To be honest Lampard’s tactics were shithousery but not that and under Rafa there was little of that.
His comments were a disgrace sorry I have little time for him.
VVD’s career could have been finished.
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He abandoned the Bitters like a pet owner abandoned his/her pet (unforgivable), meanwhile asking the pet to wag its tail before the CL (Bitter fans much obliged). All of them are expletives.
Does he though? His team don’t seem to outplay us in anything except for being more cynical, more effective and disproportionately lucky. Don’t need to remind anyone what happened with the bitters at Goodison when he was in charge and their win at Anfield came during our worst home run in decades. As far as the final goes, even in our depleted state, we win that game 8-9 times out of 10.
And then he comes out and says stuff like Liverpool were easier to play against than Chelsea or City. We would have destroyed him if we had encountered him in the knockout stages when we were flying and they still had competitive matches to worry about.
I used to think very highly of him but his digs here and there have made me lose all respect for him. He is close to being as dislikeable as Alex Ferguson.
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Napoleon Bonaparte: I know that he’s a good general, but is he lucky?
The same could be said from football head coaches. They must be good, but also have that little bit of luck on their side. And Ancelotti has had it in spades throughout his career.
As for ‘having Klopp’s number’, the numbers don’t lie. He’s one of the very few coaches who has more overall wins than defeats against Klopp throughout his career.
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Yes, he’s an excellent manager
I think not having Thiago fit made this worse… We lost all ability to play through the lines centrally from him and ended up wide or long and became a bit predictable.
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I never said that he isn’t an excellent manager. Just that most of his success against Klopp has come down to favourable circumstances rather than his own brilliance.
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I didn’t read his actual quote, in the context of his overall point, as anywhere near as derogatory or inflammatory as the headlines I read suggested. I don’t think anyone would be surprised or upset to hear that an opponent knows what it is we’re going to go out and try to do. We’re where we are now because we’re supremely good at doing the thing we’re set up to do, not because we surprise you with the way we’re setting up to play.
While on the one hand winning stuff with Real is an uneven playing ground, on the other he made at least one key decision that was not well received but he stuck to it and got rewarded. He decided that in the absence of good forward options whose form prevented them being dropped, he was going to bolster the legs of his aging midfield by putting a young hard running CM at RW. After that first leg against PSG he was slated. The sort of stuff that sees managers lose their jobs. Rafa was getting the same stick for making the same pragmatic decisions in his time, and he responded by giving the crowd what they wanted, playing their best collection of attacking players and then sat back and watched them get thrashed. That was Rafa’s way of telling the crowd and the press that their ideas were dumb and he should be given the room to do what made most sense even if not sexy. He got fired almost immediately with no chance to prove himself right. Carlo took the other path of saying continuing with his preferred approach and not only did it see him get passed PSG in the return, it was Valverde’s hard running down the right that made their winner.
Carlo in the 90s and early 2000s was a Sacchi guy and got rid of players who couldn’t fit in to the set up, but what he increasingly did over the next ten year or so was adapt to finding the best way to use the players he had available. He has done that with Real team and done it well in a way that squeezed some extra years and trophies out fo the likes of Kroos who might otherwise have been forced to move on under other managers.
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Reminds me of when people used to say Robben was left footed and should be easy to defend… the response would be it was irrelevant he didn’t use his right as he’d beat you with just his left every time.
Good post.
I thought he got Real to play very pragmatically, he defended deep, cut off out space and basically said come on have a go. Nothing like they usually play. So that for me is a good coach. We didn’t get a single clear cut chance and despite two brilliant saves from Courtois they weren’t easy chances at all.
Personally think if Thiago had been fully fit we would have won. He was signed to give that unpredictability you just can’t set up to defend.
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Yeah, I think some of the criticism of the way they played is simply sour grapes. Football is about attacking and defending. Real were forced into a situation of having to defend a lot, and they did it exceptionally well. Sometimes you have to do that in big games against top teams, and there is big difference between that setting up defensively or being negative. Whenever Real got the ball they looked to do something positive with it. The fact Real’s league situation gives them so little experience of being on the back foot puts that performance in an even more creditable light.
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Yep, people get a bit offended when I say we can be countered by a low block, like I’m insulting our management or something. Maybe its the link that it’s exactly how the likes of Burnley set up which has proven to be problematic for us in the past.
The main difference is it requires concentration and perfection for 90 minutes which really only the very very best teams can do. Chelsea have played this way against us now for at least a season, Spurs set up the last game in the same way. Even City have played much more compact. Real just followed the trend.
The better teams also can counter effectively, their goal is a perfect example of this. Ignore the flukey cross come shot, it comes from Modric baiting Robbo into pressing deep, Thiago/Fabinho not quick enough pluggin holes, one ball into the space vacated and Real are off and we are disjointed. That all comes because they are defending deep and drawining us on to them, but you need to be pinpoint with the out ball and it’s typically a high risk one. (Robbo wins the ball from Modric we are at their back 4 just outside the box…)
Thiago was clearly brought in to help counter that, but when he’s injured we do struggle. I expect another small tweak in this area on the right side of midfield via Elliot come the summer… Henderson for all his brilliant does struggle against teams sitting deep, he is one of the best box to box midfielders playing transitions.
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Ancelotti’s record against Klopp isn’t down to luck. He did well at Napoli against us, even did well at Everton. Only 1 defeat in 4 games and that was in the FA Cup. I had no problem with Real’s tactics on Saturday. They are not as good as us so going toe to toe would have been madness. Denying us space in behind made perfect sense. Most teams do the same but what surprised me was how good they were at it as when I’d seen them before I hadn’t been impressed with them defensively at all. They even defended set pieces well which was another apparent weak point. Add in the keeper having a worldie and it was just about the perfect defensive performance. They’d had weeks to prepare for this game and it showed.
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Yes,you are just an argumentative A hole. 
I thought the room the ref gave the full backs to hold and grapple helped a ton, especially Carvahal. Diaz beat him all ends up numerous time and still got nothing tangible out of it due to being horse collared and rugby tackled, sometimes even without even free kicks. There was one that made me laugh, where Carvahal drive his head into the torso of Diaz and drove him back, like he was a prop going into a ruck, and I remember Real getting a throw out of it 
But, a big part of succeeding at this level is reading the situation and playing right up the line the ref is allowing on the day, and the two FBs did that exceptionally.
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how was it?
Pretty amazing. Have you not seen any of it?
Well I hope JK took notes and has a way to counter this
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The more I read about what happened outside the ground, the more I am coming to regard the actual match as inevitable and the result as inconsequential. This should have been the fans big day out and a celebration but it’s turned into a nightmare and one that you can see affected the players. They probably didn’t know the exact scenarios playing outside but they will have known that something major was wrong and aware or worried that their family and loved ones might be caught up in it. No ways their head was in the right space going into kickoff.
Alot of the fans in the stadium will have been traumatized and physically sick in many cases. I’ve been tear gassed, it’s no fucking joke and while one is able to walk, seeing, breathing and even talking for a good long while after is very, very difficult. Simply being in the stadium in relative safety will have been a relief for thousands without even thinking about a football match to watch.
Watching some of those videos; the police were pretty nonchalant about their use of pepper spray/tear gas. Like, you know, I will just walk up casually to people waiting and spray this shit and walk back casually and strut around. That’s fucking despicable. The more I think of it, the more I think we were robbed.
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Ummm, doesn’t the drawing of Ancelotti appeared to be a dickhead?