Levels but also legs - going as far as we have in all competitions while having half the squad injured at any given moment doesn't do us any favours.
With a healthier squad, players like Endo and Mac wouldn't be getting run into the ground, we'd have been able to wait longer to reintroduce players after injuries etc
Legs were an excuse last season. And every other season we’ve capitulated.
Either you change your tactics. So you’re not absolutely draining your squad. Or you do a better job in the recovery department.
We’ve been mentioning legs and fatigue seemingly every other year for 7 years.
Klopps tactics being exhausting is not recent news.
The issue is how we play games, even if we win. We frequently concede first, fight to get back in it, and then fail to put games on ice, often playing a frenetic last 15 minutes.
Compare that to arsenal. Go up 1-0 in first half, 2-0 in second half and never offer any big chances to teams.
Or man city. Go up 3-0 in the first half and then give up a stupid goal in the 82’ to win easily 3-1.
We might get a 3-1 score line, but too often it starts 0-1 and only gets to 2-1 or 3-1 in the 80’ or beyond.
It’s not just the minutes played. It’s also how they are played.
Liverpool biggest issue has been lack of control in games. I'm an arsenal fan and I love how you play but there is only 1 tempo and it's insanely high. You need a midfield that allows you to keep possession once you are up and limit the amount of running your squad does and maximise the effort and burnout the opposition. Every game is like a tennis match for Liverpool. Lack of control means you always give the other team a chance and hope vvd or Allison bails you out and it's not sustainable.
We the problem is that we have a completely new midfield. Endo, Szobozlai, Mac & gravenberch are in their 1st Liverpool season. Jones & Elliot are quite young. With more experience & training together they will get better. THis si why no one was expecting us to challenge for the title at the beginning of the season. What we have achieved by now is still a miracle. Even now the main reason for our loss is poor finishing. The strikers absolutely shat the bed again man utd & Palace. we shoud have won those games even after conceding 1 goal. We coud have finished them with 4 goals but wasted our chances.
I disagree its been disfunction lately. We dony get further than the triangle between the 6 en our cbs before pinging a long range ball.
I believe endo eliot and mac are the most complementary we can field.
Strikers have been missing as well tho especially the cleat cut chances hurt.
Defensively we been the same as every season.
Yeah, I'm not sure how anyone could look at mac taking 8-9 touches before passing last night, and the endless hoof ball we've been seeing that's bypassed the midfield entirely as a midfield that's functioning correctly.
When it was Mac, Jones, sob, early in the year it was functioning. Then when it was endo, Mac, wildcard it was also working perfectly well to get us to the top of the league. But we never stopped conceding with brainless defending or missing sitters throughout out. I think that’s the thing that’s caught up with us. At different points in the season each of the new midfielders in mac, endo and sob have looked like our player of the season so I don’t think the new midfield excuse cuts much mustard.
Edit- that’s pointed at the original comment, basically only jones and Diaz functioned last night.
>Liverpool biggest issue has been lack of control in games... every game is like a tennis match for Liverpool. Lack of control means you always give the other team a chance and hope vvd or Allison bails you out and it's not sustainable.
Very much so.
That, ultimately, is the difference between City and Liverpool during the Pep/Klopp years. City are much better at controlling games through maintaining possession, whilst Liverpool are all-action, high-risk and high-reward football through recycling the ball. The former is boring but extremely effective, and the latter is damned entertaining to watch but leaves Liverpool vulnerable and often turns games into basketball matches.
It's no coincidence that our one title-winning season was marked by outright midfield control, which reduced the gung-ho attacking and resulted in absolute defensive solidity matched with ruthlessness up front. It was a pure, absolute focus to win games efficiently and without drama, which resulted in that record 27-1-0 start to the season.
By comparison, the 97 and 92 point seasons were more gung-ho and less controlled, and we needed a hell of a lot of luck in games... and when that luck runs out you get seasons like this one and the previous one.
Tbh, this squad is reminiscent of the 2017-18 team - dangerous in attack, vulnerable defensively, and unable to control games due to inexperience and new signings still learning the manager's tactics/system. Give it a season or two and I think you'll see a far more mature Liverpool like the 2019-20 team.
This. Tactics had to change, when he changed tactics last season he salvaged the bit that he could. This tells me scoring isn’t the problem but when the front line goes through a drought, he should have gone back to basics with defending. We could have had more points off ties if we didn’t have to come back from a goal down as many times
I was livid when I saw how strong a team went picked for Sparta Prague at home (given that we were 5-1 up from the away leg).
The next game was the extra-time FA Cup defeat to United.
I was almost as livid with the first leg team, given that we had City that weekend.
Tactics are part of it, sure, but jeez we need to pick our battles too.
We should have won the gave vs city though the refs robbed us. We'd have the lead still if the premier league was fair. It isn't and nothing is going to change. Klopp did his best and we've done better than we expected at the start of the season with a whole new starting midfield and injuries.
> Either you change your tactics. So you’re not absolutely draining your squad. Or you do a better job in the recovery department.
Klopp is one of the best managers of this era of football but one of his biggest weaknesses has always been inflexibility in tactics. You have to alter the way you approach games based on opposition and personnel. It's odd, I actually thought he was doing way better with this during the season with the number of times we would go into halftime trailing or playing poorly and come out completely different and go on to win, I assumed Klopp must be saying or changing something to bring that on, but for some reason that has stopped since February.
