His swearing at the post match interview, which incidentally embarrassed itv, sounded a bit lispish.
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I like them as we get to see the fringe players and academy talents.
I do feel that Plymouth’s style of play with players being large and physical, also defending deep, whilst just lumping it forward was our undoing considering the age and size of our midfield.
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Morton got his full league debut with us precisely because we were decimated by injuries. It’s often glossed over because of the relative success we had that season.
And notably, while perhaps we suffered in the Champions League Final because of the toll of the season, we picked up 50 of 54 points in the final 18 league games. It was the first half of the season that cost us the points we needed for the league title.
I posted this same article over on the Everton prematch thread. Ogden is an arsehole, but he understands the realities of modern football and the fact that the bigger prizes are worth sacrificing the domestic cups for, especially when the squad isn’t exactly massive. Sure - we had some senior players in the squad yesterday that could and should have shown more than they did, but Arne put out a squad that contained no starting GK, none of our starting backline, none of our starting midfield, and ostensibly two of our “starting” front three. The rest was a mixture of literal kids and fringe squad players - and of those fringe players, one was injured after 10 mins and another was on the bench unused because they felt something that morning.
We don’t have a massive squad lads, that’s just the reality. For a few years under Klopp we did, and we paid the price in 22-23 after going the full distance in 21-22 and coming up with only the two domestic cups to show for it. The absolute top priority for us every year needs to be the Premier League, the Champion’s league is a close second, and then we roll the dice on the other cups. Getting hacked off for a team of kids losing in the 4th round of the FA cup is a bit silly when placed in context. As @Mascot put in this very thread - we have a league to win, we don’t need the added stress of a poxy domestic cup potentially derailing our title charge.
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@Jackbenimble, comment?
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Did you mean fake tan? Coz she was close enough to the Ooompa Loompa in chief to smell that shite
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Not sure if it has been mentioned in the thread yet. The pitch looked like it hadn’t been watered in a while. Seemed to be very firm and may have been a contributing factor to the performances. Harvey in particular seemed to struggle with how high the ball was bouncing and had difficulty controlling it. Not an excuse for the way we played, just something that may have contributed to the overall poor performance.
Shouldn’t much matter it rains pretty much every day down there.
Core group of regular starters 8-9 still started around 30 games in the PL that drops to 5 and 6 in other seasons with the only other season in that period where we get back to 8-9 being the PL title winning season and that would have been less.
End of the day you have a core team of starters you win games, ultimately whatever happened at Man Utd last season seemed to derail us, we went 120 minutes for nothing and we were already having to deal with injuries.
Ultimately we won’t know if we could have done 4 cups but that team yesterday should have played better and also I don’t see what other options he has. Seeing Gomez drop like that left him wary of putting Jones on there. Imagine that had been Konate or VVD? Ultimately what happened in 2021-22 we didn’t win 2 of the 4, if say we won 3 of the 4 or 2 of the 4 with one of the big two? It will in my mind will be justified as many relegation threatened sides will say much the same even though they had even less to play for.
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It’s that last part for me. Finish this season with at least one of the big two and no one will care about this result. It’ll be a footnote on the last page of the story of the season.
If we end up with just the league cup it’ll at least feel like we gave it everything going after the big two and the distraction of the FA Cup would have been something we did well to avoid.
Only if we win all three trophies might some people look back and ask what if. But dear god what a position to be asking those questions from. And the answer will probably be, well fuck it, let’s just enjoy this massive parade shall we.
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Nice little postscript to the game:
The Liverpool of 1956 was a faded force, relegated in 1954 though still featuring Billy Liddell, the great Scottish winger who had inspired a First Division title in 1947; the club was nicknamed “Liddellpool” after him. Other familiar names featured. The full-back Ronnie Moran became famous as an attack-dog coach under Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley and all further Reds managers until 1998. The left-half Roy Saunders would later father Dean, a future Liverpool striker.
Geoff Twentyman, Liverpool’s centre-back, was given a real runaround by Plymouth’s centre-forward Neil Langman. “He scored,” Griffiths says of Langman, whose brother Peter also played at centre-back. “He was a big old lump but quite skilful on the ground and he made a right mess of the Liverpool defence.” Twentyman remains legendary in Liverpool lore after becoming the scout who uncovered the talents of future club greats like Phil Neal, Ian Rush and Alan Hansen.
Up front for Liverpool was Alan A’Court, who played in England’s forward line at the 1958 World Cup finals. “They were still one of the famous clubs in the country, and everybody in Plymouth wanted to see the game, the crowd was over 27,000,”
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What? How am I only funding out now Dean Saunders’ dad played for us as well?
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Now I’m questioning if there really WAS only one Dean Saunders…
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Probably more accurate with his shooting too…
Interestingly enough, you should really include 2018-19 in that evaluation, since we did get 97 points then, our second-highest points total under Jürgen, when that number was only 7 players starting around 30 games. I think all you’re saying is simply the fact that it’s very difficult to keep 22 world-class players as part of a squad, and that consistency helps build cohesion.
I don’t disagree, but the cup runs weren’t why we didn’t win 2021-22. The damage was already done before that. Our cup runs are almost always just as they are this season, players who need game time because they haven’t been starting, and otherwise kids. We haven’t gone stronger than that until the semi-finals at best.
And for that matter, they didn’t really doom us last season either. It’s quite hard to really believe or understand, but we had 70 points after 31 games prior to the United game (I presume you’re talking league), which translates to just 86 points after 38 games. Our form for the United game and the games after that effectively cost us just 4 points, and our form prior to it would have been insufficient to win the league (91 points) either.
Even in the counterfactual situation where we beat United and go on to beat all the other teams, we would:
- Have to overturn a goal difference of 17, from changing the results of 3 draws and 2 losses,
- Have been on a winning run of 9 games,
- Have won 14 out of our last 15 games, drawing the other.
Which would be an incredible feat in itself. Even City only won 12 of their last 15. If we align the games properly, since City had a game in hand for much of the second half of the season, we would have surrendered the lead after losing to Arsenal.
No, Jones was just not in the condition to play at all, according to Arne.
I highly doubt it would have been either of them, especially the latter. He would probably be more likely to play an injured Morton at centre-back than play van Dijk.
losing to a championship side can be bearable, but what sticks in the craw is that our senior players were so below par, that they must have touched the earth’s mantle. Shocking attitude from Elliot and Chiesa who gave the impression that they were arrogantly playing because the manager put them on the team sheet
I don’t agree with this, you couldn’t fault their effort, but a combination of double/triple teaming on Chiesa and both just having one of those games, where nothing went right, plus a lack of team cohesion just made it all worse
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