Post Match: Villa v Liverpool (EPL 4/10/20 7.15pm)

7-2 flattered us. Villa missed 2 sitters in the first half, hit the bar in the second and had another 1 on 1 which Adrian saved well. They looked like scoring every time they came forward and in the end I was just grateful they didn’t get double figures. Blaming individual players is spectacularly missing the point. This was a tactical shitshow.

Watch the game we played against them last season and see the difference. Villa only created from set-pieces. The rest of the time they were hanging on unable to counter-attack and we broke them in added time. Since restart I’ve been watching too many basketball games. It’s like early 2017/18 all over again. You attack, we attack and hope we score more goals than you. I think there’s a touch of arrogance about it. We need to reset and go back to the principles that made us hard to score against. Teams are fancying their chances now and those that don’t park the bus are getting the rewards when previously they would have been hammered.

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Not sure why everyone is trying to pinpoint a player whos fault was it yesterday that we conceded 7 goals.

My take on it was that Adrian had only one serious mistake yesterday and it was the first goal obviously. Dont want to crucify him, and we should defo all get back to supporting him so we dont need a kepaesque loss of confidence now when Ali is out. Last time Ali was out he won all of his games so he surely has done it before.

The defence was poor, they were rattled and they have been showing very concerning symptoms of over confidence lately. The Leeds and villa games are very good examples of this. Every team will target that right hand side now, when Trent is defending as well as my nan would and leaving Gomez out in the cold all the time. I mean the difference between Trent and robbo yesterday was so huge, that it very much leaves me concerned for our right backs as neco williams definitely isnt an upgrade on trent defensively. Virg did not make obvious errors but the captains armband gives you more responsibility over the whole teams performance.

The midfield was probably the most problematic yesterday. Gini and Naby lost fucking every second ball yesterday, and our game rely hugely on winning those second balls. I’m not sure was attitude the problem or if they had shockers of a game but both of them should take a long look into the mirror (or hendo’s performances) and think again what is expected of them. To be that shit against championship level midfielders is definitely not ok.

Salah and Jota were ok, Bobby was shit. I really would like to see the old Bobby back.

The subsitutes other than milly were also shit. Jones and Taki both invisible. Milly was the only one showing the spirit we need, and if he starts instead of gini or naby against Everton Im sure that we at least will see the real fighting spirit that epitomises Liverpool f.c.

Three things that annoy me going forward:

First is that those players should be running suicides for the next week, but they all get to go away with their national teams, change their mindset to that and hide away from this result. I hope Jürgen starts as many players staying back at melwood as possible in the derby.

Second is that those smug villa fans now can celebrate the only Triumph of their lives for two weeks. Silver lining is that grealish will leave as soon as someone is ready to pay the money for him, and everyone will see that he is an average player when the whole teams is not set up round him, and villa is a one man player and all the money they get from him will be spent on flavours of the month players from championship.

Third, this gives every team we are facing the rest of the season the culprit on how to beat us. The idea of richarlison attacking Trent and Joe feels very bad at this minute.

This was a real embarrasment which I haven’t seen before, but as we all know we just need to believe, get behind the team and support them with all we have and Jürgen will turn this around now. We all need to also remember that it will be long season and the title race will be decided much later than last season(please no we won it in july comments) and we will have much more ups and downs this season.

The full interview is worth a listen if you have a subscription to the official site.

Its transcribed here - https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/411296-andy-robertson-aston-villa-premier-league-reaction

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Like your idea about moving Bobby into midfield. An idea whose time has come.

Agreed. How many times since the restart has it been said that a game should serve as a wake up call? Last time the alarm went off due to conceding three goals at Anfield less than a month ago. Obviously that didn’t change anything.

If this humiliating showing doesn’t wake them up either, nothing will.

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I can’t watch the tape. I deleted it.

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Since the resumption of football in June, our form has been up and down, a model of inconsistency. I think empty stadiums definitely is a factor with all teams also. The atmosphere is like a training session, this possibly affects performance levels in some players. We must get some consistency back in our games.

Yes, a remarkable statistic (league only, of course). I heard Klopp mention it yesterday as well. However, that rather ignores the fact that Adrian didn’t do much to help us win those games. In fact, the team did extremely well to limit the amount of shots on target during those games.

In the 11 PL games Adrian played in the team ensured he faced only 28 shots on target. He still managed to concede 10 goals (being at fault for the only goals conceded against Southampton, Leicester and Brighton). 3 errors leading to goals in the space of 11 games (30% of our goals conceded during that time). That’s not great and it seemed as if we’d concede with the opponent’s first shot on target a lot as well.

So yes we won all 11 league games that Adrian played in last year but we won in spite of him rather than because of him. In the majority of those games we ensured we scored more than we allowed the opposition shots on target. Just as well really.

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Exactly, yet last night we hung him out to dry, we did everything you don’t want to do with your no.2 dropped in the night before the game. Piss poor.

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Lot of posts on how we missed Henderson. Again I haven’t seen the game yet, but if we are this dependent on Henderson for the team to be on our toes, that’s a bigger problem than individual fck ups. Winning teams have leaders across the pitch, and last thing we need is one single leader to keep them all on toes.

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Personally I’m not overly bothered by Adrian. I’m more concerned with the utter shit show I had to watch in front of him last night. There were many shots he shouldn’t have had to save there.

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I think you’re talking about two different things. Hendo brings leadership for sure.

But I think the biggest factor in last night was nobody was able to do the job Hendo does off the right, covering Trent and doing Mo’s tracking back.

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Have to agree with @Draexnael on this. And @Kopstar too.

Last year when Adrian came in, we tightened up and gave him lots of protection. He was looked after and after one game the team adjusted to the fact that he isn’t Alisson Becker.

As long as we do the same again, I think we’ll be OK.

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I was referring to the leadership aspect. The covering part is ‘relatively’ simpler IMO, but we have observed with Hendo on the pitch our performances improve a lot, and not just from a covering aspect. Hence the reference that the likes of VVD and Gini need to organize stuff when things aren’t going our way. We do not have many players who’ll take charge and direct the team together, as most personalities aren’t the ones who’ll lead, but focus on their performance. Not the problem with the players as such, not everyone has leadership qualities.

Different problem altogether I agree and not just this one game specific.

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Not disagreeing but do you think they should have known that last night as well?

I still think the whole performance was a little weird. Not looking for excuses but the complete lack of any kind of direction or understanding was just weird.

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Yeah, it’s inexplicable. They set up as if he was going to Alisson Becker them out of trouble if needed, but forgot he wasn’t Alisson Becker.

Put the 10th of April in your diaries that’s the match at Anfield against the Villains I am pretty sure our players will be ready to atone for this disaster.

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To boot, it was a massive error from Klopp to not start Milner yesterday.

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The team gave up, on average, 2.5 shots on target in the 11 league games in which Adrian featured last year. In the 13 league games since resumption, we’ve been giving up an average of 3.5. I think that makes a difference when we won so many of our games last year by a single goal.

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I fairness we could have scored about 7 or 8 too.

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