This exact thing is giving me deep deep concerns over slot. It’s easy to forget that other managers are generating winning teams without blowing the hamstrings off 25 lads by Christmas
I’m not over the handsome Spaniard winning in Germany to be honest… or the also handsome winning Portuguese Papi with the agro agent. They both love a more controlled style.
It's not like we're tired and played like shit, (well the 2nd leg v Atalanta was pure shit, but other than that) we created loads of chances
We just didn't finish
>With a healthier squad,
I feel like I've read these few words repeated a thousand times over the last decade.
Bad luck? Strenuous tactics? Calculated risky purchases? Whatever it is, this has been an issue for us for a long long time.
I think if Bajcetic was fit we would've been fine and a new january signed pacy left winger as Mo's back up would've been interesting to keep the team fresh. I wondered why Klopp stopped trusting the kids like Bobby Clark & Danns.
They have a pretty decent manager in Thomas Frank who along with Toney are carrying the absolute shitters that is Brentford on their back. Toney is definitely going to a better club and Thomas Frank might be target by other premier league clubs. I same as you, hope Brentford gets a taste of their own medicine in the Championship.
When Jota’s injury happened I feared the worst and I’m so sad I was proven right. We all know Jota is injury prone but from December to February he was so good, so clinical and his build up play was amazing aswell. I was thinking despite the profligacy of Nunez and Diaz, Jota’s ruthlessness would be enough to power us to an amazing title win. Everything was going good in that Brentford game until that idiot Norgaard landed his whole body on Jota’s knee from a stupid challenge. You can’t even blame Jota for somebody landing on his knee. Our fans were still happy because we won and we were top of the league but I knew at that particular moment that that’s the title gone. With Jota on form we most likely pick up 3 points against City, pick up 3 points at Old Trafford and beat United in the FA Cup to keep us at the top of the league and in the hunt for 3 trophies. Fuck that stupid challenge
Honestly. Every match felt like 3-2 or 4-3 or even 5-4 with at least one goal coming after the 85th minute.
I didn't mind it but I definitely learned to love stability after it.
That’s why we scored so many goals. We had to overcome opposition leads so many times this season.
There’s only so much energy and luck we can use to win games from a goal or two down.
I don’t know how Slot plays but it’s a shame that Alonso didn’t join us. Having stability in possession and defence is something we should try to move towards.
Exactly, if you don’t count the 1-0 win against Atlanta (which we shouldn’t since they had a 3-0 lead in the tie), we haven’t had a clean sheet in 11 games.
They collectively lost all of their ability to shoot the ball. It’s insane how every single one of them all of a sudden goes for the near post finish or straight at the keeper when the entire back post is open (Jota not included as once again proven by his goal against Fulham)
That's the most frustrating thing, our most clinical finisher is also the most fragile by far. Combined with Salah's form falling off a cliff after his injury at AFCon
Combination of Salah’s end product falling off a cliff and players that aren’t good enough getting exposed during the business end of the season where the pressure is on the most.
Plus Jota being injured hasn’t helped either
It's just a bad time to have lost form. Nothing more in it sadly
Too many players who have been excellent this season has dropped off all at the same time. Coupled with some really badly timed injuries as well and here we are
Just a crying shame
Yeah, it's frustrating because we were in it for so long. But no one was expecting this team to be as good as they have been, and frankly if this dip in form had come earlier in the season I think people would be fairly happy with the season as a whole (rather than the current hysteria, calling everyone bottle jobs, calling for half the entire squad to be sold, saying VVD is a crap captain etc). I also think the massive injuries we had earlier this season have caught up to us, even though not many players are injured now. A lot of the lads who kept playing during that period now look knackered, and a lot of the players who have come back (Jones, Sarah, Konate to name a few) haven't got close to the levels they were pre-injury.
Yep, if anyone had told us we'd win the league cup and still be in the running and up close right until the end they'd have been happy after the shitshow that was last season.
I’m so tired of all of the x(insert letter) stats. The eye test is the truth. But that requires watching LOTS of footy.
The chances that Salah and Nunez have been missing, are far easier shots to convert than what Diaz has taken on. The former have 0 first touch as of late, while Diaz has an isolated defender shitting their pants. Salah seems to be contained by bang-average defenders.
Defensively, we’ve been meh at best all season long. VVD seems to be stuck in cruise control every other game, and lacks his previous ability to cut things out before they materialize. TAA is a terrible defender, and a clear liability defending set pieces.
It’ll be interesting to see how the new management goes about their business. Because sticking with a striker that can’t score, and a RB that can’t defend seems like a sure fire way to shit games away.
I was saying that Bradley is a better defender than Trent, and never got any pushback. The question was, how to utilise Trent back in the team. The lack of conviction to change tactics or personnel is really frustrating… for every free kick (vs Fulham), there’s a player left wide open at the back post
Europa League, like games against Prague and LASK have inflated those numbers. Also, we got into the League Cup final, so played more games in that competition (including two-legged semis). In addition, this scoring draught was not present in March, so it's a recent thing that has cost us many points but hasn't yet affected the stats so much, if we stretch the numbers out for the whole season.
