Trent was obviously ran past fairly regularly by Doku but I think we knew that would happen, Doku has a great many flaws to his game but he has a low-centre of gravity, is rapid and he enjoys dribbling - he literally runs past every FB he ever pkays against.
The tactic instead was to get other players in the area quickly and make it hard to actually do anything. Konate did a superb job of cutting off angles, Doku would get past Trent and look up to see a mountain of a man in his primary passing angle which for a player like Doku essentially means he’s out of ideas.
Salah came back and helped while I think Grav could have helped out a little more but overall for all the hand-wringing and panic in the match thread there wasn’t a single time that Liverpool as a team didn’t immediately eliminate his threat.
On Doku, maybe a weird comparison but I think he’s like an NFL 3rd down pass rushing specialist. You just tell him to pin his ears back and run hard and often then he can do it. Ask him to do anything else and he’s useless. He has zero game intelligence, just gets the ball and runs. That time when Gvardiol was struggling under pressure by Salah and was looking for Doku to offer him a pass, but Doku was stood still 50+ yards away really highlighted his lack of match intelligence to me.
That sounds much more likely to me than the idea that this game had the lowest in 20 years. Taken from what @cynnie posted - I suppose the lesson is don’t trust an’ ol’git who is always pissed on Y’quem after his fancy lunches and then becomes fixated with despoiling his mattress.
Not sure you can argue definitively either way… different times, different opposition, and different squad. Certainly, if Slot goes on to repeat then you can build a stronger case.
I understand the comparison but I think Doku is better is short and tight spaces, Traore is a 100m runner who accidently finds himself on a football pitch.
Also the part that Alvarez has had to play in City’s success last year is often forgotten.
Sure Haaland did his stat padding this season as well.
City might well be having a Rodri shaped hole in midfield but they don’t have a reasonably good replacement for Alvarez. Marmoush might prove to be one but it’s too late as far as this season goes.
The “master plan” was to compress the middle of the pitch (which was absolutely NOT “parking the bus” as some have described it) giving them as little ball in actually dangerous areas as possible. It prioritized crowding out their 8s and 10s in favour of allowing them to get the ball to their wingers with our FBs a little exposed. Its an approach that concedes those wingers will get good Opta dribbling stats, and accepts that as a trade off as long as at the same time we ensure 1) that did happen when we were stretched up the pitch giving the winger room to run into after beating the FB, and 2) we took away all the next passes making it difficult for them to do anything productive with the room they created for themselves.
That’s the thing with tactics…you do something to gain in one area and necessarily lose something in an other, and by leaving our FBs with relatively little help we accepted they would get beaten, but as long as we maintained the defensive pressure and our shape inside we’d be able to deal with that, which we did. But nar, the simpler and supposedly better explanation is Trent is just shit and doesnt even try anymore and not only slot but his team mates are fine with that.
Isn’t this just proof that Trent was doing what he was supposed to do? Force the player in to a low risk area and then the team as a whole deals with it?
If he was to stick his boot in and tackle the player, he is most probably going to concede a throw-in or corner, or a free kick in an advantageous position.
Of course, us lesser mortals have no complete understanding of the situation whatsoever until explained to us. I’ll ignore everything I’ve seen including his team mates having a go at him at times. Back to my lane with me!
I just dont get responses like this. It’s ok for you to say that you despair at their interpretation of what happened (even while not being completely fair about what was generally being described) but react like that when someone counters your position?
Er no. It the implication that the nature of what’s happening in front of our eyes is some sort of 4D chess that can only be explained away by some esoteric knowledge of tactics that very few have rather than the much more simpler notion of calling a spade a spade.
But you know what, I can actually get the idea of letting them get the ball wide and force them to play the way they did. We’ve had that against us many times and it’s as frustrating as anything however I cannot see that tactic being one where Slot and the team thinks it’s all good for the FB to get beaten time and time again and just hoping that a decent centre doesn’t occur.
Yeah, Trent is shit and doesnt even try anymore, and Slot is fine to watch it happen week after week. If that is where you have landed surely it is worth stopping to ask yourself if you’re seeing it correctly (or maybe just describing it somewhat unfairly)?
So your explanation is that Slot is fine with him being beaten time and again and it’s all part of the master plan? Not sure ones FB being on toast every game is really what a manager wants to be honest.
It’s those seasons where us and City, and Arsenal last season to be fair, rattled off win after win after win to finish out seasons. That’s skewed everyones mindset that any but a win is a disaster.
What we’re seeing now is still exceptionally strong sides putting together great runs but with the occasional draw and the odd rare loss instead of just winning.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see yesterday as being the end of this. We’ll drop some points between now and the end of the season but so too will Arsenal.
