A couple of times yesterday Szoboslai was in the RB position with Araujo more advanced than Munoz.
Wondered if Iraola might be looking to Dom to do what TAA used to do. Don’t see it working tbh.
A much bigger issue with Szoboszlai is he can’t press and his out of position work is awful. It’s like watching a headless chicken. When he fronts a player in position he over commits in one direction and he is so easily bypassed.
I’d like to see the Gravenberch Szoboszlai axis broken up, and in future it’s one of them paired with one of Nyoni or Mac Allister.
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It’s getting tiring. It’s like there is a competition to come up with the best put down.
The negativity in this place is over the top.
I doubt that Iraola is going to pair them again any time soon. The only other time he tried it was against Newcastle and he couldn’t have been impressed then either.
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It wasn’t. He felt he needed to evolve the team in a specific direction to get ahead of where the prem was going and was lavishly supported in that effort. There is a lot more at a football club for the DoF to be concerned with that just first team players, and the main thing FSG tried to wrestle back control over with the title change were those larger structural issues and appointments outside of the playing staff (see the athletic piece from several years ago about the behind the scenes battles between the medical department and Klopp/Kornmayer about recovery and return to competition management).
As for the game, to me a lot of yesterday looked like an over correction to some of the “emptying midfield” issues that cost us in the first couple of games. It’s looked better with Mac in there, but yesterday reinforced the idea that those improvements were personnel related (and the combinations they create) rather than because of lessons learned. You see it with the how relatively easy Fulham found it to find the free man in midfield, with one of those CM two too often a Slot-era like distance from where they needed to be to apply the pressure we needed. I’d need to watch it again (or wait for a Clearly analysis), but I suspect Barcola being new to the group probably contributed that as well. But we also saw the conservatism of the CM on display when we had the ball as well. You saw it especially whenever Wirtz peeled off towards the touch line there ended up being a big hole inside that was screaming for someone to step forward into an receive a killer pass, and no one did. It ended up with Wirtz or a FB just getting crowded out on the ball waiting for someone to show.
This is precisely the problem Iraola has spoken about not wanting to create with a traditional sitting 6, but it felt like Grav was creating it yesterday by how conservatively he was playing.
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@mattyhurst @RedArmada i’m not sure what you’re expecting. It’s an amalgamation of circumstances that’s causing people to be concerned. We keep harking back to the early days of Klopp, well he started from basically rock bottom. We were in team in complete drift and he didn’t have nearly the financial clout nor the talent levels that we currently have. Having said that it’s a different set of problems now because even a blind man can see that we have deficiencies that need addressing. We’ve just come off a pretty dire season which stood in stark contrast to winning the 20th league title. So people can remember what a fully functioning team looks like and we’ve fallen off that level so precipitously in such a short period of time that it has shocked everybody. Yes of course we will have the odd ones attacking a player when really it’s a lot more complicated than that but by and large, I don’t really see people just tearing everything apart as far as the club and the team are concerned.
I myself said that the crowded Anfield could do with being a bit more supportive of the team, but when you’ve seen 34 instances of blind passing straight back to the opposition in a short period of time then the collective belief starts to dissipate.
Apparently we are rock bottom right now looking at some of the reactions. I expect people take into account it’s a new manager, new system, some new players that it’s up and down and that we have come off the back of two impressive displays and that these things take time.
The issue is if this is still the same scenario 6/7 months down the line then perhaps but fucking hell I think some of you have collectively failed to realise how much change we’ve had. This isn’t Slot coming in and tweak a system that was generally a success.
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I think peoples memories are short and having been spoilt by this long period of challenging for top trophies as obscured their memory of what it is like for a team should be taking the long road back up the hill to success.
Be patient with them just like you’re being patient with the team
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The team under Iraola is trending upwards and it’s not something that it’s hard to see even after bad performances like yesterday’s.
But besides that, most of the posters, if not the overwhelming majority, are well into their adulthood, so seeing a good number here react like teenage brats do on twitter after the latest game is annoying and off-putting.
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No disrespect but you and I haven’t played professionally so how can you claim it to be an excuse when the manager, with access to the data, said that they lacked freshness?
I mean, that was the entire idea behind changing how we play and bringing in a number 10 like Wirtz
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I thought he was fairly clear that he didn’t that was the problem, or at least not a problem we can allow ourselves to accept. The fact Tsimi and Grav were probably the two worst performers kind of speaks to that given their limited involvement on Wednesday.
Grav was the one who went to the World Cup and didn’t show he was any different from the player we saw on the pitch all season.
That did concern me at the time.
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100% and I’m happy to have those dainty players in our team. They just need to be complimented with some steely, harder bastards who will do the stuff they don’t seem to like doing.
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It is Grav’s passing that has become alarming, he is really struggling to pass it forwards and quickly enough.
This as become more highlighted as teams have worked him out, you don’t really have to press him hard, as if you do he can produce one of his trademark turns and leave you for dead, just hang off slightly let him turn and then close him and the passing lanes down.
He then struggles and plays a poor or defensive pass.
The other thing from yesterday’s game, he was sitting too deep and at times alongside the CB’s, a similar position he did under Slot, this was mentioned by Limie.
This totally is at odds, not only with our press but also in that the distance between Wirtz and the forwards compared to the midfield is too big and not only the passing limiting the passing options but making it easy for the oppositions defence to cover those passes.
He isn’t playing well, same as last-minute year, and seems to be struggling to adapt to our new style of play.
Unless he steps up he is going to be left behind, I thought at the beginning of the season it would be Macca that would struggle due to his athleticism but he has flourished as the distances are smaller and his game intelligence is higher.
I am watching this on replay and really haven’t the will to watch the second half.
Our central midfield is in dire need to be refreshed and we need a striker who has some presence.
Central midfield is laborious and poor. In such a situation it’s difficult imo for anything else to work.
We were better in the second half when Macca came on. But by that time Flo had run himself into the ground.
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I am watching it with half an eye so if things pick up I might open that eye fully.