Post match: Leicester v Liverpool (EPL 28/12/21 8pm)

That’s exactly what they said about us when we were in the middle of our great run. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. It is just that both us and them are normally way better than most of the other sides…for example I watched their game against Leicester and the foxes did not roll over. They got to 4-3 and then ran out of steam.

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I am so glad I didn’t see the game last night…(not Prime’s fan at the moment)…anyway…conflicting reports of players being good/bad…I know we should’ve scored and why,when we go 1:0 down…we get the dropped head syndrome…fails me…but shitty can lose games and do…let’s fight back and show em…COYR…

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Tennis is not remotely comparable. Average heart rate is usually in the 60%-80% range, oxygen uptake generally stays below 60% of VO2max. Unlike footy, for men’s tennis at least, the higher the level of play, the lower the level of exertion. There isn’t much exertion taking one step and watching a serve blaze past you.

Where I think Klopp wrong-footed himself is the psychology, which he usually does very well. With no match versus Leeds, fatigue was really not a factor. We hadn’t played in six days, Leicester had. Hard not to develop the expectation your exhausted opponent will simply roll over for you.

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sometimes the shit you read on this board is jus that, shit. so klopp is an idiot and wrong to complain about player welfare because the team lost to a team that had played 48 hours earlier. so according to some, the fact that we lost invalidates klopps argument on player welfare. By the way this is not an argument that only klopp has made, but pep, tuchel, rodgers (james maddison limping off injured) etc. the list goes on. We are a rhythm team, who play our best when we play often. but often is not every 48 hrs but more like every 72 hrs. that is why the CL format suits us so much. trying to lump in player welfare/fatigue in last nights narrative just because we lost is plain silly…

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And I thought I had the worst memory on TAN.

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That’s exactly what grates the most. The team went into the game with the same state of mind that abounds in most pre-match threads of this forum; They lulled themselves into a false sense of security thinking that they would win just by turning up for the game. I’m not sure what Klopp could have done or said to change that. They really ought to have known better.

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On the one hand, I get that he’s scored some great goals from range, but on the other hand, Hendo had three volleys and none of them were on target (only one was even close). Not what lost us the game, but did my head in watching it.

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Joel’s yellow was a stonewaller - cynical trip to stop a break. Had to be given.

I would have been all over their timewasting with yellow cards.

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The mistake everyone makes is to see this as a short term thing. Klopp’s concerns about welfare does not mean a team that has played a couple of times in a week can’t put in a performance in the second game. Of course they can.

His point is that if you keep asking players to go two games a week, week in week out then that will eventually manifest in injuries and burn out.

Anyone saying Klopp is wrong to moan about fixtures because we have just been beaten off a rest by a team that should be exhausted is missing the point.

I’m of the view that we look better when we are in the rhythm of playing two games a week. That clearly what the players have been conditioned to do and what the sports science at the club has been geared towards. There are teams in this league who struggle when the are forced into a two game rhythm at Christmas because they are geared towards one game a week.

I think Klopps point has always been that as long as you give recovery time, two games a week is OK - but you have to provide a break in the season to allow players to rest. That’s why the winter break is such a big thing for him.

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Klopp’s post match comments were quite telling - he was not impressed;

I didn’t like our performance.

So often these boys give me a chance to say ‘wow’ what a game. Tonight it’s ‘wow’, but in completely the other way. It didn’t look good.

I don’t have a proper explanation for tonight - to find it is my main concern, not City.

It didn’t look like us, and that’s obviously the one thing we have to think about and change immediately. We have to learn and we will.

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Unfortunately, this is a particularly effective approach against us, for the reasons I alluded to in my last post. I think a good way to view us at our best is with a boxing analogy. There is a saying in boxing that “Pressure breaks pipes”, meaning that the work you are doing in the early rounds doesnt have to be clean to be effective. If you are staying on top of them and making them work really hard to defend themselves, eventually the pressure pays off and they break down and the openings come.

I view us as like a world class pressure fighter, and so one of the most effective strategies you can employ is to do something to force a break in the action. Leicester did that last night with their football, repeatedly breaking the press, and they need to be credited for that. Especially that Dewsbury Hall kid. Butthey also did it with help from the ref. That incident with Vardy was absolutely absurd, not least because the ref actually stopped the game for him to get his treatment, which is not supposed to happen, but was understandable given the distress he looked to be in.

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well said mascot, I couldn’t agree more…

It’s probably more likely that we see Williams as a forward…

That experiment worked great in the first half last week.

This thread is helping me to understand what it has been like over the last decade to be a United supporter. So many contradicting beliefs of what our problem(s) are, and it makes it seem like we are a total mess of a club (like them).

Probably the opinion that’s most frustrating me personally is the belief that the players ‘believed they just needed to turn up’. Where’s does that opinion come from? Is there evidence? Absolutely a number of our players looked less than bothered (Jota :rage:) with their application, but IMO I feel that’s far more likely to be caused by a Christmas period without a game and therefore being out of the footballing mindset than thinking a Leicester away game will be a walk in the park. I think the postponed Leeds game hurt us a lot.

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Dear me Neco Williams as forward … pffffffff

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Agreed, I thought last night looked like a complete lack of rhythm combined with rustiness than anything else. I’m rather surprised that the sentiment on here seems to be more that we weren’t trying hard.

Look at the passes we made, so many of them didn’t find their player, and were just generally off from where they should have been. It’s just one of those days, and had one of the many chances we had gone in, the tone of this thread would probably be very different. I don’t buy the idea that we were arrogant/complacent at all, it just felt like everything we tried just didn’t come off for whatever reason, just like Salah’s penalty. How many times would we have seen those go in, or just the rebound finished off perfectly?

Almost sacrilegiously, I think we would have been able to change this and the Spurs game had Origi been available. Both times we were in rather decent control of the game, we just couldn’t finish off our chances well enough. These are the moments that he thrives best in, just somehow bundling the ball over the line.

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I agree partly not that we did not play on Sunday, but the fact that a lot of our players decided that they could do it at 75% is what caused it IMO, arrogance and underestimating what resulted in less intensity and a loss.

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Fucking fuming still. We can argue about the refs role in the Spurs game and time wasting and snide tactics but the reality is that the players in our team have cost us 5 points over the last two games. Alisson and Robertson both lost their heads literally minutes after taking the lead against Spurs, the finishing on display last night was fucking woefully inept, midfielders strolling around like the bees knees, making Ademola fucking Lookman (no disrespect to you young man) look like Thierry Henry and then Alisson, with the only real bit of action he had all night, not making a save he should be making.

I don’t know if Klopp does rollickings but they need a mighty kick up the arse after the last two Prem games. Salah I can tend to forgive a miss as he tends to still be laser focused on getting in but the attitude of some of our other players to fucking up does my head in; Mane smiling after missing, Bobby grinning after putting Van Dijk (I think it was) off a clear header. Ffs man. We’ve cost ourselves.

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The only part I don’t agree with is this. Very clearly, Klopp wasn’t happy with the performance. So I don’t think it’s as simple as saying ‘it wasn’t our day’. Either the players didn’t do what Klopp asked of them, or they didn’t apply themselves in the manner he expected or demanded.