Micah Richards was focusing on his body position and not “seeing” Vinicius. As if seeing an attacker is all that matters. That was a shot that flashed across goal and knowing Vinicius is there doesnt mean he’s necessarily going to be able to cut it out. The reality is in that position the FB has multiple things to do, the attacker has 1, and that is to gamble. The forward is always going to be a favourite to get on the end of that sort mishit, because that’s the one thing the defender isnt accounting for.
So much criticism of defending, including the comments about Virgil/Valverde, are counter factuals. It ignores that defenders often have multiple things to be conscious of in any situation and have to act to mitigate the overall risk of all of those things. When it goes wrong fans then bitch about how the defender should have ignored everything else and focused on that one thing that eventually happened. It’s just not based in reality.
And the reality with defending, especially in those situations, is sometimes you can get beaten even when doing the right thing.
So much of defending is trying to dictate to the forward the way in which you prefer to be beaten, the way you think is least damaging…is there one more pass to make? is it a harder pass? is there more chance of a cover player getting back to help?..and playing those odds. When it works you are hailed as a genius (see virgil doing exactly this with Son 2 years ago), but sometimes even doing the right things can lead to them getting a chance or scoring.
Trent for me gets caught out far too often…I know he was very good last night but defensively he is the weak link in our back line and not having any real competition has hurt us imo.
In hindsight one thing I would have changed is one player in the starting line up. I would have started Jota in place of Diaz. This to have an attacker who attacks the ball and has a decent physical presence as well as being good at getting on the end of crosses. With 5 subs I would then bring Diaz on for Jota and at the same time Firmino on for the tiredest midfielder earlier than Klopp did. I think this would have helped a lot.
Still we need to sort out that righthand side. Salah and Trent lose the ball far too cheaply whilst we are in situations where we haven’t enough cover.
I’ve seen people make the comment that this starting option limited our effectiveness of the bench as well. I get it, but the reality is Jota has been off colour for months and Diaz one of it not our very best player in that period. There are alternatives, and ones that look viable in hindsight, but I dont know anyone who really starts Jota in place of Diaz last night.
Only if your not on ball over who and what we were up against, which is why it’s hindsight on my part, which the coaching staff at least should have been.
Of course it’s not worth discussing, I just mentionned it in passing as you asked the question!
Jota has been off colour since Diaz arrived. Is this a coincidence that his role has changed now Diaz is here and the move to play Mane more centrally has resulted in Jota been used on the right or left when hes had his greatest impact centrally.
He is a dispicable cunt!
There really is nothing else I can add to that except say that that has been my opinion of him since I 1st heard the cunt utter a word.
It’s clear as daylight when Jota plays since Diaz arrived that his role has changed into doing the stuff Diaz does well and at the same time Diaz is now being asked to do the stuff Jota does well. It’s good in the sense these players will learn and become better however it’s not the sort of stuff I would expect to be experimenting with so late in the season. Then again it will help next season.
still the biggest problem remains the Hendo, Trent and Salah triangle up the right side of the pitch. That has got to be sorted before the start of next season. Here I think Trent needs to hold back more often dictating play more rather than offloading to Salah who doesn’t attack the ball prefering to tussle with the defender (this means Trent has to make more judicious decissions than he is doing).
I think it’s possible he is struggling in this new dynamic, but that is life at a top club. How many times has a new midfielder come in to challenge Hendo only to see him still end up starting the vast majority of our important games. I think the reality is that no matter the reason, Jota’s form would have seen him likely be 5th choice among our fans to start that game.
Sure I think the form of some of the forwards hasn’t been top notch for a few months now, but when you play a final against a very aggressively counter attacking team like RM, who sit 8 players behind the ball, what you are not going to get is goals by running through the defence like it’s an U9’s match. We of all teams require width to break through that sort of defence.
Robbo and Trent are well and truly rooted. You can see that with the high percentage of crosses that are hit too high or too low, with the sloppy passing (I reckon they’ve had more passes intercepted in the last 2 months than they’ve had in the rest of their careers combined), and the dropoff of the crosses.
That isn’t a criticism of either because in our system, FBs are the workhorses expected to sprint and run from one end of the pitch to the other for 90 minutes and they’ve probably played as many minutes as anyone this season.
The season we’ve had they’ve just played too many minutes IMO and I think without functioning FBs this team will turn to shit against good defensively minded teams if those FBs are not on song.
Last night makes me even more convinced we need a real FB who can give Trent a rest, particularly if a deep run in the domestic cups is something we want to carry on. 60+ games for either FB the way we play is too much.
I’ll get round to the details later but that has put me into a rage. At least there’s some French making efforts to show the truth.
What we see in the video is an organised successful tentative to enter the stade without tickets. That fucking bitch is a high ranking ‘stadier’ (you can tell that as the other 'stadiers are doing what she tells them). She lets in her ‘band de cretins’ probably her boy friend and ‘gang’. what makes me really mad is the ligitimate LFC supporter who follows with his daughter is thrown out by that fucking bitch, in hesterical mode, losing his daughter in the process, you see how scared the kid is.
At some point in France these fucking unsocial fuckwits have got to pay the price, there’s far too many of them, this scene has got to be sent to whoever is responsible (at LFC) and that bitch of a stadier prosicuted to hell by anyone who was injured in that fiasco. Anyone who got sprayed, fell over … in the complete clusterfuck should be looking at prosecuting these cunts and LFC should help them and never give up.
Should get that bitches name quite quickly if you follow things on social media.
I’d love to hear Darmanian explain this!
TPMP is a really sick TV show in France (Touch Pas à Mon Post) in other words they are mocking everyone else!
Thank you Flobs, this is immensly helpful.
I am not sure which woman you are referring to, the long haired one with the boy?
I have forwarded it to our club, Spirit of Shankly, Redmen TV, I am not sure who else i can send it to. SOS are part of the fansacross europe group