Liverpool FC Forum

[red_guy]

We defend in much the same way as most other top teams you could name.
Why is it when we concede from a corner its the zonal part that gets the blame instead of the man to man?
We dont play a complete zonal system,infact we defend much the same way as we used to in Hansens days, man to man on the biggest threats and zonal elsewhere.
No one ever mentions that we lack height and players who are strong in the air, but then why would that have anything to do with it.

I just wish we put men on the posts, Adebayour would not of scored (imo) if we played with a man on the post.

yeah mate, men on the posts is zonal defending too.

Yup, many team uses zonal marking but we're the most popular ones because we conceded loads of goals on set pieces. It's just that the media/football pundits need a scapegoat for our misfortunes and blame rafa for using the zonal marking...well i don't agree with that unless rafa are at fault of getting us mediocre players , odd decisions etc. Zonal or man mark, both have pros and cons. But what bothers me though where's the alertness, positioning, logic etc of our defence esp. the CB's? against City..we were awful and at the same time we're lucky because City's not that good either.

[heimdall]

Reina is a fantastic keeper in many many ways but he is not a natural shot stopper in my opinion.

Thats complete sh!te and I dont think you`ll find anyone who will agree with that. Anyone who has seen him play will know that that is probably his main strengh along with distribution.
How is it he became known as a pen stopper if he isnt a natual shot stopper?
How can you think he is a "fantastic" keeper if he isnt a quality shot stopper?
You say he is a fantastic keeper in many many ways, ok list these many many ways.
I wish you would read your posts through before you hit send.

OK OK chill. By shot stopper I'm referring to saves made in a one-on-one situation, instinctive reflex saves. I don't think reina is particularly good at them compared to say Schmeical, James, Cech etc.
What Reina is very good at is dealing with crosses, positioning and saves from distance.
I have now read my post several times and I feel happy with it. 

[heimdall]

Corner kick + Shkrtel = conceding a goal. Shkrtel is an OK defender.He could block and tackle but the crosses are his problems as I can see.But in order to make a good defense we need a Vidic or a Puyol type of defender, which is imposible at the moment.Kyrgiakos is an OK defender too.As long as he sits on the bench we'll be fine.Charager is getting a bit old and Agger is getting injured too often.But at the end I actully dont see why do we suck that much in defense.The players may do alot of mistakes but they cant suck this much in defense.They're not really that bad but the defence is still critical.

It's only really set pieces that we suck at and this is because of zonal marking and the fact that our players clearly aren't comfortable with it combined with having  manager who is too stubborn to change his mind.

We defend in much the same way as most other top teams you could name.
Why is it when we concede from a corner its the zonal part that gets the blame instead of the man to man?
We dont play a complete zonal system,infact we defend much the same way as we used to in Hansens days, man to man on the biggest threats and zonal elsewhere.
No one ever mentions that we lack height and players who are strong in the air, but then why would that have anything to do with it.

I'm sorry but that is complete and utter 100% grade a in so many ways. Firstly in what way do our defenders lack height, Skittles, Carra and Agger are all big lads aren't they and Insua is no dwarf either, plus Stevie and Nando are tall enough. In fact the only smallish players we have are Mascha and Benni.
Secondly if we defend corners in the same way as other teams then what the F is going on, why are we so terrible at them, who's fault is it?
For my money we do not do man-on-man in corners we do zonal and it quite simply doesn't work and every oppo player knows it. FFS all Adebayor had to do was take two steps back to get out of his "zone" and there was no one challenging him because no one was sure who's "zone" he had gone into.

[heimdall]

The solution is we need a new manager simple as that.You can see these lads are in desperate need of inspiration, a new challenge, its like the life has been drained from them lately. We can do better with what we have but just need a new angle and a fresh eye on things and thats no disrespect to Benitez who has given us some good times and had a real go at it. Whats happening on the field of late is just not good enough for this club and we have to move on now.

right...yeah, it doesn't matter that our first choice RB Glenn Johnson, our first choice striker Fernando Torres, our first chice LW Albert Reira are out injured or still recovering from injury and that within first 15 mins of the game our first choice CB Agger, and our back up LW Ryan Babel got themselves injured and had to be replaced with our back up CB the Greek and not fully fit Yossi Benayoun, now does it?

And how many players were chelsea missing yesterday then, didn't seem to affect them in the slightest, doesn't ever seem to affect the other teams so much, and why is it we only have one quality RB and one quality striker, who's fault is that after 5 years??

[milou]

Reina is a fantastic keeper in many many ways but he is not a natural shot stopper in my opinion.

Thats complete sh!te and I dont think you`ll find anyone who will agree with that. Anyone who has seen him play will know that that is probably his main strengh along with distribution.
How is it he became known as a pen stopper if he isnt a natual shot stopper?
How can you think he is a "fantastic" keeper if he isnt a quality shot stopper?
You say he is a fantastic keeper in many many ways, ok list these many many ways.
I wish you would read your posts through before you hit send.

