I think a Liverpool 11 anywhere near our best would have totally bossed them about yesterday, probably would have been 4 or 5 up at half time. The Spurs team had no balance, not enough runners off the ball to really threaten us and too many players who are mediocre in possession. Mane would’ve had a field day yesterday playing against that Spurs back 6 and midfield.
Just one player in Kulusevski was enough to totally change the dynamic of the game and give us problems we didn’t know how to solve.
There were some excellent individual performances to take heart from but still much work to do as a unit.
I’m really happy with the performance. In fact, longer term, I think that it will do us more good that a 3-0 where we also controlled the second half and put the game to bed.
You need to be able to go away from home to good teams and dog out games. There were more than a few of these in the long winning run at the start of 19-20.
The lads proving to themselves that they can be under the cosh for long spells and hold the lead is no bad thing.
Yeah. Klopp should have brought on Gomez for a striker, and gone five across the back to stop them stretching the pitch. Maybe then we could have held on for the win?
As Martin Tyler never grew tired of reminding us, Spurs this season have a habit of finding another level in the second half. That they threw themselves into it, roared on by a really good home crowd, and got chances isn’t a surprise.
It’s especially enjoyable to go through a long dogfight against a rival, and to come out with the three points. In my book, this, coupled with the clean sheet against Napoli, was the perfect medicine our lads needed. Hopefully they’ll be able to build on it for the last two matches before the break.
Not sure what the snark is for, as if that substitute made a whole lot of difference. He was on the pitch for about 6 minutes and they still created after it.
We had an easy day defending yesterday because Spurs had little threat on the pitch for most of the game and it was all one paced. It was predictable right from when the teams were announced. It’s no different to us when we field a slow front line.
The other thing that was annoying about the coverage, was Tyler and Neville continually going on about Spurs missing Son and Kulusevski, but totally neglecting to bear in mind we were without Diaz and Jota.
It reminded me of the a match (can’t remember the opposition) towards the end of the 20-21 season when they would not shut up about the opponents being without a centre back. We were playing Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams. It was a proper WTF moment.
Of course they did. They are a very good side, who traditionally have a strong second half roared on by a fervent home side.
If your beef is that ‘they created’ I think you’re never going to enjoy a football match. Other teams will create and make chances. Especially good ones at home.
The point is that they threw everything they had at us and we rode out the storm and were well worth the three points.
There was no need for the snark, so I apologise. But you said we had no answer to Kulusevski. We did. We brought on an extra defender for a striker, sat in and saw out the game. Job done.
The Trent form started on the back of the stupid inter-club rivalry between Chelsea, City, Pool and god knows who else’s fans in terms of England RB selection. On top of that there was a small faction of Liverpool fans who were also saying ‘remember that time when Trent was beaten once?’. These whisperings are what has turned into a snowball effect. And what I mean by that is the constant conversations about his defensive ability became additional and unnecessary pressure he had to deal with. Its from someone sparking the idea that he can’t defend that this essentially influences his defending.
Part of football is perceived confidence (positive or negative) being used to build or take away confidence. If the media narrative is that Trent shouldn’t play for England because he can’t defend and the media has been playing on that recently, then you can sure and shit say that an opposition coach will be doing everything in his power to have the left sided players target him. You can also bet Trent hears about the media narrative, gets stopped on the street by fans saying ‘we still support you/still think you can defend/whats happened with your defending?’ perhaps thinking they are supporting but only adding doubts in Trent’s mind.
I don’t think Trent necessarily looks unfit. He certainly appears to be bulking up whether intentional or not and that may have an effect on his recovery speed, but I wouldn’t call him lazy, or unfit or not capable of getting through a 90 minute game.
I personally think it comes back to the snowball effect mentioned earlier. I would say the constant media narrative/likely abuse from opposition fans/probably from some of our fucking own at Anfield absolutely must be difficult to handle. It looks like his attitude is being affected. Those two shoves (the first a 50/50 penalty IMO even if Ryan is a diving little shit) look like the actions of someone who has had enough of all that shit rather than being unfit or whatever else. Both were completely unnecessary. He’s made these sorts of anger based decisions in other games this year as well.
I don’t have any beef and I enjoyed the game plenty.
That Spurs 11 yesterday was not a very good side at all. There was no balance, no pace, little quality on the ball. Emerson Royal would be lucky to get in my local sunday league side.
I’m not trying to rid of us any credit for yesterday but I’m not going to pretend we were playing a top side either. It wasn’t inevitable that the game would have ended that closely, a very good Liverpool side would have buried them easily.
All we can do is use the game as a stepping stone toward our next win. I doubt anyone is getting carried away with the win or even how we did it simply defending for 45 minutes, or that we are back to being a ‘very good Liverpool side’ We still have a long ways to go but the same core is there and they show brief glimpses of it most match days. The players just need to continue to work hard to get their mojo back.
It’s how he’s told to defend imo. I’ve seen Milner and Gomez do the same thing. They all tuck in and leave the wide man in acres of space and only really engage them when they have the ball under control.
One of my earliest memories of this involving Trent was the 3-0 against City in the CL. We were under the cosh 2nd half and they were pinging balls to Sane and Trent was 20 yards off him. He actually defended well against him one on one and didn’t get done like he’s been getting done this season.
Someone made a point about his current size and it does seem he’s lost some pace and mobility.
I’d just like to chip in with a bit of praise for Harvey Elliot. Offensively and attitude wise I thought he had a very good game. He impressed me by winning/retaining possession on three occasions I can think of when he was played poor balls by teammates.
I’ll temper the praise with a slight criticism of his defensive work. A lot has been made of Trent’s performance but I felt that Harvey could have been doing more to help him? As I said, a slight criticism, he’s a young lad and overall another very good performance from him.
We were 2-0 up yesterday and most of the posts were about how shite we were playing, and how dreadful Spurs are. Rather than just enjoying a great game that we were winning. Reminded me why I’ve avoided match threads most of the season.
All of these can be true, they aren’t mutually exclusive. First half we were excellent, second half we were terrible.
It’s baffling this slant that you can’t comment on the current performance of the team at any given point in the game, first half it was primarily positive as we dominated the game.
Second half we were under the kosh and a lot of that was self inflicted and down to our own inability to retain posession. They hit the woodwork twice and we had a 10 minute spell where we decided to self implode culminating in Ali nearly being tackled by Kane (which Klopp lost his shit at also).
