Who would you buy?

Agreed. And having long shots also means defenders have to close us down, instead of just staying camped in their penalty area, safe in the knowledge that we will play it wide.

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that seems like 5 more than I even remember, to be honest.

Yeah, thought it was quite evident we shot from distance more than usual against Chelsea, so not sure what the point is here.

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Probably because, much like most long shots, they rarely result in much of note.

Interestingly, as you mentioned crosses, we put 40 of those in during the game at an accuracy of 25%. That number was significantly up on both the Norwich and Burnley games. I don’t quite know how they qualify what’s a cross and what’s a lateral pass but so far, pretty much every goal we’ve scored this season has been the direct result of a cross, corner or lateral pass into the box.

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maybe just my impression of the game. I saw Fab keep getting these passes from Harvey who is cycling the ball with Trent/Mo in the corner and hoping he’ll hit one or do a quick one-time cross to the far side to catch Mane cutting in behind the defence, but it never materialized.

Probably just my shitty memory of the days events.

If you have only 1 player in their box surrounded by 4 defenders and noone attacking the box as they are all out wide or waiting for a lateral ball then putting a cross in is really low percentage stuff.
I’m no fan of hundreds of long shots, Coutinho really used to piss me off.
Some long shots however also some play through the center could open things up a bit especially againt a team like Chelsea who are finding it fairy easy to either stop us progressing out wide or nullifying our sole ‘striker’ in their box.

Doku.

To answer the thread question!

Still a chance!

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I thought Fab did have a shot that was pushed out by their keeper?

Edit:. yep. 59 minute apparently:

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Didn’t I read somewhere that Klopp did purposefully coached the players to lower the instances of shooting from outside the box? That the percentages is like 8 times higher to score from inside the box compared to outside the box when taking a shot. So that is part of the data analytics strategy we adopted. Its not clear cut for every single game of course. But our midfield was never meant to score as their main function, the best 3 are there to do a different job for Klopp’s team and I thought Klopp has explained that before when questioned about the midfield’s lack of scoring. We saw from the Chelsea game that Fabinho can shoot. We have saw before that Elliot can shoot. And Henderson certainly does. So why do they not do so in more games? Its obviously an instruction from the coaching team. Sure we can get 3 Coutinhos who loves taking hundreds of shots from outside the box in midfield but who would do the job that they are supposed to do then? Its as if we expect our players to do everything. Every player in Klopp’s first 11 has a job and their job is not to do every single thing, its to do that one thing well so that together, we are well balanced.

PS: Maybe maybe maybe out there, there is a player, a midfielder who like our great Gerrard, who can tackle, who can run all day, who can distribute the ball, who is tactically intelligent, who can shoot, who can score…maybe we will find that player again one day…but for now I am very happy with our world class trio of Fabinho, Thiago and Henderson backed up by Keita, Milner, Elliot and Ox.

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I think the possible evolution open to Klopp is to flip a 6 and two hard working 8s into a hard working, defensively solid, double pivot with more of an attacking 8/number 10 in front. I think that’s more a possibility than trying to use a Gerrard type Roy of the Rovers midfielder in our current CM set up for all the reasons you gave in that excellent description of what their jobs actually are. I feel if the 8/10 in front still had defensive responsibilities and was still a little hard working it could work without losing too much of anything from our current midfield.

Two from Fabinho, Thiago, Henderson, Keita and Milner for the deeper roles would create a great double pivot with only Keita and Milner to ideally be avoided as a partnership, any other partnership would be good to world class.

The offensive 8/10 role would then be up for grabs between Elliott, Jones and Ox.

Elliott is already performing in a way that would make this work running more than anyone on the pitch and working hard. His link up play with Trent and Salah has been great, this move would open up the ability to get the same link up going with Robertson and Mane too. He’d also be a bit more free to let loose with some shots from just outside or just inside the area.

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Agree.

with the asterisk point that having long shots is predominantly about scoring, but bit part of it is changing it up a bit.

opposition need to be on notice that it could go either way. it disrupts the defensive Lock in a way.

ill believe you about the four shots…cant recall them so was suprised it was that many…but with the possesion we had, against nine men ridgidly behind the ball…im thinking four in total is a bit on the low side.

ive never played at a massively high standard, but im still playing…when the box is that crowded sometimes just fizzing the fucking thing in there is (low hard cross or shot, either/or) is better than trying to pick the lock.

unsophisticated?..probably. but some truth in the old ‘never win the lotto unless you buy a ticket’ theory

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Hendos extension confirmed.

Good way to distract us from the fact that Mbappe won’t sign today.

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It’s my birthday in January. Mbappé will be announced on a pre-contract then.

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It was seven, which equates to just a smidge under 30% of all our shots in the game.

With nine men behind the ball, all options are going to have quite low success rates. That’s why Chelsea played like that.

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It’s not just the chance of the long shot going in its the chaos the loose ball can have if its saved or comes off the woodwork, a defence can’t be set up to deal with it. VvDs shot nearly made things happen. Also it means they may start having to come out and deal with our players around the edge of the box breaking their solid, impossible to bypass, set defensive lines. Its not just the chance of the shot going in that’s a benefit.

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…but we did shoot from distance, plenty.

How many shots is enough? 30? 40? Should we have only tried long shots?

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Who made the shots and were they those curve in types from wider like Salah tries? Or thunderbastard attempts from the likes of Fabinho from a more central position? Think its the good old rocket types that I’m talking about really. Although Salah has scored a fair few of the other type they’re usually way off target for him and almost never on target for others.

  1. with at least a 10% conversion rate

that’d do…

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Van Dijk, Fab, Elliot and Henderson are the ones that come to mind.

The VvD one was exactly what I was talking about it actually made things happen.

Edit: To achieve what I was talking about they have to be ones hit with power and on target/off the woodwork.