You maybe…
But I’ve been consistently lowering the bar since before you realised a redbj was anything you’d find on a football forum…
I’m not about to change just because the mods have slapped a shinny new Coat of paint on the joint, and claiming the league is gone after a 5 goal deficit is easy pickings for a guy like me…
HAHAHA
I would give you one of these… 
…but I have run out.
I am a commoner like the rest of 'em when I thought I was in the clique.
I watched to half-time, I couldn’t take any more of that thereafter.
There were no standout players, at least for the right reasons, but imho if you have a keeper who is not, has never been nor will ever be Alisson, you cut your cloth accordingly and don’t play as if you do have Alisson.
Yeah, Adrian isn’t great, but we knew that going in. So why no attempt to protect our weaknesses somewhat, particularly when our attack is already blunted through losing its most incisive player. Heck, with Alisson, Hendo and Mane all out we were effectively without our spine.
Defence and keeper didn’t cover themselves in glory, but equally they were exposed by the tactics played. Playing so high up with your best XI on the pitch is a calculated risk, doing so with inferior stand-ins is suicide.
Take our lumps, learn our lessons and move on. If we’re without Alisson for a few league games I hope - expect - us to adapt our strategy accordingly.
There was this game right, in Istanbul…
I think my issue was failing to recognise the issues and doing something about it.
That said when you collectively forget which foot you normally stand on you know it’s going to be a rough night.
All I’m saying is, when the wifely question floated up the stairs at 8pm “can you read the children a good night story?”, my answer changed from the “bugger off” it would have been 45 minutes earlier, to a “thank christ for that!”…
By the time I was done it was 6 and I wasn’t turning that back on. -_-
Also, like Klopp said himself. We lost the ball in very dangerous areas way too many times.
Papa Klopp:
"We lost balls in the wrong area and did not protect properly. It looked like we lost the plot after it went to 1-0. It is not an excuse.
"Normally you can be 1-0 down and do the stuff you want to do. We created but did not protect ourselves properly so each ball we lost was a massive counter attack.
“That is why we conceded and three goals were deflected. It’s unlucky but it is not a coincidence because it means it was not a proper block. There is nobody to blame apart from me and us.”
With you on the keeper, but seriously, we need to stop this overreacting on the defenders. We have three very good defenders and a great fourth option in Fabinho.
It does not matter who you play at RCB. In the system we play, unless everything clicks, they will get exposed again and again. It spectacularly didn’t click last night.
We can put the boot into Gomez as much as we want, but the failings didn’t stop when he left the pitch last night. They won’t stop with a shiny new toy in defence.
To look at the issues (said in the context of us losing something like four games in two years) on the right, we can look on the left and contrast the two.
The first thing you have on the left is Virgil Van Dijk. The best defender in the world (who was shite last night by the way). Teams don’t tend to attack down the left because of him, and any coach with half a brain is telling his to play on the other lad. So this is problem number 1 for any Right Sided Centre Back. 90% of anything the opposition throw at us is coming his way.
Then there is the full back back issue. The Right sided centre back has got to deal with the fact that his right back is the teams primary creative force and is going to spend most of the time in the attacking third. Robertson gives much better balance between attack and defence and a better natural engine, that enables him to get up and down the pitch better than Trent manages. This isn’t a dig at Trent, by the way, because its clearly a tactical instruction.
Problem 3 is in attack, where you can contrast the job that Mane does and the job that Salah does. Again Mane will work his nuts off, up and down that line, being a nuisance and getting everyone’s faces (God, we missed him last night). Salah doesn’t track back as much, and again I think that’s by design more than anyone else. Mo isn’t shy of hard work, and it’s not unheard of for him to pop up deep and help out. But Klopp obviously wants him on the shoulder where he can hurt teams. This means that the RCB has another layer of protection that the left hand side gets unavailable to him, especially if the midfield is AWOL, like it was last night. Which brings us to problem 4.
The biggest issue last night IMO was Naby Keita. I’m a big fan of the lad, but last night, and the last couple of weeks, showed why Jordan Henderson is absolutely massive for this team. We miss him desperately when he isn’t there, and with the best will in the world, Naby isn’t the player to offer what Jordan brings.
When Henderson is in the team, the first three problems here are all negated by his work rate and game intelligence. When Trent is up the pitch, Jordan will step in and fill the hole at Right Back. He does all the Mane style running and harrying that Mo doesn’t give. And across the whole team he doesn’t let standards drop. Don’t you fucking date let your level drop when Hendo is on the Pitch. Theare is a reason why Keita is the one that get pulled at half time (although I’d have brought on Milner). Henderson means Trent can be a Trent, Mo can be Mo, and Joe Gomez doesn’t have a quarter of the pitch to look after on his own.
So I think we need to get off Joe‘s back. Yes he was poor on the night, but the situation he is in any thing less than perfect is going to quickly become a car crash because of the points in this post. Lots of people are calling for us to sign a new centre back, but the reality is that if Joe Gomez played somewhere else, he’d be top of everyone’s shopping list.
Hey on the bright side, this might be just a blip for us, but United are flaying around right now in a desperate attempt to remain relevant.
Rudigear is available sign him up quickly.
You think you lot have problems…
It’s the Monday morning after a week off for me.
Have some pity.
Those saying we’ve been like this since February, that would have been the case 2 weeks ago but since then we put in two of our best performances in months.
Was a freak result but maybe that’s it, I do think that line is higher than it’s ever been and isn’t as effective as it has been catching players out. These games really do miss Hendo and I hope he stays safe on international duty, seeing him in the team for the Derby would make me feel a lot more comfortable.
But yeah I think tweaks prevent yesterday and I think Klopp deserves a bit of a criticism, I guess if we could have got in at half time 2-1 down maybe those tweaks could have taken place but yeah game was pretty gone.
I did turn off at half time only to put it back on but when the 5th went in I didn’t bother, sorry Salah I probably won’t watch your second goal unless like last season we go on win it again.
It’s Henderson, Mate. If he’s there instead of Keita, he doesn’t let the right hand get bullied like that. Poor Gomez is left defending about a quarter of the pitch on his own, and gets nothing his fullback or his midfield. Absolutely nothing.
We underrate the lad and continually write him off, but this team doesn’t half miss him when he’s out.
International duty? If I’m Klopp he’s going fucking nowhere.
Apparently he has been called up, yeah baffling
Oh aye.
Sucks to be them.
My uncle is a massive United fan and an all round good guy. He’d stick it in during their glory days every now and then just as a reminder that they were up there but it was a really awesome rivalry between us and we always watched our games together regardless of whether we were playing each other or not.
Anyways, he’s taken the last 7 years pretty well and he just called me and we honestly just had the biggest laugh possible at what has just happened to both of us. It was really quite cathartic and I just realised that we take this malarky far too seriously and it’s not quite the end of the world just yet. I am not sure the reaction we’re going to get from the team but I think Klopp and them will figure it out somehow. The key is to learn and move forward and not to hold onto it and let it drag us down to a point where fear of a similar performance starts to weigh on the lad’s minds.
If this 7-2 will lead to 7 + 20 I am okay.
I remember the last time we conceded 7. It was in 1963 against Spurs away when everyone played 3 games in 4 days over Easter. We beat Spurs 5-2 at Anfield on Good Friday, beat Leicester the next day and then lost at White Hart Lane on Easter Monday
I was at the two home games…
Imagine that…same 11 players, no subs, heavy ball and heavy pitches. These guys get away lightly
