A lot of assumptions there.
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What’s an assumption?
I’m going on what I saw with my own eyes - Trent having a shocker, getting abuse, and responding to that by playing further forward and trying to force it - especially at 2-1.
Just to be clear, this idea I have about taking Trent out of the side, is as much for his benefit as it is the team.
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Pretty sure @Sportbilly1966 among others has been talking about how this isn’t specific to this game. If it was just about “[getting] in [his] own head, [taking] the approach of trying increasingly riskier passes and start trying to influence the game more”, then that wouldn’t be true.
If he was playing well but had the exact same positioning, which isn’t unusual from our recent games, then you wouldn’t be saying this.
But he hasn’t been. We’ve been seeing a lot less of the inverted midfield stuff this season. One of the narratives around Trent, and which Trent has spoken about, is how Slot has simplified his game, he is playing more as a full back. He has been speaking more about how he wants to be remembered as the greatest ever full back and so on.
Not saying he has never stepped into midfield this season, but he has become much better at picking his moments.
On Sunday, it really looked to me that when the abuse started raining down on him, he wanted to respond to that by doing something fucking spectacular.
Mind you, when he had the chance to do something fucking spectacular with a free kick that would have put us 3-1 up, he deferred to Salah - who as far as I can recall has never scored one on those. So what do I know?
Essentially all that is just a confirmation bias, because you already have that narrative in your head, so you can easily read that into it. And that ultimately is pretty much most of the fume around him. It’s really at pantomime levels.
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Lads, the next match is hours away and you’re still going round in circles about the last one.
Time to look forward and let it go.
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Yes and no. There are moments from this game that were absolutely unacceptable in terms of defensive effort and deserved pelters. His lack of interest in pressuring Bruno after the give away for the first has already been talked about. There was another time where Ibou flicked a cross into the box out for a corner with about 3 Utd lining up at the back post. Trent was 15 yards outside the box just walking back despite Ibou being left massively outnumbered and having to improvise to deal with a situation. Both were met with virulent abuse from sections of the fanbase, and probably fairly. But a lot of this anger and criticism comes from a general state of unhappiness where anything and everything is not just blamed on him, it is blamed on him being disinterested. That is too much, but to a significant degree he could mitigate that by cutting out those moments where he is showing genuine disinterest.
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Again, I understood that from the first post already, I don’t think that you do, and I haven’t implied so.
It’s the explanation that you give that I disagree with, and not so much whether it’s a possible explanation, but whether is as certain as you present it (dismissing other explanations that are at least as possible).
The parts of my post about fans, player and media playing right into Madrid’s plans were not a comment on your points (which seems to be what you took them for), but an observation on the topic of our discussion, that also helps (I hope) highlighting why I don’t agree.
I agree with everything you wrote. But the questions are:
a) would Trent have displayed such a bad performance had Madrid not moved (with all the consequent reaction)?
b) would fans have reacted in exactly the same way, if we were only talking about a bad performance? If you say yes, consider similarly bad performances and whether they had the same reaction; even though that would assume the answer to the first question is yes, and I believe it’s no - maybe playing badly, but not that badly…that was most probably affected from everything that happened. Should it have been? No, I think we all (players, manager, fans, media affiliated with LFC) should know better by now.
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Feeling lonely at the Spurs game thread?
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At all? Has he been as bad as he’s been on Sunday all season?
Wouldn’t it be fair to say he hasn’t found the consistency but there were a significant number of games (some high profile ones too), where he showed for large parts of the game (and a few for the whole or most of the game) what a player he can be for us under Slot?
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[quote="Mascot, post:380, We should have beaten them comfortably. The main reason we lost was because Trent’s head went.
[/quote]
Wow…it was even worse than I thought 
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To build the bridge…
I think Trent will start tonight and his performance will decide whether or not he starts v Forest
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This is a totally fair assessment, the “had a shocker and got abuse and tried to respond but messed up” part. The “played further forward” part (or not) can surely be verified or dismissed by comparative heat maps, so doesn’t matter that much.
I don’t think it is, because I’ve always been a huge supporter of Trent, and I’ve never really bought into this narrative that he’s a defensive liability.
I do think the contact situation - his silence, the offer on the table, the hostility that is increasingly being directed at him, and his response to that abuse - could potentially unravel the season.
The most important thing is that Liverpool go on and win this league. Nothing should get in the way of that.
I just said in the Spurs thread that Trent should start tonight. It’s a chance to show that Sunday was a one off.
Wow…it was even worse than I thought
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Title races do that to you. Every dropped point feels like the end of the world.
I’m not sure how anything you’ve said here contradicts what I’m saying.
I’m talking about the narrative of him moving into midfield because he wanted to do something spectacular to counteract the media talk (and consequent abuse).
If he was doing the same thing positionally but actually being successful at the defensive work (i.e. not having a bad day) you wouldn’t say a thing.
But isn’t that the whole point? If you’re having a shit game and the crowd is on your back, and the lad who usually covers for you when you are on a forward run is clearly not fit, and you 2-1 up against the run of play, isn’t that the point where you just focus on your full backing, make sure you are doing basics, and keep it simple?
So perhaps it wasn’t because he wanted to prove something, but it’s because it’s what he was tasked to do?