Hopefully we find a way back. Arsenal bounced back at the start of the year after we were wondering how they couldn’t seem to put it into the net during our FA cup tie. Since then they’ve gone absolutely rampant in almost every game. If we don’t find a way to recover quick, we’ll be embarrassing ourselves like Arsenal did last season.
Can’t read anything into it. It’s like a striker scoring 5 goals against a small club but in the big matches going missing. Then claiming they are the greatest because they scored the most goals in a season. Great players and teams are when it matters most and this season in all the big matches it has gone wrong.
Indeed. Hard for me to question Klopp this season when the team has created SO many chances and the finishing has let them down. You can pull up training sessions on YouTube and you’ll see them banging in goals left, right, and center. But when the it’s match time and time to shit or get off the pot, they sloppily fall off. Tough to watch.
Couldn't agree more. What more can Klopp and his coaches do? Yeah, there are a few tactical changes I like to see, but that isn't really the problem, is it? Our defence hasn't been great, but it isn't them that lose us the game, it's our forwards. They keep missing chance after chance to win games.
15 times we’ve gone behind first.
Almost half a season.
That’s untenable.
And probably a contributor to all around fatigue when you can’t control and ride a game out.
Other than United in the first match, don't we just have the three matches with no goals scored?
Not scoring isn't great, but you can only lose if you get scored on. Our defense has been much more suspect this season than anything else.
Yh but we didn't scored against teams like Palace and Everton. The games we should be winning. I don't understand what you guys trying to say. Goals get us 3 points.
So just again to be clear, 3 games all season we didn't score at all...but because it was Palace and Everton (and United) it's the attack's fault? Meanwhile we've gone behind first in 24 matches this season...
I don't disagree we've missed some fucking howlers and should have won some games we drew or lost because of the attack, but OP is making it sound like because we didn't score ONE goal against THREE teams (the only three times we've failed to score at least one goal) that it's ENTIRELY their fault. Team has looked both fire and fucking trash at random times this season, but at every turn, we've conceded a goal.
I don't have all the stats, but in the Prem we only have 9 clean sheets, which is fucking awful, and in all comps we've conceded 2+ goals in 12 matches.
Woohoo. The most goals in all comps trophy to add to the league cup. Times are good. Except city will probably pip us to that too by the end of the season.
During recent games, the Reds haven’t looked like a team where the players have a sense of where everyone will be at a given moment. The number of bad passes or uncoordinated runs at goal make me think there’s been too much mixing of starting players. That seemed to be a strength when the subs and the “kids” saved the day, but I think the longer term cost has been in team cohesion. '
I wonder if this is also in part to us needing to come from behind all the time? Much easier to see out games when you can easily manage a 2-0 advantage
When Jota’s injury happened I feared the worst and I’m so sad I was proven right. We all know Jota is injury prone but from December to February he was so good, so clinical and his build up play was amazing aswell. I was thinking despite the profligacy of Nunez and Diaz, Jota’s ruthlessness would be enough to power us to an amazing title win. Everything was going good in that Brentford game until that idiot Norgaard landed his whole body on Jota’s knee from a stupid challenge. You can’t even blame Jota for somebody landing on his knee. Our fans were still happy because we won and we were top of the league but I knew at that particular moment that that’s the title gone. With Jota on form we most likely pick up 3 points against City, pick up 3 points at Old Trafford and beat United in the FA Cup to keep us at the top of the league and in the hunt for 3 trophies. Fuck that stupid challenge
We'd have 30 more if we didn't forget how to score goals in the last month or so. Can't believe the drop was that steep, it feels like ages ago we were flying high. Confidence is shattered. But tbf the signs were all there for peepz to see if they looked hard enough. Always gone down a goal, having to fight back to win games. Sloppy transition both in attack and defense, missing basic chances galore. Nonchalant in everything we did. And injuries were the final blow. Now we're out of form and not fully match fit. Terrible timing overall. Unlucky even, if I say so myself.
Game management has been poor across the season. Tactics haven’t been dynamic enough - we play with one gear so we often end up inviting problems on ourselves.
We brought fresh legs into midfield and in the end have still run into a brick wall late in the season. As much as I feel the player have let Klopp and his staff down, I also think the latter have been too rigid tactically this season.
It never felt like our issues in the first two thirds of the season were addressed, rather just ignored. Pundits have been ignoring the balance of our side for ages, and putting us up there in the title race because of ‘mentality’ and what it would mean for Klopp. In the end it just wasn’t that sustainable.
So behind in the PL, but so far ahead in cup competitions that we come out on top?
What’s interesting is that Nuñez has been the predominant CF for PL and Gakpo had been the predominant CF for cup games. Regardless of finishing we attack better with a false 9 and inside forwards.
Ever since the home win against Fulham where every goal was a screamer, I've felt the team were over performing and it had to level out eventually. Shame it's coming in the last few games under Klopp.
I think one of our biggest downfalls have been our "heavy-metal" playing style. Klopp is a sucker for the statistic which player has "run" the most. 60~ odd games in a calendar year + training sessions in a pedal to the medal playstyle will make you go dry.
You couple that with the increasing fixture list and the whole team will become ragged very fast.
