Post Match: West Ham - Liverpool (PL; 7/11/21)

We’re back to the same old problem of lacking someone in midfield who can pick open a packed defence. Thiago, Keita and Shaqiri have all proved inadequate in this respect, mainly through a lack of availibility. Cut off the supply from Trent and Robbo and we’re in trouble.

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We’ve also gone back to the bad old days of Mignolet when it seemed every shot on our goal ended up in the back of the net.
West Ham 3 shots on target…3 goals, Brentford 4 shots on target, 3 goals, Man City and Milan both scored twice from 3 shots on target…Allison was not at his best yesterday but not sure why it’s been the case so often.
I think Jurgen needs to take a look at our whole defensive set-up and make some adjustments, I’ve no idea why we’ve become so easy to score against but it’s been evident all season as most decent sides have picked us open easily.

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Your two posts above are connected. We’re almost totally reliant on our full backs for assists so they’ve no choice but to bomb forward. It worked for a couple of years but now every team in the world knows to put runners in space behind them and pump the ball into that space. Last year Trent and Robbo sat back more to cover missing CBs and our makeshift defence actually looked stronger than it does this year. But we couldn’t score. It’s a conundrum alright

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Let’s just fucking win the next nine and go to Chelsea like men possessed.

Easy as.

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Think you’ve got it spot on. Only answer I can think of, apart from more creative mids, is to go with 3 CB’s and play the 2 full-backs as out and out wing-back’s. Can’t see JK doing it though, he’s pretty much a 4-3-3 man.

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And that’s because we weren’t converting our chances. We were creating boatloads of them but couldn’t hit the proverbial cow’s arse.

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For me its a Red card but also I dont think theres anything wrong with the first goal. Alisson has to be stronger.
Where the injustice is the consistency. We get ours chalked off v United but West Ham get theirs.

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Thought Declan Rice was good. Made a few good tackles and played a few good long balls.

Didn’t do much but did well

What is interesting for me is at the international level England does not play that way and there’s nobody impeding the GK.

In the CL and Europa League, of which WH is a part of, none of the English teams play that way…

Anyhow it’s done now. Still struggling to pin point where we went wrong but otherwise lets hope it gives the boys a kick up the Jacksy and we get back to our level.

What happened to having a man on the back post for corners? Do that and neither of those goals go in.

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I agree. It’s sort of a “bang-bang” play and I’d likely be annoyed if the roles were reversed and we weren’t awarded the goal.

The only goal that was annoying for me was Fornals. He literally ran straight through 4 of our players then the shot he got off wasn’t spectacular by any means. I’m not blaming any player, my perspective is only that a goal like that shouldn’t happen.

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Worst game Alisson has had even including the 6(?) we past him in the CL.

Maybe Robbo will be on the bench if he keeps on playing like this, but you never know with Klopp as Bobby went through the same form drop and was yet undroppable. He’s great in defence except now he is pretty much useless in attack, which negates one of our tactics. Timmy is the best crosser from the left by far, and has barely made any mistakes in defence.

Matip was average and caught out of position too much, yet again. Joe won’t make it this season, so we might as well get Konate in for a while. Matip is good at bring and passing out of defence, in fact better than starting midfielders today, but seriously if we are relying of Matip to do the creative job of the midfield, then we are in absolute midfield crisis.

We now have two major flaws that teams are going to try exploit, long balls to wings thereby taking wingbacks out of defensive ability, and crowding of Alisson on corners. 3 flaws if you count man marking Bobby out the game, but this can be changed by subs while the other 2 can’t.

We played a bad game and should of got something out of this at the bare minimum. West Ham are really not top 4 good, and won’t be near us at the end of the season. Well at least the no loss is off the table, so maybe we can convert some draws into win which will determine if we win or get close to winning the PL this season.

The ref was shit, fucked up a huge decision at the start of the game but that is an easy out to coverup a shit performance. If we need to rely on players getting sent off then heaven help us. It must start with us playing well, and then if someone from the opposition is sent off then at least we will be able to take advantage without fooling ourselves.

Motm, seriously do we need to “reward” a player for this team performance?

The Man Utd game is now a distant memory, let’s not be those supporters that “win” the season by revelling in the satisfaction of 1 result. City won there easily in neutral/reverse gear, with 1 shot on goal, while we gave up several opportunities, don’t let that game fool you no matter how enjoyable.

What did I have to open a pre match thread when we had such a shit game, someone should have warned me.

Another international break, thank fuck, which is never uttered but is sorely needed now. So two weeks and we face Arsenal, a team that had 0 points after three games, with a goal difference of -9, who can now leapfrog us with a win.

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In hindsight Jota score that Mane header 9.9 times out of 10.

Pussy😀

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Not making excuses for Matip but I posted earlier and a few others did after me, IMO that was a result of whatever we were trying to do on the right. Trent moving central, Hendo pushing up higher, WH lobs balls into that vacated space on the right and it becomes chaos for Joel.

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Still feels awful the next day. I hate losing!

West Ham good, in their own way… outmuscled us, showed greater desire, did well on the counter, and benefitted from at least two very consequential decisions in the first goal, and the Cresswell non red.

On our side we were not good enough. Yes, adverse circumstances, but generally we played the game too slowly in front of them, as they organized well and packed players in behind the ball. At that point we need something world class that you can’t always bank on, OR, which is what we need to work on… we needed to up the tempo with the passing to move them out of shape a bit. Generally we were too ponderous.

So, there’s work to do. Only four points off the top, and nobody is running away with this. The overall Prem is stronger, and all the fancied teams are dropping points.

Today the plan was to push straight on the keeper and today no one marked me on the keeper so I’m there to block him and make sure he can’t come out and catch it. You then saw what happened today: goals."-Antonio

Keep us informed, mate, but I’m not holding my breath indeed.

This discussion’s been had - see the post by @jaffod - no surprises.

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