Good news is that this game showed perfectly well our flaws and there is still time to fix them.
We desperately need a center back. Matip is unreliable, while Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams are not good enough to start for LFC.
Playing our 2 best midfielders in defence in the future will be suicidal for us.
If a 17 years old kid without any senior football experience can get the better of Williams, what will happen when he is up agains Kavani, Martial and Rashford?
Phillips has a little bit more more experience, but he is not faster and much better than Rhys. And what happens if we lose Fab for a month let’s say?
At the moment we are not talking about the title, we are talking about top 4. I understand why the club don’t want to spend 30+ mln. pounds for a defender, but not qualifiyng for the CL /which is a real possibility, if Williams and Phillips continue playing in the league/ means we will lose much more, not only money but prestige and the option to sign top players in the summer of 2021.
The recruitment team failed badly last summer - not signing a center back was a very, very poor and shortsighted decision. Relying only on VvD was very naive and now the club has the chance to act decisively and must do it. By the way Virgil was a January transfer, like Coutinho and Sturridge.
Last summer the club’s net spending was less than 35 mln. pounds, but it is offset by the lack of spending in 2019/2020 when LFC was +40 mln. pounds from transfers.
LFC must try to sign a central defender that will at least try stabilize the ship /because we all know very well that things won’t end well for us, if Phillips and Williams are tne only options for Klopp/. And I am not talking about breaking the bank. Leicetser signed Fofana for 30 mln. pounds from France for example and at the moment most of the teams in Frnace are in a huge financial hole. There are enough good players available and we must act or we will have to painfully watch more games like WBA and Southampton.
I’m just glad we won as the pre-match thread was an embarrassment.
Hopefully some fans have had time to reflect on where we are now against where we were just a few years ago.
Great piece of writing .
Point I’m making is , if a top class centre back isn’t coming our way in this transfer window , then fab basically plays all season in defence , getting better and better and making that position his own along side Virgil .
I can see it happening .
If we can get a good loanee ,like now and bed him in the team great .
Otherwise it’s fab / Joel
Fab / Williams / Phillips .
Personally I’d have fab / Virgil until we get a proper top centre back .
I mean real top.
Re the midfield .
Assuming gini stays .
Hendo -gini - Thiago. Would do me .
Curtis - ox - Naby on the bench .
I’m of the view that last nights starting 11 was more than capable of winning that game easily last night. The fact they didn’t to me is not William’s fault but there’s something else not clicking in midfield and up front.
I also don’t understand this idea of crossed into the box at a time when the defence is set. It’s a lottery play in my book.
Rhys Williams - 1
Neco Williams - 2
Curtis Jones - 2
I’ve seen all three players get complained about but if we are honest all three were playing lads similar in age to them.
The two latter ones didn’t do much wrong, in fact Neco played pretty well for me.
All the bleating from the stacked up quality coming through at Villa and how it would be interesting to see how they progressed, well Liverpool already had two who could easily claim they are first team squad players in a normal season in Neco and Curtis and if truth be told they were and are far better than the Villa players last night.
I’d agree Neco played well, Jones was okay in a dire 1st half. Rhys was exposed for their goal, he simply does not have the pace and will always struggle in a high line. Not his fault as such, he simply cannot cope with a pacy forward.
To be honest I think Rhys’ problems are being overblown, they certainly don’t need pointing out every 3 posts.
Joe Gomez was letting players run off him 2 or 3 times a game when we were playing with a high line and he’s one of the quickest defenders in the game. We conceded 10 goals in 2 games against Leeds and Villa with our quickest pairing.
It happens in this system. Sule is first choice for Bayern and Germany yet he’s always getting caught out too, and Boateng and Alaba aren’t flawless either. 24 goals in 15 games conceded in the BL by Bayern so far because of their high line.
Williams has done pretty well against good opposition like Arsenal, Atalanta, Tottenham. We’re not at the point where we need to write off games when Rhys starts, he hasn’t been that bad at all.