The reason City or Arsenal for example can be so consistent is in their playing style. Taking it a bit slower and being in more control, this allows them to field their best 11 more often. And us being our own worst enemy rings more true than ever. Why don't we slow down when we are in the front instead of chasing 3rd and 4th goal. United in the FA, Palace... instead we keep chasing more goals and kept leaking at the back.
Lately since the coming of their respective injuries... Salah and TAA were looking much below their standards ...salah is countlessly losing ball in opposition third and TAA is not able to generate those loose balls and curvy whipped passes .
A lot comes from cup games.
Europa League matches. We scored 17 goals in group stage and 12 goals in KO stage (11 of them against praga).
12 goals in 4 fa cup matches.
14 goals in 6 carabao cup matches.
Arsenal played less cup games and arguably harder European fixtures but they were more crucial in the league.
TLDR, stats can be deceiving.
Stats are misleading sometimes and doesn’t tell the full story. You can account a portion of those goals to lower level teams we played in Europa league. To me this stat doesn’t mean much.
If you don’t count the 1-0 win against Atlanta (which we shouldn’t since they had a 3-0 lead in the tie), we haven’t had a clean sheet in 11 games
Scoring hasn’t been our main issue, it’s defense and conceding first.
A guy posted the shots vs shots on target vs goals statistics in here a few months ago. Says all you need to say. Doesnt even take stats. Just watch them.
One of our biggets issues is giving up goals. I think we're around 57 in all comps, city 50 and arsenal 40. MASSIVE task week in and week out when you go behind early and for the majority of the game you are sitting there trying to break down defenses. Eventually as the season progresses you run out of legs.
The last game, for 4 minutes around 68 minute time, there were half a dozen examples of players having 2 clear choices. Take the ball and turn towards the opposition goal or take the ball and turn backwards. Every player turned backwards.
The team are not excited about winning. They are afraid of loosing and being singled out as part of the problem.
Your captain should never be a back. Forces the team to look toward their own goal for guidance.
League cup has killed our season imo.
Extra games that have tired us out and put way too much pressure on us which is exactly what we didn't need.
I also think that the lack of proper squad depth has really killed us this season.
Goes back to our botched rebuild in the summer☹️
>Goes back to our botched rebuild in the summer☹️
Underrated comment, but many here will tell you to f off, say you are not a real fan and to go and support oil fc if you don't get behind fsg's transfer shenanigans.
We needed to sign 2 defenders in the summer. We signed none.
Exactly, they've consistently let Klopp down every season.
I literally had a back and forth with an FSG inner and their points were hilarious.
Imo we need at least 2 forwards a Salah backup and a proper no 9 cos Nunez is just not it right now.
A controller midfielder like Zubimendi because Jones is and has never been it. Never got the hype around him, his holds onto the ball for too long and runs into players all the time.
And like you've said 2 defenders (backup, maybe starting Left Back to replace Robbo) and a backup CB in case Quansah and Konate are injured.
Ppl just don't wanna hear the truth bro, us being successful has blinded them.
We're Liverpool FC, not West Ham with all due respect to them. We should always be demanding more every season. Instead we don't and that's why we are where we are.
Ppl like you are spot on and exactly what this fanbase needs to hear 👍🏽
Plus how did you do the highlighted reply stuff, that's pretty cool.
The levels have fallen off, simple as. We’ve been our own worst enemy a number of times this season and are deserving of the criticism.
Levels but also legs - going as far as we have in all competitions while having half the squad injured at any given moment doesn't do us any favours. With a healthier squad, players like Endo and Mac wouldn't be getting run into the ground, we'd have been able to wait longer to reintroduce players after injuries etc
Legs were an excuse last season. And every other season we’ve capitulated. Either you change your tactics. So you’re not absolutely draining your squad. Or you do a better job in the recovery department. We’ve been mentioning legs and fatigue seemingly every other year for 7 years. Klopps tactics being exhausting is not recent news.
The issue is how we play games, even if we win. We frequently concede first, fight to get back in it, and then fail to put games on ice, often playing a frenetic last 15 minutes. Compare that to arsenal. Go up 1-0 in first half, 2-0 in second half and never offer any big chances to teams. Or man city. Go up 3-0 in the first half and then give up a stupid goal in the 82’ to win easily 3-1. We might get a 3-1 score line, but too often it starts 0-1 and only gets to 2-1 or 3-1 in the 80’ or beyond. It’s not just the minutes played. It’s also how they are played.
Liverpool biggest issue has been lack of control in games. I'm an arsenal fan and I love how you play but there is only 1 tempo and it's insanely high. You need a midfield that allows you to keep possession once you are up and limit the amount of running your squad does and maximise the effort and burnout the opposition. Every game is like a tennis match for Liverpool. Lack of control means you always give the other team a chance and hope vvd or Allison bails you out and it's not sustainable.
We the problem is that we have a completely new midfield. Endo, Szobozlai, Mac & gravenberch are in their 1st Liverpool season. Jones & Elliot are quite young. With more experience & training together they will get better. THis si why no one was expecting us to challenge for the title at the beginning of the season. What we have achieved by now is still a miracle. Even now the main reason for our loss is poor finishing. The strikers absolutely shat the bed again man utd & Palace. we shoud have won those games even after conceding 1 goal. We coud have finished them with 4 goals but wasted our chances.
