn’t bad against Everton. The goals, like most goals, came from a sequence of people not quite doing their job optimally, and for the first goal, Adrian takes part of the blame if we want to do this, but weak defenders in front of him were more at fault, as was giving away a cheap corner (and possibly overlooking the fact that without Virg on the pitch, corners would now be much more dangerous).

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If David Coote can’t be sacked, he needs to at least be dropped — he has a history of blowing calls as VAR:

  • Didn’t overturn the Rashford goal with the foul on Origi
  • Missed the De Bruyne handball and the Lo Celso stamp on Azpilicueta in the same day
  • Saturday

And yet he’s going to be reffing the Wolves game tonight. I can only hope they haven’t announced him being demoted for next weekend only because he still has a game left to do this week (although I might argue all the more reason to drop him). An absolute disgrace.

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You’re right it’s getting silly, but not in the way you say.

My position on Adrian is as follows.

  • Alisson Becker is the best goalkeeper in the world at his absolute prime.

  • This means that we are judging any back up by the standards of the best goalkeeper in the world.

  • It also means that we are limited in how good our back up is going to be. Any reserve keeper is not getting a game, and this limits who you can attract. You can’t suggest that a new keeper has any reasonable chance of winning that number 1 shirt. Call it a trade off. If you want the best in the world you can’t also promise an honest competition for the place.

  • Adrian is not great, but neither is he nearly as bad as his worse detractors. He’s just alright.

  • There are some problems in his game and these need to be accommodated and his team mates need to help him out. Not give him stuff to do he can’t do.

  • He has got the attribute all keepers need more than any other. He backs himself to the hilt. He’s a bit Degsy. Mistakes don’t bother him. If we’re going to have a back-up prone to an error, I’ll take the one that doesn’t fall to shit after an error, unlike Mignolet or Karius.

  • His contract is up at the end of this season, and I’d expect it not to be renewed and the club get a new deputy. I do think Alisson’s fitness record (which is becoming a bit troubling) might give us the scope to pull in a better number 2, as Alisson’s trend is to give up 12-15 games a season through injury.

Until then, I’m sick of this argument. It does no-one any good, and it is what it is.

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If he blew that, you would have to blow every time a ball is lifted into the area. That is part and parcel of the game…all sorts of physical contact goes on in a crowded area…always has and always will.

I think Adrian has time to get his hands into position. He just misjudges the flight of the ball and doesn’t get his hands high enough.

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He should have got a yellow for that for unsporting behaviour another one to add to a long list on Saturday Fateful fixture

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I started the last one and the mods put a bag of flaming dog shit on my front step.

Not doing that again. My suede loafers were ruined.

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Although not at all surprising, the FA comment today is like someone force feeding you the now stale shit sandwich you could only half eat on Saturday.

What a fucking great start to the week.

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Jen Chang does have his uses.

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It’s always going to look like that on a slowed down video. It’s part of the reason we get so many bad handball decisions using VAR.

These are ones that are firmly in the category of not expecting your keeper to save it. To play at a club like Liverpool however there is a requirement that you still are able to do so a certain number of times. You therefore judge a keeper not on the outcome of any one of these incidents, but his overall collection of work on them. I appreciate that many people think Adrian does not do this enough to justify his place at the club. That’s a fair debate. Slating him for failing to keep this particular goal out, as had been rife on this board, is completely different though. There is nothing that will convince me that does not come from either an unreasonable perspective of what keepers should do and be able to do (which is something that is also incredibly common), or driven a pre-existing perspective that he isnt good enough which then colours every thought about him.

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You need to shape up. Call me.

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Oh for a breakaway league where professional referees could be hired

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I would add we got him as a cheap backup because we had spent a fuck load on one of the best goalkeepers in the world. We were loseing Mignolet, the only keeper we had arguably better than Adrian at the club.
No he’s not a world beater but he is better than I anticipated when we went for a ‘free’ on the market better than anything else we have.
Let’s face it we, LFC, have messed about with keepers for a while (pushing Reina out was really taking the piss). As it stands we have better than we bargained for.
I agree he’s gone at the end of his contract however we will need to replace him and with our ‘recent’ history on the matter I am not sure we will be winners.

Another debate is where is Adrian really weak you know with none of the fabricated nonsense. I reckon as a supporter of his I have a better idea than his distractors. :wink:

He’s still going backwards. He just can not get enough ‘force/weight’ behind it to deflect it enough. He was behind the play, too slow if you like. Yes it’s an error he decided not to go for the cross too late and suffered the consequences. Yet, if he had continued to go for the cross it would have looked and been even worst. Right decission poor outcome, it happens!

Depends who your keeper is. I’d expect a decent keeper, in Adrian’s position as the ball leaves Keane’s head, to save that 9 times out of 10.

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Only that 9 keepers out of 10 aren’t decent. :wink:
Of all the keepers we have had since Reina which would you bet your life on would save that bar Alisson? :thinking:

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Err, none. Who would bet their life on even a 10% chance of death?

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I feel truly blessed that we have so many goalkeeping experts in our midst…

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… and fortune tellers. :wink:

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