I don’t understand the moaning about him at all. If anything, he has been a welcome addition to the squad. Suprisingly good with the ball at his feet and has defended reasonably well. He’s been caught in a few difficult situations but it’s not his fault that he doesn’t have the pace to play in a high line. Not to mention that as he improves his positioning and reading of the game it will help him out in similar predicaments.
you throw yourself into a contact sport against a club that are in the middle of a serious Covid outbreak. I’m still waiting for news that half our lads have tested positive. Let’s not criticise the players for just wanting to pass the ball around and get off.
a lot of players treated that as a fitness runaround before Utd. That’s fine. They were never, ever at serious risk of losing the game.
The game panned out exactly as I thought it would. Villa played the first half on sheer adrenaline - the game of their young lives - while we we passed the ball around trying to do the minimum without being silly and risking strains and pulls. When we needed to we put the foot on the gas, smashed in a few goals and then went back into low energy mode. Job done. No new injuries. All is good.
a lot of cryarsing that we didn’t absolutely twat them. Grow up. The last thing we need is a first teamer pulling up with a hammy because we’re chasing a seventh or eighth goal. We did what we needed to do.
It was a game played in such freakishly unusual circumstances, I don’t think any conclusions can seriously be drawn from it. I understand we’ve been in poor form, which I am confident Klopp will sort out because he’s the best fucking football manager in the world.
Obviously it’s a weakness for Williams but I wouldn’t expect a 19 year old to have the perfect all round game.
The way some people are going on it’s as if getting caught out by runners in behind is something that started with Williams, but it’s actually a problem that was highlighted this season (by Carragher most notably) before the majority of our fanbase had even heard of Rhys.
The only thing that bugged me was how blunt we were until shaqiri and thiago came on. And only because that was a continuation of what we’ve seen the last few games.
Last night Rhys made one little mistake for a young player that was he forced himself to ‘check’ himself in full flight when chasing an opponent. For me that’s not ‘bad’ enough to criticise to the level of not being good enough, particularly as having to chase the opponent wasn’t his fault.
Yes he needs to improve his positioning and reading of the game (this will cause him to appear faster and hence better) however he can only do that if he plays. He already has a very good all round game and hasn’t shown any signs of struggling physically. Sure he is behind Matip but Matip isn’t fit.
Job done. It’s possible to critique a few things but there’s no real point. We turned up, passed it around, Villa youngsters had a go, then we piled on a few goals to get the win and get outta there.
They had a nice day and get some credit for applying themselves. We advanced and had a bit of a warm up for Man Utd.
Nice to see Thiago, hopefully he stays fit and has a big second half to the season. The Prem title and CL are still there to be won, even if we haven’t been at our usual level.
Personal circumstances played a large part in my absence in 2020, my business no-one else’s.
Most of what brought me back to posting has been my anger at the bias and prejudice against the club in this godforsaken country, starting with the hysteria in the spring to have the season cancelled, then the clear campaign of biased officialdom this season.
I might be more inclined to post on things that I think are wrong and need improving, but that doesn’t make me any less of a supporter.
It galls me that this pandemic has made the exploitative super rich richer, and taken out hard working well run businesses, and that this will also affect our club versus benefactor clubs.
But I think you have to do what you can, and I do think the club could do something about the centre back situation in order to give us a better chance of a very winnable PL and CL.
Sorry about your personal circumstances. 2020 was rough. Hopefully you’ll have a better 2021, and Liverpool will give you some cause to post something positive about the club.
If we don’t sign a centre back a lot of fans, including you, are going to be furious. But the reality is that nobody outside the club knows what is going on. You like to imagine that buying players is like buying a box of cornflakes, and Klopp and Edwards are sitting on big sofas smoking cigars and scratching their arses.
It goes without saying that we could do with a Centre Back. I know it, you know it and Klopp and Edwards know it. But while you can say ‘we need a centre back’ leave it at that and be indignant when it doesn’t happen, Klopp and Edwards have to find the right one, negotiate a fee, find that money from somewhere, and convince both the player and the club to move mid season, and without wanting to bring an unnecessary dose of realism into a fun pastime, would you want to move your family to the UK right now?
Whereas my response if we don’t add a centre back will be to try and remember those points, think it’s a shame, and back the lads we do have to crack on. You’ll cry blue murder, blame everyone, throw words around like negligence, sabotage and dereliction, confidently assert we’re finishing sixth and repeat over and over again.
