Virgil pretty much sums up how I feel about Trent tracking back.
You can’t blame the “set up” for his vivid failures…Hendo can no longer track back every time he goes forward…Virgil is not his absolute world class best that he can move over and cover every time (things need to change). Some are lapses of concentration, some if poor defensive judgement and others are outright laziness. I’m sorry to point this out. Btw I’m only posting these YT clips because a lot tends to get forgotten on recent past performances.
Whether they happen in isolation or not is besides the point, fact remains they happen…& far too often to be having a detriment on team.
“Too much to ask”… for a mentally/physically weak player with no stamina, perhaps… then his role in the team needs to change or we move forward with someone else. Simple.
I see Robbo on the other side flying up and down for 90mins, bagging more assists than anyone in the team right now and also defending properly. I don’t see any other player that defends as lazy as he does. People want to make excuses and give the lad overprotection which I understand to a degree…guy played about half hour of football during a 4 week WC campaign, came back and was still “fatigued” so at what point does the mind come to the realisation that maybe it’s not about fatigue and that he just doesn’t have the mentality or fitness to do what’s asked of him?
At what point are you going to realise that it’s not just his fault?
Oh and the Robertson you are describing shows up sporadically nowadays. His consistency has dropped and he has also struggled like everyone else. Not to mention that over the years he has had far better protection on his side with Mane, Wijnaldum/Thiago and van Dijk next to him.
If I was you T-AMR… with you only just putting in your admin application… I would be extra kind in your response to any posters on here for a while yet :0)
Right, let’s fuck these dudes up royally. Strongest possible team. Season “can” end well with us finishing 4th but I think we’d all take 4th and FA cup right now.
I don’t think Robertson has defended well this season either. He’s naturally a better defender than Trent but he’s been standing so far off this year, allowing players to come inside or to get crosses in and it’s cost us a number of times. I think it’s the same problem Trent is having, their spending so much energy covering attack and defence that they just can’t apply the same intensity on either end of the pitch.
So much has been said to defend Fabinho by pointing to the amount of space he has to cover but both Trent and Robbo are asked to cover double that distance and then to defend consistently in 1v1 or overlap situations with minimal to zero help. There’s never a midfielder getting back on the cover - sometimes a CB gets drawn out to assist and that only makes things worse as the attack progresses.
Robertson has played better than Trent this season but neither has been at their best and it’s because we are putting too much workload on them.
I’d add to that he is one of the worst culprits for giving the ball away cheaply, countless times he does suicide passes across field or up to his winger which then get returned over his head and he’s out of position.
Happened enough times to us and not led to anything but that’s us. Then again their manager is gobbing off all the time he has probably put their back up.
Whether we win or not we need to start performing. I’m interested as to what changes Klopp makes. Does he give a runout to fringe players or try out something we could use in the league.
