We bypassed the midfield, long ball hoping again. We need to learn how to play it out from the back and use the midfield to tire the opposition.
We have a good squad however it seems to me we are not doing the right things in training.
And how many of those long balls aimlessly ran through to the keeper?
However, we stopped it for the most part in the 2nd half
Some of the long balls were very nice as well. Itās just that if we played out from the back better the percentage of nice long balls would go up imo. Letās face it Trent, VVD and Quansah can play very nice long balls and we need to use that but not as much as we did in the 1st half.
Also if your going to send so many long balls you need someone who can get on the end of it and/or chase it down and Nunez didnāt start.
1 Like
They really came across well on the TV coverage. All I could hear from the Fulham fans was booing Elliott. But they sounded in form - YNWA and I Feel Fine really clear at the end.
1 Like
The thing with the Fulham fans booing Elliotā¦ they at least waited until he had left the clubā¦ meanwhile, at Woodison, they Boo their own while they are still there :0)
1 Like
Hmm was this in the spell after the goal, it didnāt feel like 20 mins more like 10.
You are not entirely wrong - we went the last 12 minutes plus 5 minutes of stoppage time without getting a shot (Gakpo at 33ā was the last of the half). We had a weird reaction to going ahead 1-0, but it was really the last 5 minutes of the half where we simply could not keep the ball. Of the 16 losses of possession LFC had, 5 of them came in that period.
Of the 4 games weāve played against them this season, yesterday was by far the most comfortable Iāve been in seeing through a winā¦even with what was a bit of a sucker punch right on the stroke of HT.
Fulham gave it far more of a go in both the games at Anfield.
We were not dire for 20mins. Not even 10mins!!!
We controlled the game for almost the entirety of the match, playing around their formation.
But we did not create enough chances, and couldāve done more between the lines.
But that improved progressively with the work of Grav and Gakpo; Luis being used to push back Robinsonā¦
Dire is perhaps an overstatement, but in that period we were not great. We were giving the ball away really easily (and frequently), not working as hard as we had before the goal, and letting them cut through us far too readily.
You drop those 15 minutes out of the match, and statistically we were so much more dominant.
1 Like
Again not quite correct. We were not giving the ball away frequently; and we were not being cut through easily. The giveways came from Endo in 2-3 incidents, and then a few times with Eliott, Grav and Jota.
Now our diagonals, when we sought to switch play, were not working. IMO that was more the issue than giveaways. But even more significant was the difficulty in playing consistently between the lines.
It was a far more controlled performance than is being recognized, albeit without creating a plethora of chances. But on the other side never really gave up anyā¦
In that time frame, we had 55% possession, so in that roughly 8 minutes of possession we gave away the ball 5 times. That is far worse than the rest of the match. They also got 5 of their 12 total shots, including their goal. Not quite sure which 10 minutes you were watching. We scored and started being brainless.
Agreed about the diagonals, seemed all part of the same malaise. Thankfully, that did not come back out for the second half.
1 Like
Donāt want to over labor it, but that does not mean 8mins of possession to them. This was one of our better controlled games, and I mean the entire matchā¦
Our biggest vulnerability was their diagonals to Iwobi, but we always recovered or he turned it overā¦
Not 8 minutes of possession, but from the LFC side we were coughing up the ball every minute and a half.
No question that in the second half, we just didnāt let them play anymore.
1 Like