Post match: Inter v Liverpool (CL 16/2/22 8.00pm)

The Albert
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A very difficult match and a very important win, but it was clear that this won’t be a walk in the park. Internazionale are the best team in Italy at the moment, the reigning champions and probably the future champions.

Alisson was once again dependable.
The defence was very solid. VvD and Konate looked superb. Strong, fast, blocking, heading, winning duels. Best players on the pich in my opinion.

Trent and Robbo were fine. Not their best game, but definitely not their worst. Robbo with an assist and TAA with practically the same - great ball for Virgil who assisted Salah.

In midfield once again we have the biggest problems. Fabinho was the only positive for the first 35 minutes, then Inter started to press him with 2 players /copying Palace’s approach/ and Tiago and Elliott were nowhere near to help.
I love Harvey and he has the potential to be a top players and Klopp really likes him, but at the moment he is not ready to play at that level. He needs to drastically improve the defensive aspect of his game.
The most obvious example was the situation when he didn’t follow Calhanoglu’s run, just trotting 20 metres behind him and the Turk hit the bar.
Harvey’s passing wasn’t good enough too and even in a good situation when he and Mo were 2 vs. 1 Inter defender his pass was intercepted.Tiago was decent, but overall looked much better after Hendo and Naby came in for Fab and Elliott.

Good thing is we are starting to score important goals from set pieces /goals in 5 consecutive PL and CL macthes - vs. Brentford - Fab from a corner, Palace - VvD from a corner, Leicester - Jota from a corner, Burnley - Fab from a corner and Inter - Firmino from a corner/. Well done to Trent and Robbo for those assists, but as I said every midfielder /bar Fabinho/ needs to raise his game from now till the end of the season.

Hopefully the club will keep Keita /he is injury prone, but his quality is undisputed/, bur still think that we will need two new faces in central midfield.

Well done to Mo Salah for his goal and the desire to play for LFC after the heartbreaking loss in ACON. Mo and Sadio are world class players and the club must protect LFC’s jewels and tie them to new long term contracts.
Bobby did not start very well /losing the ball when pressed in dangerous areas/, but scored a hugely important goal from a very difficult situation.

Comliments to Luiz Diaz, he is playing with confidence and finally we have great competition in attack. Bobby, Mo, Sadio, Luiz, Diogo - all of them top players.

No time for rest as we play Norwich in less than 48 hours. Now every game matters and there is no room for mistakes. Hopefully the boys will continue fighting with all they have and showing strong mentality.

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On Trent, he is the best rb in the world. I completely agree that we reinvented the position with Trent, and the way he plays it is some sort of combination of Cafu - often regarded as the best attacking right back to have played, and Beckham - often regarded as one of the best crossers of a ball to have played. Trent has another dimension to his ball striking too, with the switch to the other flank hit sweet as you like.

We are talking about a player who occupies rarified air.

So with that said, nobody is above criticism. We are allowed to give fair criticism on a football forum, even with regard to someone who is the best in the world. We are just fans, and it is what we do.

It bothers me enormously that the pundits dish out the lazy viewpoint that Trent can’t defend. He can defend and he does defend. And on occasion when he is caught chasing back, it is by the design of Klopp and the coaches, as we want Trent up the pitch to damage the opposition. It’s a sensible strategy. Witness all the assists he gets.

Still, in the impossible quest for perfection, occasionally Trent can switch off. Actually, that’s saying it too strongly. What I mean is he occasionally doesn’t track the runner as vigorously as he might, or with the full awareness that a defensive minded fullback might have. When Virg shouted at him last night, it was spot on. Virg had the benefit of seeing the bigger picture from his position, and he got stuck into Trent at a particular moment. He is a leader, a captain, and not too shabby himself, and Trent - to his credit, will listen, learn, and improve even more.

On the night the defence did really well overall, and Trent played an important part in securing the clean sheet away from home against a quality opponent.

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Seems a bit unfair to only post positive stuff in the thread. When we play shit we get blasted (team or specific players), when we play well, the opposite. The end result doesn’t mean we played at a satisfactory level. Imo, its theoretically always a concern when your centerbacks are 1st and 2nd motm, for us as a team it shouldn’t really happen.

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I personally avoid in match threads most of the game for a few reasons:

  1. I miss things when I type.
  2. Some dickhead will post “great goal” when my dickhead stream is lagging.
  3. Me contributing to in game threads directly influences the game outcome in a negative way (basically like @GermanRed starting pre game threads, but x1000 worse). So most of the time I wait for half time.

As in all online activity, for example a restaurant, people are more likely to leave a review when they have had a bad/poor/terrible experience. It’s literally human nature to complain because you expect a certain level. I think there are two teams in the league (maybe 2.5) where you literally can’t hide as a player, and for this Liverpool team if you have an average game, then your are in reality playing shit, yet if you move that performance laterally to a team like Watford (purposefully using them and not Norwich, for obvious reasons), then you are having the game of your life.