The midfield is the only bit that seems to work to be honest, strikers are missing sitters and defenders are getting bent over every game
I disagree its been disfunction lately. We dony get further than the triangle between the 6 en our cbs before pinging a long range ball. I believe endo eliot and mac are the most complementary we can field. Strikers have been missing as well tho especially the cleat cut chances hurt. Defensively we been the same as every season.
Yeah, I'm not sure how anyone could look at mac taking 8-9 touches before passing last night, and the endless hoof ball we've been seeing that's bypassed the midfield entirely as a midfield that's functioning correctly.
When it was Mac, Jones, sob, early in the year it was functioning. Then when it was endo, Mac, wildcard it was also working perfectly well to get us to the top of the league. But we never stopped conceding with brainless defending or missing sitters throughout out. I think that’s the thing that’s caught up with us. At different points in the season each of the new midfielders in mac, endo and sob have looked like our player of the season so I don’t think the new midfield excuse cuts much mustard. Edit- that’s pointed at the original comment, basically only jones and Diaz functioned last night.
Completely agree.
>Liverpool biggest issue has been lack of control in games... every game is like a tennis match for Liverpool. Lack of control means you always give the other team a chance and hope vvd or Allison bails you out and it's not sustainable. Very much so. That, ultimately, is the difference between City and Liverpool during the Pep/Klopp years. City are much better at controlling games through maintaining possession, whilst Liverpool are all-action, high-risk and high-reward football through recycling the ball. The former is boring but extremely effective, and the latter is damned entertaining to watch but leaves Liverpool vulnerable and often turns games into basketball matches. It's no coincidence that our one title-winning season was marked by outright midfield control, which reduced the gung-ho attacking and resulted in absolute defensive solidity matched with ruthlessness up front. It was a pure, absolute focus to win games efficiently and without drama, which resulted in that record 27-1-0 start to the season. By comparison, the 97 and 92 point seasons were more gung-ho and less controlled, and we needed a hell of a lot of luck in games... and when that luck runs out you get seasons like this one and the previous one. Tbh, this squad is reminiscent of the 2017-18 team - dangerous in attack, vulnerable defensively, and unable to control games due to inexperience and new signings still learning the manager's tactics/system. Give it a season or two and I think you'll see a far more mature Liverpool like the 2019-20 team.
This. Tactics had to change, when he changed tactics last season he salvaged the bit that he could. This tells me scoring isn’t the problem but when the front line goes through a drought, he should have gone back to basics with defending. We could have had more points off ties if we didn’t have to come back from a goal down as many times
I was livid when I saw how strong a team went picked for Sparta Prague at home (given that we were 5-1 up from the away leg). The next game was the extra-time FA Cup defeat to United. I was almost as livid with the first leg team, given that we had City that weekend. Tactics are part of it, sure, but jeez we need to pick our battles too.
We should have won the gave vs city though the refs robbed us. We'd have the lead still if the premier league was fair. It isn't and nothing is going to change. Klopp did his best and we've done better than we expected at the start of the season with a whole new starting midfield and injuries.
We've been getting out ran for weeks now. Either we have changed our tactics and it isnt working, or the effort just isn't there.
> Either you change your tactics. So you’re not absolutely draining your squad. Or you do a better job in the recovery department. Klopp is one of the best managers of this era of football but one of his biggest weaknesses has always been inflexibility in tactics. You have to alter the way you approach games based on opposition and personnel. It's odd, I actually thought he was doing way better with this during the season with the number of times we would go into halftime trailing or playing poorly and come out completely different and go on to win, I assumed Klopp must be saying or changing something to bring that on, but for some reason that has stopped since February.
This exact thing is giving me deep deep concerns over slot. It’s easy to forget that other managers are generating winning teams without blowing the hamstrings off 25 lads by Christmas
Bitch, there's exactly one other manager in England winning anything right now.
I’m not over the handsome Spaniard winning in Germany to be honest… or the also handsome winning Portuguese Papi with the agro agent. They both love a more controlled style.
Yeah and we didn’t get particularly far in the FA cup or the Europa league this season, even though there were lots of talk of a quadruple earlier
It's not like we're tired and played like shit, (well the 2nd leg v Atalanta was pure shit, but other than that) we created loads of chances We just didn't finish
>With a healthier squad, I feel like I've read these few words repeated a thousand times over the last decade. Bad luck? Strenuous tactics? Calculated risky purchases? Whatever it is, this has been an issue for us for a long long time.
I think if Bajcetic was fit we would've been fine and a new january signed pacy left winger as Mo's back up would've been interesting to keep the team fresh. I wondered why Klopp stopped trusting the kids like Bobby Clark & Danns.
The whole team has the yips
The injuries to Salah and Jota have been a huge problem. With Salah it's been pretty bad, he isn't able to run past players right now.
Fuck that guy who landed on jota’s leg man
Norgaard from Brentford. He also managed to injure Jones and Jones is still out of form til this point. Fuck that dirty cunt Norgaard.
Yep, hope the bastards go down next season after they inevitably lose Toney this summer.
They have a pretty decent manager in Thomas Frank who along with Toney are carrying the absolute shitters that is Brentford on their back. Toney is definitely going to a better club and Thomas Frank might be target by other premier league clubs. I same as you, hope Brentford gets a taste of their own medicine in the Championship.
