He did.
But the current narrative is to bin him off to AFCON. Early. A good performance goes against this conventional wisdom. Diamonds and all that.
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He did well as did Gakpo up until they scored, but still no end product, and both are not working hard enough to help us out defensively, and in that aspect we need all hands to the pump because we are leaking goals like gods knows what
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Pressing and counter pressing was brought in by Klopp ie it is a pure German trait, the German national team has thrived on it for years.
The German national team hasn’t been thriving for years.
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Yes but it was down to lack of quality to replace the superstar players and the managers.
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Salah was ok for the first 20, but still lost possession 36 times against Forrest! (Isak only touched the ball 14 times for reference). Before the game my mate suggested a drinking game where we take a shot of tequila every time he loses the ball, thank fuck I declined or I’d have ended up in hospital with alcohol poisoning. His standards have hit absolute rock bottom this season that a performance like that is seen as ‘improved’. Fucked thing is as has already been mentioned, he’s not even our biggest issue atm!
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That does seem like a lot, but qualitatively this was a very different performance from him than we’ve seen from him for most of the season. He was a near constantly outlet and doing productive things with it, really forcing the defense to work hard to keep him out. He’s never been a clean player so has always turned the ball over in those situations a lot, but has generally been backed up by a side that wins it back quickly and allows us to keep a sustained pressure applied. You ask a defense to do for an hour what it did for those first 30 mins and eventually there’ll be a break down and we’ll get something. The problem is we aren’t that team anymore and not only are we no longer able to pin them back into their third, making them defend over and over and over again, we defensively crumble at the first sign of defense pressure we get put under.
You look at the situation from where the corner came from on their first goal - They partially clear a cross from Mo and then win the second header on the edge of their box. From there is just 1 Forest player among maybe 5 liverpool players, but he is able to bring that ball down without even being challenged, run with it and find the feet of the only possible option there was, and he despite being 60 yards from goal and outnumbered 4-1 still got a corner. People have criticized Ibou for how heavy his touch was to concede the corner, but there were probably 6 opportunities missed before that to have not just stopped that counter but have kept the ball in their end and forced Neco to have squared up to Mo in his own box yet one more time.
I used to become frustrated with Salah when he lost possession until I realised that, at his best, he was dribbling through about 1 in 3 attempts. Which is incredible and matching winning stuff. As well as taking 3 or 4 defenders out of the game.
He’s not close to that this season also except against Forrest he seems to be seeing a lot less of the ball than in previous seasons.
If he can get back to near his best he frightens opposition’s.
Btw I think Nico Williams has always played well against Salah.
For me that highlights more of a concern with Isak. We were clearly set up, for the first 30mins anyway, to play through Salah. Obviously Slot wasn’t trusting Isak (or his match fitness) to get the ball to him
Salah looked sharper than what we’ve seen for most of the season, especially in the first half hour.
I’m of the view that we should be looking to replace him, but he will still do well for us on occasion, and still have big moments. He’s a very talented player. It’s just that for me, at this stage of his career, I don’t think Salah can perform consistently at the level we need and we should be thinking about rotating him more, and then at some point we will move on from Salah. It happens to the best, and it’s no criticism. He has been phenomenal.
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But he still didn’t create anything aaprt from the Kirkez chance, but a hard chance as it was on Kerkez’s right foot and no pace on the cross.
Someone said that he lost the ball 36 times, which is beyond comprehension, if true.
To have that much possession and for nothing to really happen from it just shows Mo’s drop off this season.
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In this present climate of defeat after defeat, if MO can’t adopt to what the team needs, especially tracking back and helping the full back out, or playing down the middle, he needs putting on the bench until such time he can/will… Get someone in there that can help our cause right now… not weeks down the line when we have thrown away another double digit points total.
We are entering into an embarrassing ‘forever’ history period, that as Champions, we are becoming a laughing stock…
Unless MO has a clause in his contract that he is picked every game… put his arse on the bench for time being - The team is not capable of carrying anyone at the moment, even for 10% of the game
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Against Forest we looked like we were carrying 3 players when Forest had possession. It’s not just Salah.
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I think we’ll sell him in the summer, possibly to Saudi. He’ll get one last big contract and we’ll get a fee for him.
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depressing to see us lose again. Confidence seems lacking, especially after we concede. We need our players to stop pussyfooting around, afraid to make a tackle or two. Having said that, they probably feel they will get a card shown just for trying to tackle the opposition, because they have no confidence in the refs. Hopefully sooner (like in the next game) , we start to play with more confidence and hammer whatever the opposition is
YNWA