The old style of winning via pressing doesn’t work for us any more. Also because we no longer have the creative fullbacks. And pressing tends to get negated when teams are sitting very low.
So we have to change the way we construct attack. And that’s where Wirtz comes in. Need players to fit in with him? Then that’s what we have to get.
You have to remember, even if we were to want to go back to that older style of pressing, we don’t have the players for that any more. Like nowhere on the pitch. And all teams have studied how we used to press, what triggers we used to use, and have developed strategies to counter that.
So we must adapt and change.
I’d pretty much swap the rest of the midfield (a a fair few others) before considering Flo. The work needs to be done in training so where he and others are is understood by all. Ironically a Pep type wanker is just what we need wrt this.
The last time we played the old style, we destroyed the league, dominated the UCL league phase, and made League Cup final.
It was a choice to buy the likes of Kerkez, Frimpong, Wirtz and Isak while we could have bought a different set of players to continue the old system. And so far Wirtz hasn’t do any better in breaking low blocks, and far worse than TAA. He simply lacks the flair and dribbling skills of Coutinho, Firmino…, even Bellingham, to disrupt the low blocks, while his finishing is never good enough. Don’t forget that we silenced him and Frimpong easily the only time we faced Alonso’s Leverkusen.
Of course the coaching team plays a big part to make players work together as a machine and hopefully they do because on paper we have a very good squad.
It’s still too early definitely to talk about who should leave the club, we have seen with Klopp that with right coaching, what a machine 11 players can become so we have this whole season to see how it pans out.
But it is not wrong if someone lays a hypothesis that if a player does not perform as per expected, next summer could see some major departure, not just for Wirtz but a few others are in the radar too.
We have always struggled against low blocks even with Mo and Trent, other teams also struggle against them, if they were easy to play against for the so called top teams, the supposed inferior teams wouldn’t play a low block!!
And when does a team ever reach the point where they don’t struggle or have issues with a certain type of opponent more than against other? It’s a never ending process, trying to improve the team and it’s weak or less good points. Our evolution was such that we were constantly in the process to evolve our game, add layers, reach control in possession, etc. It was very easy for some people to say “just keep it as it is”. It’s not even possible, apart from fundamentals. But of course, you can go too far and make mistakes. City for example at times had issues against teams that played back 5. Pep spoke about it. And of course, they were not the only ones.
@Thomas1195
But we didn’t play the “old style”. We pressed from time to time but we did it more conservatively.
Plus we no longer have Diaz, Jota, Nunez, or the then-freescoring Salah. We don’t have Trent to link midfield to attack, we no longer have the still-fairly-solid Robbo on the left.
And I’m not sure how you haven’t noticed, but near the end of that season, even before we clinched the title, our methods became less and less effective and we were scraping through matches.
Of course. Could even be argued Gegenpressing didn´t exactly dominate. Iraola will find his style and it can hopefully do well.
At the moment we are caught between two ways of playing with a midfield of players that don´t fit and Iraola needs to find the balance. He seems a smart guy and not afraid to change things, so I am sure he will find a better balance.
On teams sitting in front of you, yes it´s a challenge for all top teams. The very best ones have ways to eventually get through, be it getting round the side with good wingers, a long shot, a clever player in the middle finding a tight pass, the midfield two working it forward quickly or over the top, or whipping a great ball in. Ideally you have most of these tools rather than just 1 or 2.
Let’s give Iraola some time and a couple transfer windows to get the squad to where it needs to be. You can clearly see improvement in the way we are playing and that he has a plan. There will be growing pains for him learning how to play every 3 days. I have confidence he will get it sorted.
I havent seen any improvement really.
Im not blaming the manager but he needs to sort that midfield. If Fulham, Newcastle and Ipswich can stroll through then what are Arsenal, City and the best of Europe do?
Joking a little bit. Yeah, we have work to do. Not only in the transfer market, but how we use what we have on disposal right now.
If I had to bet now, I highly doubt we’ll see all of our protagonist players on paper together in a few years. It seems more likely that someone will have to drop out.
Yeah I think the combo of Iraola getting his ideas across and finding better fits in the transfer window is going to be required. In the meantime, I would drop Grav until he can find some form and/or learn how to play in the system. Dom hasn’t been great, but he offers some things Grav can’t offer. The combo of the two together isn’t working at the moment. That much is certain.
That’s why I kept out of the post match thread I knew we would struggle to beat Fulham with only 2 days recovery time after emptying the tank on Wednesday against AM. I do like this manager/coach and we should give him all the time in the world to sort the team out and make it very competitive. We all have to remember Klopp had an even bigger shock when he had to put a team together after playing a hard game and he had to play the away game 2 days after the Wednesday game and at 12:30.
I said a couple of weeks ago that I suspect that any combination of CMs we have that includes Mac is going to be better than any version that doesnt and nothing over the past 3 games has swayed me from that. I forget which game it was now, maybe the one where Dom went to RB, it was interesting that when Mac and Grav were paired in midfield together it was Mac who was the more reserved, typically deeper, of the two. Maybe that was a reflection of Grav having the fresher legs coming on as a sub and so being given the licence/responsibility to run around, but I think its more a reflection of how much better suited Mac is to that role.
Completely agree. It’s like Dom and Grav should be rotating with each other (carriers/like to get forward) and then Maca and Nyoni rotate with each other (more reserved/better progressive passers), at least in the short term. It may be too soon for Nyoni, but I don’t think we know for certain yet if that is true. I think he’ll have a good opportunity against Spurs to stake his claim.
Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid are all interested in bolstering their midfield with PSV Eindhoven’s 20-year-old Austrian international Paul Wanner. (Teamtalk, external)
Never heard of him, anyone seen him play?
From the video, Looks like he can receive the ball under pressure, but there is very little in the video regarding his passing.
