To be honest Taylor did correctly book the two fouls and let other stuff go which weren’t fouls but had the spurs bench crying like the guy had been shot or something.
My major issue was with the Mane stuff as some of them were fouls on Mane if anything, it wasn’t great and I think Mariner was far better on Sunday bar the foul on Salah but then I kind of think Taylor would have given that for some reason.
As for VAR officiating, I really haven’t a clue anymore, the guy on Sunday was terrible with that constant replay of Fabinho’s challenge and he looked at the handball for longer than was necessary both decisions Mariner made correctly on the pitch.
That’s what really irks me bar the line drawing that suddenly changes angle about 9 minutes in to them drawing it, is they get involved in stuff that’s obviously fair like that Fabinho challenge, there was no point in playing that several times over and absolutely no point in asking Mariner to look at it. He even mouths it when he was watching it and they still showed him another angle.
I haven’t watched much PL this year and missed a few of our games so I was surprised to see Mariner is still around.
I thought the balance of what they were allowed to do to us vs what we could do was way off. But I think this is less an anti-liverpool bias and more a case of how refs get manipulated into playing to the script of how they think the game needs to be played. When a team comes to defend the ref seems to tip the balance in their favour by allowing them to get away with more otherwise he’d be blowing the whistle all the time. It’s almost like they convince themselves that what they think is a foul cannot be one because if it was they’d be blowing their whistle every 30 seconds. It’s like they dont realize they are actually enabling that sort of constant fouling by not punishing it.
I feel he blew less and less as the game went on, not sure if it was a reaction to the Spurs bench which went up every two minutes on anything resembling a tackle. I think bar Mane which he got completely wrong he wasn’t the worse ref, our issue like against Fulham is with the official in the VAR room, I prefer the world cup when they had three.
Good performance stunning result. Gini was terrific Curtis seems to get better with every game. What’s that persistent whining noise? Oh yeah it’s just Mourinho.
He has been at Liverpool since the under 10s, but for the first half of last season he was on loan at Kidderminster Harriers, at team that plays in the National League North.
What really annoyed me was their FBs falling about in their box on set pieces LFCTV showed Bobby’s goal from several angles and you can see Dier slipping and going down waving his arms in the air when there was none anywhere near him! This is a guy who would not have done that with previous managers but clearly he was coached to do that a lot in both boxes one to get a goal chalked off in their box and two to win a penalty in our box another Maureen masterclass!
Mourinho can talk his teams performance up all he wants but
We scored 2,they scored 1
We hit the crossbar,they hit the post.
Both teams had a similar number and quality efforts on goal which were saved or went wide/over.
If all decent chances were converted we’d have been 3 up before Son scored and 4-1 at half time.They had a couple more half chances than us in the 2nd half but overall not better chances.
Liverpool 1.22 v Spurs 1.52
Which considering how much we dominated the game and how many more attempts we had on target than them (11 v 2) I find quite remarkable. It also includes the Bergwijn chance when Ndombele handled in the build up. Take that away (even if VAR would probably not have looked at it had Bergwijn scored but I’m adjusting it because that’s what ought to happen) and it’s 1.22 v 1.24.
This is bit of post-game analysis that always confuses me. Yes, the game would have had a different complexion had Berjwin’s chance gone in. But why is that the only chance we give this sliding doors treatment? Typically there is a late game bias to these sorts of things, where missed chances late on are given more credit in the “they deserved to win” stakes.
I think far too much of the analsysis of this game that has bought the Jose read of it overlooks that theirs was not a particularly suffocating defensive performance. Had they have legitimately limited our looks at goal with a more complete defensive performance then we could look at this Berjwin miss and say it was the stand out moment that prevented Jose’s tactics from being succesful. But in the overall context of the game their commitment to defending still allowed us a series of decent chances to be created. Admittedly none as clear as Berjwin’s but when you allow 7, 8 or 9 good looks at goal throughout the game as they did to us then you have to expect a team like ours to eventually take something out of the game. That Berjwin miss should not be viewed in the context of them holding us at bay for the rest of the game, but of them being incredibly lucky that 4 or 5 times we somehow managed to fire good chances right down Loris’ throat.
One of the reasons xG is a poor way of judging the game’s outcome is that it cannot yet filter in context. A team could score two goals from long range, which would have an xG of 0.4 (as an example, I don’t know what it would be) and then be happy to see the game out and defend the rest of the game. xG would likely end up with the losing team “winning” as they have to attack and create chances but in reality aren’t close to winning the match.
So what is your argument? I can see at least 5cm of grass between Son’s toe, and the line, which at minimum is touching (looks like its going through) Rhys’s foot. Probably one of the clearest ‘tight offsides’ we’ve had.
The only questionable part of that decision is whether the ball had left Lo Celso’s boot yet. Would have been very interesting to see what the next frame would have shown. This is one where working out if he’s behind the line can be determined in a matter of seconds, but they needed to go a step further back and find the correct point of release, which is potentially not the one they used.
Agreed - it’s a good starting point but is not yet as sophisticated as it could be. A shot from long range has an even lower xG than you imagine. You could probably put the decimal point next point along (0.04). Kane’s attempt to beat Alisson after he intercepted Alisson’s pass had an xG of 0.01 for example.
My argument is very clear. They spent very little time scrutinising this compared to other offside incidents, usually involving us. Why is that do you think? From what I saw last night it was offside and I’m judging it against Mane at Goodison Park.
Otherwise, probably because it was a real Jedi v Sith night, Ol Moaninho really stirs the pot and all of a sudden you could be cast back to our battles with the Chavski in the late noughties. Wanker of a man.
