Do we miss VVD, yes
Are we in a rough patch, yes
Are these two related, no
Not just last night, our recent malice has been not scoring enough/killing off a game.
We are like in the early days of Klopp (is that where the pre-VVD thingy comes in!!!), lacking belief and hunger. If anything, we should be worried about our misfiring forwards.
I’m rather shocked with some of the recent reactions. If someone if freaking out at our present state, he/she must have been on suicide watch during Hodgson Era. Yeah, things are bad, but it’s not end of the world/season by any means.
Look, form has been very patchy and inconsistent since the restart - no-one’s denying that, and yes, this current run is very disheartening because it was an opportunity to amass some points ahead of the second half of the season. There are reasonable questions to be asked of Klopp and his substitution decisions, as well as in-game tactics.
All that said, people claiming we’re going to be lucky to finish top 4 need to give their heads a wobble. We’re in a dogfight for the league, and we’ll be in the fight all the way to the end. Keep the faith. Last two seasons were magical, this one can be too.
My original comment and the thread was not saying we are done or defeatist. It was nearly saying how important us solving the defence was to our consistency over the last couple of years. Including Fab at DM.
With that lack of solidity comes difficulty. Although all those making the point about our goal scoring being the issue do have a good point.
We can cope if it was just VVD long term but it hasn’t been, it’s been everyone else small or long term, the form just makes us look exhausted. Really not sure if this less intense period will help let’s just hope so.
Thank fuck, Lovren, Moreno and Mignolet were absolute banter starters. Decent enough to play a game here and there, not good enough to start for a team that wants to win the League.
I think our relative cohesiveness defensively even without Virgil is better than we’d have coped without him previously. That said, we definitely miss him, as any team would.
I’m more of a browser than a poster on the forums. But the way I see it is we should have kept or replaced Lovren. Sure Fabinho has looked very good in some games, but when he plays there we miss him from midfield, and that has a huge knock on effect for the forward line in my opinion. Phillips or Williams should have partnered him against Saints, Henderson can not and should not play as a CB again this season. As someone above mentioned, we need a regular CB partnership, Fabinho + 1 or even Philips and Williams together would be better than constant rotation, with Fabinho in front of those to I can imagine a more cohesive unit, anf then the rest of the team could play with a bit more freedom.
I was just thinking the same thing myself. We have to decide whether 4th place is good enough this season or if we want to buy a CB and make it a fight.