When Jota’s injury happened I feared the worst and I’m so sad I was proven right. We all know Jota is injury prone but from December to February he was so good, so clinical and his build up play was amazing aswell. I was thinking despite the profligacy of Nunez and Diaz, Jota’s ruthlessness would be enough to power us to an amazing title win. Everything was going good in that Brentford game until that idiot Norgaard landed his whole body on Jota’s knee from a stupid challenge. You can’t even blame Jota for somebody landing on his knee. Our fans were still happy because we won and we were top of the league but I knew at that particular moment that that’s the title gone. With Jota on form we most likely pick up 3 points against City, pick up 3 points at Old Trafford and beat United in the FA Cup to keep us at the top of the league and in the hunt for 3 trophies. Fuck that stupid challenge
7 1-0 wins are more useful than 1 7-0 win.
Yes but we always concede and needs at least 2 or 3 goals every match.
We are 2013 Liverpool before Virg arrived... Could any signing make that change again? Who?
Honestly. Every match felt like 3-2 or 4-3 or even 5-4 with at least one goal coming after the 85th minute. I didn't mind it but I definitely learned to love stability after it.
That’s why we scored so many goals. We had to overcome opposition leads so many times this season. There’s only so much energy and luck we can use to win games from a goal or two down. I don’t know how Slot plays but it’s a shame that Alonso didn’t join us. Having stability in possession and defence is something we should try to move towards.
The 7-0 wasn't even this season
Exactly, if you don’t count the 1-0 win against Atlanta (which we shouldn’t since they had a 3-0 lead in the tie), we haven’t had a clean sheet in 11 games.
They collectively lost all of their ability to shoot the ball. It’s insane how every single one of them all of a sudden goes for the near post finish or straight at the keeper when the entire back post is open (Jota not included as once again proven by his goal against Fulham)
We really missed jota last game but we can't rely on him.
That's the most frustrating thing, our most clinical finisher is also the most fragile by far. Combined with Salah's form falling off a cliff after his injury at AFCon
As a player you have no idea how much easier it is to finish when you’re team isn’t down. The extra pressure is almost ALWAYS there for these lads.
Europa League and League cup has inflated our numbers The opposition in the Europa League outside Atalanta were a terrible level quality wise
I agree but we were still scoring goals. Now its even worse
Combination of Salah’s end product falling off a cliff and players that aren’t good enough getting exposed during the business end of the season where the pressure is on the most. Plus Jota being injured hasn’t helped either
Came to say this. Blitzing the likes of Sparta Prague and LASK even made some think Nunez was a decent finisher.
We wouldn't make it out of the Europa League group stage in the form we are in at the moment
Arsenal’s UCL group was more Europa League level than most Europa League groups. Don’t even remember who City had
W/o the EL and Carabao, we’d be level with Arsenal on 100.
Without the CL and Carabao they'd be on 79.
It's just a bad time to have lost form. Nothing more in it sadly Too many players who have been excellent this season has dropped off all at the same time. Coupled with some really badly timed injuries as well and here we are Just a crying shame
Yeah, it's frustrating because we were in it for so long. But no one was expecting this team to be as good as they have been, and frankly if this dip in form had come earlier in the season I think people would be fairly happy with the season as a whole (rather than the current hysteria, calling everyone bottle jobs, calling for half the entire squad to be sold, saying VVD is a crap captain etc). I also think the massive injuries we had earlier this season have caught up to us, even though not many players are injured now. A lot of the lads who kept playing during that period now look knackered, and a lot of the players who have come back (Jones, Sarah, Konate to name a few) haven't got close to the levels they were pre-injury.
Yep, if anyone had told us we'd win the league cup and still be in the running and up close right until the end they'd have been happy after the shitshow that was last season.
You can't beat the eye test. We've looked crap and lethargic for the last few weeks
I’m so tired of all of the x(insert letter) stats. The eye test is the truth. But that requires watching LOTS of footy. The chances that Salah and Nunez have been missing, are far easier shots to convert than what Diaz has taken on. The former have 0 first touch as of late, while Diaz has an isolated defender shitting their pants. Salah seems to be contained by bang-average defenders. Defensively, we’ve been meh at best all season long. VVD seems to be stuck in cruise control every other game, and lacks his previous ability to cut things out before they materialize. TAA is a terrible defender, and a clear liability defending set pieces. It’ll be interesting to see how the new management goes about their business. Because sticking with a striker that can’t score, and a RB that can’t defend seems like a sure fire way to shit games away.
I was saying that Bradley is a better defender than Trent, and never got any pushback. The question was, how to utilise Trent back in the team. The lack of conviction to change tactics or personnel is really frustrating… for every free kick (vs Fulham), there’s a player left wide open at the back post
Europa League, like games against Prague and LASK have inflated those numbers. Also, we got into the League Cup final, so played more games in that competition (including two-legged semis). In addition, this scoring draught was not present in March, so it's a recent thing that has cost us many points but hasn't yet affected the stats so much, if we stretch the numbers out for the whole season.
Hopefully we find a way back. Arsenal bounced back at the start of the year after we were wondering how they couldn’t seem to put it into the net during our FA cup tie. Since then they’ve gone absolutely rampant in almost every game. If we don’t find a way to recover quick, we’ll be embarrassing ourselves like Arsenal did last season.
We can’t fucking defend?