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To be honest their best spell was when they had the ball in front of us but couldn’t do anything, our passing was so bad in that spell after half time and it bounced off everyone it seemed, I don’t think the pitch was that great if truth be told, VVD and Konate defended superbly but away against a decent side in Europe you need them too.

Really not sure why people seem to have an issue with our defenders being our best players, better than our goalie being it.

We bought the best defender in the world to be the best defender in the world, I’m delighted Konate stepped up and showed genuine quality yesterday. We beat Inter Milan 2-0 away from home, geniunely I think outside of Paris and R Madrid they are probably the strongest sides in this bar the English clubs.

They used the crowd, they won’t have that at Anfield but being a CL night I expect we will.

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Erm…so we are Ivan Drago, and can only compete by using anabolic steroids… :sweat_smile:

And Lukaku as Rocky? Is this because he blames himself for not being there at Inter Apollo’s first leg death, so vows to punish the cheats by winning the Champions League for Chelsea?

Sorry, i’m a bit thick, and don’t get it :crazy_face:

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Sometimes it’s better not to over analyze or take things so seriously.

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It’s Rocky. Drago is the bad guy. How much more serious can you get :exploding_head:

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Him and Robbo are incredibly hardworking and possibly 2 of the fittest players on the planet. They have to be for that role

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My two cents is that Trent is better offensively than defensively and not as good as Robbo defensively (we’re talking by degrees here btw, not saying he’s shit at defending).

As such, opposition teams will see that as the ‘weak point’ of the defence and make more of their attacks from that side. Trent often then has a lot to deal with and won’t always do it perfectly and so when chances are made from down that channel, Trent will be identified as the responsible player.

Considering how much he is expected to get up and down the pitch, I think he works remarkably hard.

I’ve never seen him as arrogant. I suppose the nice way of saying it would be confident in his own abilities, which isn’t exactly the same thing, and absolutely an attribute you would want in any player.

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Spot on RedOverTheWater

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TAA gets stick for his poor defending from so called pundits who have never kicked a ball as sweetly as Trent can in their entire life… This is wrong and totally unfair
Looking at it from a different perspective… when a team deploys to play a back 3, do their fullbacks come in for as much criticism… probably not because they are classed as midfielders…!
When the teams are announced or shown on TV before the game… LFC have 4 lined up across the back, which by default, class TAA + AR as fullbacks… If VVD and Matip were not so good at their job (2men doing the job of 3), Fab would need to drop in-between them constantly(ie, back 3)… TAA being shit at defending is a narrative that is doing the rounds is all… The guy plays a combination of roles as fullback, midfielder and winger…
What more could we possibly ask for from a 21yr old…!

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“You be cocky and arrogant, even when you’re getting beat. That’s the secret. You gotta play this game with fear and arrogance.” – Crash Davis

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Sometimes I can just tell by the sudden increase in unread posts something amazing is going to happen in the next 90 seconds…

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It’s not necessarily about either of their individual defending ability. It’s as much tactically about where we leave space an opportunity with Trent asked/allowed come forward more and move centrally more there is more often space behind him.

If I was an opposing manager, I’d be trying to play balls into the spaces on the wings to run onto and create 1 v 1’s or 2 v 2’s against our high line. Its the obvious response to our tactics. Usually it gets nothing be delayed off side flags and conceded throws, but every now and then a team has success with it.

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It happens even when I am watching BT Sport on my tv. How come there is such a lag?

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It’s not just Trent. You also have to factor in that the right hand side is generally where Van Dijk isn’t.

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I agree with what you’re saying reference the new way to play FB. But I wish Trent would put more effort into getting back into defence if he’s beaten upfield. Robbo can be caught out of position near the oppo’s penalty box but still recover to make a saving tackle near to our box. Trent (In my opinion) seems to have no urgency about him to get back between the ball and the box. Twice on Wednesday he was rollocked once by Virgil, I can’t remember who the other player was (Hendo?) for his slackness in recovering.
This isn’t me saying Trent’s not good, it’s just something that I’d like to see him improve on. :nerd_face:

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In the same match, TAA did make some gut busting runs to get back in position. It’s just that on the occasions when he opted not to run hard, the situation occured that everyone on TV and VVD saw and berated him for.

I’m not fan boy defending him, it’s just that he can’t be expected to do it every time.

I think those hard runs back into position are a “you decide” basis for Trent straight from Klopp’s tactics. If he gets it seriously wrong, then VVD/ Henderson will sort him out to keep tight for a bit (like they did in this match).

When I see games in person, I often see TAA making those off the ball runs back when the ball is on the opposite side, and he comes in to cover the space created by the CB moving towards the left.

Also, EVERY team is obviously targetting the space he leaves, and the fact that VVD is on the opposite side, as posters have pointed out already. In most games, we keep more possession, and then when the opposition beat our high press (of which TAA is an integral part) there will be an increased frequency of balls into our right side.

Expecting Trent to run back hard every time is like expecting Usain Bolt to do the 100m and 200m heats and finals all on the same day. Just not possible. Our high line and the cover at times from the RCM is there to step in (and we are statistically significantly way ahead in offside traps than the whole league).

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