We’ve gone 3 at the back numerous times to see out games, so you would imagined that we have practised it and some of the players should be familiar with the system
And often it wasn’t good, we’d actually concede late chances/goals. It’s different, playing for the final few minutes and actually starting.
Without going too deep on it, we never did it. I don’t think it’s impossible in the future, but I don’t see much sense in it either, especially with certain players in certain positions.
I’m up for some changes, knowing that we will not turn this around by simply flipping formations. But still want to give the team the chance to recover it’s form in the structure we’re more or less used to.
Doing wild stuff we could lose ourselves totally like Rodgers in 14/15.
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To be fair I don’t really care what we do. I knock up an experimental XI in 5 seconds, I’m not wedded to it. It is a personnel issue and a formation one. Our current version of 433 is shite and even if it wasn’t our starting RCM and DM are both shite so it has basically no chance of working.
I’m up for us playing 1-1-8, 2-4-4, 9-0-1 - I don’t know, I don’t care. Just do something that looks fun, we are painfully tedious.
Has to be time to change the players… With some tweaks to the formation.
The problem at the moment is that we are not gelling as a team. Simply going for random formation changes isn’t going to help that.
It might be a radical idea but most of our players are probably OK individually but there are certain positions, mostly in midfield, where we have players who are struggling for form and fitness, and due to the number of injuries and the balance of the squad we don’t have an awful lot of options to change things.
I think you can see this fractured synergy by the lack of overlap play between Trent and Salah on the right and Robertson and whoever happens to be playing on the left wing that week (and there is part of the problem).
I don’t think playing players drastically out of position is ever the answer. There may be odd tweaks that we can make by brining in one of the younger players and this could be a good match to do it. However, the only way we are going to get back to winning is to play out way into form.
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The problem though is the base, standard 433 we are currently implementing is broken. It’s not the same version of 433 we have played in previous years. It’s a lot more aggressive and played with a lot more width. I know Lijnders idea is to be smothering the defence but it’s just leaving us wide open at the back. The problem is exacerbated by Fabinho being crap and Henderson not being able to run anymore.
Sticking with what we currently call a 433 and just switching a few players around isn’t going to help unless we buy way more athletic midfielders. It may not even work then, to be honest.
We’re talking about ‘thing have to make sense’ but nothing we’ve done this season makes sense. Everyone at the club has been rubbish this campaign. Players and coaches, everyone is doing a bad job.
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I’m up for flipping to the alternative, 4-4-2 structure, with also a personnel change or two. Although it’s hard because we have a lot of games now and many injuries. When Bobby and Jota are back, maybe our defending from the front will improve, as they are arguably on paper our best pressing forwards.
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The formation is not irrelevant - the 433 has been poorly coached and our players are often in ridiculous positions.
Changing formation wouldn’t solve all of our problems but that isn’t a reason not to change what is obviously not working.
If we’d played our 433 against City at home they’d have put 4 past us again at Anfield. Whether it’s a 4231, 442, 343…not arsed, just don’t keep persisting with a failure of a system. It wouldn’t be change for change’s sake.
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I would put Thiago at 6. With Jones and Keita ahead.
Start Gapko at CF and Mo right and Doak left.
We won the League and the European Cup with it. I suspect that it is more a case of some of those players no longer being up to what is asked of them.
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One that addresses our problems?
Currently our midfield gets bypassed and our defense is leaking goals in this structure, and without Darwin we are not too dangerous on attack, wingers lingering without much bite.
What Sweeting proposes addresses exactly these shortcomings. Three at the back, with Thiago and Bacjetic as double pivot enables Konate and Gomez to shift to fullback as the double pivot drops back, allowing the wingbacks to roam without being too concerned to be exposed.
At the same time, the specific double pivot is ball-able and playmakers well, carries the ball well, allowing us to evade pressure better.
Salah centrally at this point may help the fact he hasn’t been dangerous in the wing lately (mostly because of deficiencies in our attack and key players missing, which is still the case).
So if a structural change addresses the issues we have, why not try it, especially in a cup game where playing like we currently do was already not enough against that team at home, which we now play away.
No, we didn’t.
This isn’t the same 433, that was evident from day one against Fulham.
We didn’t. We used a 433, certainly, but the version of it we are using this season is completely different from the one we won those trophies with. Look at the positioning of the two advanced midfielders.