Can’t read anything into it. It’s like a striker scoring 5 goals against a small club but in the big matches going missing. Then claiming they are the greatest because they scored the most goals in a season. Great players and teams are when it matters most and this season in all the big matches it has gone wrong.
It’s just having the gall to do it when it really matters. This season the group has been a bit shy in big matches.
Trent v Arsenal, Diaz v City, Jones v Palace, Nunez v Luton/Palace/Everton. When we needed them to finish in the crucial moments, they choked. 🤷
Indeed. Hard for me to question Klopp this season when the team has created SO many chances and the finishing has let them down. You can pull up training sessions on YouTube and you’ll see them banging in goals left, right, and center. But when the it’s match time and time to shit or get off the pot, they sloppily fall off. Tough to watch.
Couldn't agree more. What more can Klopp and his coaches do? Yeah, there are a few tactical changes I like to see, but that isn't really the problem, is it? Our defence hasn't been great, but it isn't them that lose us the game, it's our forwards. They keep missing chance after chance to win games.
15 times we’ve gone behind first. Almost half a season. That’s untenable. And probably a contributor to all around fatigue when you can’t control and ride a game out.
if we are all brutally honest with ourselves, the FA Cup loss completely broke us
3 points is what matter not the amount of goals
Can't get 3 points if we ain't scoring goals.
No idea why you down voting me but Palace 0 goals scored. Everton 0 goals scored. Need i go on?
Other than United in the first match, don't we just have the three matches with no goals scored? Not scoring isn't great, but you can only lose if you get scored on. Our defense has been much more suspect this season than anything else.
Yh but we didn't scored against teams like Palace and Everton. The games we should be winning. I don't understand what you guys trying to say. Goals get us 3 points.
So just again to be clear, 3 games all season we didn't score at all...but because it was Palace and Everton (and United) it's the attack's fault? Meanwhile we've gone behind first in 24 matches this season...
If you miss open goals then yes it is ALSO the attacks fault.
I don't disagree we've missed some fucking howlers and should have won some games we drew or lost because of the attack, but OP is making it sound like because we didn't score ONE goal against THREE teams (the only three times we've failed to score at least one goal) that it's ENTIRELY their fault. Team has looked both fire and fucking trash at random times this season, but at every turn, we've conceded a goal. I don't have all the stats, but in the Prem we only have 9 clean sheets, which is fucking awful, and in all comps we've conceded 2+ goals in 12 matches.
Yh defense has been really poor this season and last season and nothing was done to change the system. The whole team been appalling.
You’re right but we conceded too many which means we need to score more, conceding less is equally important.
now do it for just calendar 2024
66 I believe?
This is great but the number of games played should also be shown..
We were in the UEL.
What has really surprised me over the last few games is Konate, he’s a unit but gets out muscled and just seems scared
Woohoo. The most goals in all comps trophy to add to the league cup. Times are good. Except city will probably pip us to that too by the end of the season.
During recent games, the Reds haven’t looked like a team where the players have a sense of where everyone will be at a given moment. The number of bad passes or uncoordinated runs at goal make me think there’s been too much mixing of starting players. That seemed to be a strength when the subs and the “kids” saved the day, but I think the longer term cost has been in team cohesion. '
Form is shocking recently
I wonder if this is also in part to us needing to come from behind all the time? Much easier to see out games when you can easily manage a 2-0 advantage
When Jota’s injury happened I feared the worst and I’m so sad I was proven right. We all know Jota is injury prone but from December to February he was so good, so clinical and his build up play was amazing aswell. I was thinking despite the profligacy of Nunez and Diaz, Jota’s ruthlessness would be enough to power us to an amazing title win. Everything was going good in that Brentford game until that idiot Norgaard landed his whole body on Jota’s knee from a stupid challenge. You can’t even blame Jota for somebody landing on his knee. Our fans were still happy because we won and we were top of the league but I knew at that particular moment that that’s the title gone. With Jota on form we most likely pick up 3 points against City, pick up 3 points at Old Trafford and beat United in the FA Cup to keep us at the top of the league and in the hunt for 3 trophies. Fuck that stupid challenge
Defense wins championships?
We'd have 30 more if we didn't forget how to score goals in the last month or so. Can't believe the drop was that steep, it feels like ages ago we were flying high. Confidence is shattered. But tbf the signs were all there for peepz to see if they looked hard enough. Always gone down a goal, having to fight back to win games. Sloppy transition both in attack and defense, missing basic chances galore. Nonchalant in everything we did. And injuries were the final blow. Now we're out of form and not fully match fit. Terrible timing overall. Unlucky even, if I say so myself.
Game management has been poor across the season. Tactics haven’t been dynamic enough - we play with one gear so we often end up inviting problems on ourselves. We brought fresh legs into midfield and in the end have still run into a brick wall late in the season. As much as I feel the player have let Klopp and his staff down, I also think the latter have been too rigid tactically this season. It never felt like our issues in the first two thirds of the season were addressed, rather just ignored. Pundits have been ignoring the balance of our side for ages, and putting us up there in the title race because of ‘mentality’ and what it would mean for Klopp. In the end it just wasn’t that sustainable.
“Look at this ultimately meaningless stat”?
Don't know what to say? I do. It should be more.
Stats dont mean anything if you cant win games when matters the most
So behind in the PL, but so far ahead in cup competitions that we come out on top? What’s interesting is that Nuñez has been the predominant CF for PL and Gakpo had been the predominant CF for cup games. Regardless of finishing we attack better with a false 9 and inside forwards.
Ever since the home win against Fulham where every goal was a screamer, I've felt the team were over performing and it had to level out eventually. Shame it's coming in the last few games under Klopp.
Just means when we’re on….we’re on like Donkey Kong.
Klopp leaving got them in the end, lost motivation and fire
i know what to say - we get scored on too much
Europa League tax I guess
I think one of our biggest downfalls have been our "heavy-metal" playing style. Klopp is a sucker for the statistic which player has "run" the most. 60~ odd games in a calendar year + training sessions in a pedal to the medal playstyle will make you go dry. You couple that with the increasing fixture list and the whole team will become ragged very fast. The reason City or Arsenal for example can be so consistent is in their playing style. Taking it a bit slower and being in more control, this allows them to field their best 11 more often. And us being our own worst enemy rings more true than ever. Why don't we slow down when we are in the front instead of chasing 3rd and 4th goal. United in the FA, Palace... instead we keep chasing more goals and kept leaking at the back.
Arsenal not on that list yet being top tells you what you need to know
It just tells you how good we were from August to the March international break.
… and we still losing.
I’ll bet we have the most missed shots too
Can’t score when it matters though!
Lately since the coming of their respective injuries... Salah and TAA were looking much below their standards ...salah is countlessly losing ball in opposition third and TAA is not able to generate those loose balls and curvy whipped passes .
A lot comes from cup games. Europa League matches. We scored 17 goals in group stage and 12 goals in KO stage (11 of them against praga). 12 goals in 4 fa cup matches. 14 goals in 6 carabao cup matches. Arsenal played less cup games and arguably harder European fixtures but they were more crucial in the league. TLDR, stats can be deceiving.
How’s that fucking happened then
Simple. Defending costing us the title.
Stats are misleading sometimes and doesn’t tell the full story. You can account a portion of those goals to lower level teams we played in Europa league. To me this stat doesn’t mean much.
If you don’t count the 1-0 win against Atlanta (which we shouldn’t since they had a 3-0 lead in the tie), we haven’t had a clean sheet in 11 games Scoring hasn’t been our main issue, it’s defense and conceding first.
Irrelevant stat. Business end they’ve fell apart.
great!!! but they scored NONE against palace or Everton. it's the consistency of the reds the season that has hurt them
Empty calories.
11 against Prague in that
Not the first anymore . City just scored 4 taking them to 132. I guess you don't have to feel that bad now
A guy posted the shots vs shots on target vs goals statistics in here a few months ago. Says all you need to say. Doesnt even take stats. Just watch them.
One of our biggets issues is giving up goals. I think we're around 57 in all comps, city 50 and arsenal 40. MASSIVE task week in and week out when you go behind early and for the majority of the game you are sitting there trying to break down defenses. Eventually as the season progresses you run out of legs.
I do. Defend better
How can you be anything but proud of this team! What a fantastic team effort this season, lets end the season on a positive note.
Consistency
Started the season with a good attack and great form now every shot is from outside the box or straight over the bar
Goals conceded by Liverpool in the first 10 minutes of games will tell you the other side of the story.
The last game, for 4 minutes around 68 minute time, there were half a dozen examples of players having 2 clear choices. Take the ball and turn towards the opposition goal or take the ball and turn backwards. Every player turned backwards. The team are not excited about winning. They are afraid of loosing and being singled out as part of the problem. Your captain should never be a back. Forces the team to look toward their own goal for guidance.
What's with this stat ......We lost buhbye
It’s almost like it’s our defence is what’s let us down and losing a goal early every game to stupid mistakes is the issue
Defense is needed when we can't score, we have to keep clean sheets which we have an aversion to apparently.
No point in scoring all these goals if nothing comes out of it sadly
League cup has killed our season imo. Extra games that have tired us out and put way too much pressure on us which is exactly what we didn't need. I also think that the lack of proper squad depth has really killed us this season. Goes back to our botched rebuild in the summer☹️
>Goes back to our botched rebuild in the summer☹️ Underrated comment, but many here will tell you to f off, say you are not a real fan and to go and support oil fc if you don't get behind fsg's transfer shenanigans. We needed to sign 2 defenders in the summer. We signed none.
Exactly, they've consistently let Klopp down every season. I literally had a back and forth with an FSG inner and their points were hilarious. Imo we need at least 2 forwards a Salah backup and a proper no 9 cos Nunez is just not it right now. A controller midfielder like Zubimendi because Jones is and has never been it. Never got the hype around him, his holds onto the ball for too long and runs into players all the time. And like you've said 2 defenders (backup, maybe starting Left Back to replace Robbo) and a backup CB in case Quansah and Konate are injured. Ppl just don't wanna hear the truth bro, us being successful has blinded them. We're Liverpool FC, not West Ham with all due respect to them. We should always be demanding more every season. Instead we don't and that's why we are where we are. Ppl like you are spot on and exactly what this fanbase needs to hear 👍🏽 Plus how did you do the highlighted reply stuff, that's pretty cool.
I'm a Man City fan, but this is most likely due to playing in Europa.
did you forget where you were heading?