Bin this off, rather play whatever half decent kids we have and see them run their course for the club rather than the pathetic seniors who’ve given up on us. Couldv’e easily avoided this if Klopp wasn’t so naive with his selection last week. Saturday is what’s important.
I don’t like Salah when he has to come towards the ball, he’s terrible at it. Klopp doesn’t like him there, Salah doesn’t like playing there.
In any case, I think this cup rematch is the perfect place to try and get our shit together before the Chelsea game, and if it works, the Chelsea game is probably the perfect game to try and develop it further (they are in as much trouble figuring out their game as we are).
Formation alone won’t do it, for sure, but the same goes for other things, they won’t be enough in this formation, simply because of deficiencies in players in specific positions.
European Cup final 2019
Of those starting players, Wijnaldum has left. Thiago was essentially his replacement (obviously both at the club for a year) and Mané has gone - replaced by players who are currently injured. Of the others, several are injured but all of them are now 4 years older. Several of those starters are clearly not the players that they once were.
The problem is now you have the fullback playing where Hendo did, Hendo playing where Salah did, and Salah right out on the touchline…
This means a single long ball over the top behind Trent means Matip needs to shift across, a striker plays inbetween Matip/Van Dijk and has acres of space as Fabinho is covering the whole width of the pitch (also too slow to get back).
The structure is broken, compounded by constantly losing the ball so its basically kamikazi football.
Looks like a complete overthink trying to fix our problem of scoring against deep sitting teams.
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Fair enough that you don’t prefer him there, I actually don’t either-when we have the full personnel his best position is definitely RW, but:
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what’s his record when playing centrally for us?
I don’t have the numbers, but I remember him scoring and us solving problems at some points in previous seasons when we did shift him centrally. -
who would be best suited to play centrally right now? At left wing we have no one right now if Gakpo doesn’t play there, we’ve seen Ox is not a solution there (despite the odd goal). So with Gakpo centrally the left becomes a non-danger area from us, which means Gakpo centrally will suffer as well.
At the right, I’d say putting Doak there may sound too bold, but it keeps us dangerous from the right, and no one else can do that for us right now, and certainly even Salah isn’t making us dangerous from the right at the moment.
So I don’t see who else is ideal to play centrally at the moment other than Salah, both in terms of delivering and scoring, as well as deciding this while considering how to keeping the wings dangerous at the same time. -
Do you think that Salah is being frustrated/ frustrating at the wing since the start of the year, or do you think it was just a few bad games and he will simply turn it around and perform better? (Assuming you don’t think his performances right now are good on the right)
There’s a difference when Salah is up in a 2 or 3 up top.
When he’s central, Klopp either starts him up top in 2 or he can finish games in a 3 (or 2). That is when we just try to see the game out and play on the counter in the final stages of the odd game. One of the examples, the final in Madrid. When Origi when he came on, had to drop deeper and defend more than Salah.
When I think about it more, I think there was literally one game he actually started central of a 4-3-3. That was Leicester at home in the league in 19/20. Mane had the job to keep Chilwell quiet/occupied, Bobby was in the left half space and Salah was released centrally. Leicester played a pretty high line then. That was the late Milner winner from a penalty.
The other time he spent more than the final 10 minutes or so, was probably City away in the CL in 17/18. A larger part of the second half I think we switched to Mo up top on his own in a 4-3-3, just trying to defend as best as possible with the other 10 players.
Generally, in the last season or two, I think his form dropped massively after AFCON (though his starts to the seasons of 20/21 and 21/22 were great, especially the latter), then had a weak start to this season, then improved.
Looks quite sharp to me now, so I’d either keep him where he is when we play 4-3-3 or play him up top as the right sided striker in a 4-4-2 (alongside someone who should drop a bit more than him/come towards the ball more).
I don’t have a problem if, in our evolution and some actions he plays 10 metres wider or more central, that is when he’s on the right of a 4-3-3. It’s just depends from attacking sequence to sequence, who goes wide and who goes inside. Naturally, you want him making more those diagonal runs into space. He’s good at shielding the ball, but more coming from the right. He doesn’t play all the time as the right winger tucked out wide. It’s still more or less his role, his best role and I don’t see it changing in the final years of his contract while he’s in his 30’s.
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