OK OK chill. By shot stopper I'm referring to saves made in a one-on-one situation, instinctive reflex saves. I don't think reina is particularly good at them compared to say Schmeical, James, Cech etc.
What Reina is very good at is dealing with crosses, positioning and saves from distance.
I have now read my post several times and I feel happy with it. 

i actually agree with you

Although exceptional in stopping penalties, Reina's shot-stopping in open-play is nothing to shout about really. Too often he concedes when he is "supposed" to concede.. just like our 2 goals conceded yesterday. Does anyone think he could have done better with Adebayor's goal yesterday? The cross was behind Adebayor so the header could not have been that powerful.

However, Reina is not to be blamed for our overall current defensive problems. He is indeed a top keeper very few mistakes.

[The_Rock]

Forget the pros and cons of zonal marking.....

The most important thing is that it ain't working for us rite now. The players don't feel comfortable with it..... SO why don't we just go back to man-marking until we fix this problem in the post-season ?

It seems such an easy and lazy excuse to keep insisting on using this zonal marking....it begs disbelief.

[Bad Bob]

Corner kick + Shkrtel = conceding a goal. Shkrtel is an OK defender.He could block and tackle but the crosses are his problems as I can see.But in order to make a good defense we need a Vidic or a Puyol type of defender, which is imposible at the moment.Kyrgiakos is an OK defender too.As long as he sits on the bench we'll be fine.Charager is getting a bit old and Agger is getting injured too often.But at the end I actully dont see why do we suck that much in defense.The players may do alot of mistakes but they cant suck this much in defense.They're not really that bad but the defence is still critical.

It's only really set pieces that we suck at and this is because of zonal marking and the fact that our players clearly aren't comfortable with it combined with having  manager who is too stubborn to change his mind.

We defend in much the same way as most other top teams you could name.
Why is it when we concede from a corner its the zonal part that gets the blame instead of the man to man?
We dont play a complete zonal system,infact we defend much the same way as we used to in Hansens days, man to man on the biggest threats and zonal elsewhere.
No one ever mentions that we lack height and players who are strong in the air, but then why would that have anything to do with it.

I'm sorry but that is complete and utter 100% grade a in so many ways. Firstly in what way do our defenders lack height, Skittles, Carra and Agger are all big lads aren't they and Insua is no dwarf either, plus Stevie and Nando are tall enough. In fact the only smallish players we have are Mascha and Benni.
Secondly if we defend corners in the same way as other teams then what the F is going on, why are we so terrible at them, who's fault is it?
For my money we do not do man-on-man in corners we do zonal and it quite simply doesn't work and every oppo player knows it. FFS all Adebayor had to do was take two steps back to get out of his "zone" and there was no one challenging him because no one was sure who's "zone" he had gone into.

Couple of points...

1) Insua is one of the shortest defenders in the league.  FACT.

2) Adebayor did not step out of Skrtel's zone and the Slovak should have stayed with him but instead got caught ball watching again.  Bad individual defending and not a fair reflection of the system.

[JC_81]

Heimdall chatting absolute garbage as usual

'Insua not the shortest'

Insua, at 5'4'' is THE shortest player in the premier league... fact.

The defensive problems are not easily solved, there are several reasons I feel we are leaking goals.

1)  Lucas is criticised for not offering as much as Alonso in an attacking sense, but the truth is he doesn't offer as much defensively either.  Alonso's positioning and tackling were also better than the Brazilian's and he along with Mascherano shielded the back four superbly.  We haven't had that solidity, nor the control of the midfield this season and teams can get at us through the middle more easily.

2)  Carragher's form has been dipping for a few seasons and continues to deteriorate.  He is as slow as ever now and especially on the turn.  He can't get close enough to strikers to get his blocks in, which was one of his best attributes as a defender.  The United game apart, he has been horrendous this season.

3)  Aurelio was excellent at left back last season and had his best run of fitness.  Insua is not up to scratch.  He is painfully slow and the rest of his game is not good enough to compensate for this.  Good effort, good play at times, but overall not good enough imo.  SWP and Valencia both destroyed Insua, so will any other good winger with pace.

4)  Skrtel is not good enough.  Simple as.  He ball watches too much and losing Adebayor for the goal yesterday is the latest example.

5)  Agger can't stay fit.  To be honest I'd consider selling him, the guy is a good footballer but has an injury record similar to Kewell.  His constant injuries are a problem because we never have a settled centre back pairing.  Chopping and changing the centre backs is another reason why we are suffering.

6)  Kyrgiakos, when he plays, is awful.  He is nowhere near Hyypia's standard in terms of back up centre half.  Buying him was a mistake.

7)  Johnson has been excellent going forward and a good buy, but his marauding runs leave us exposed.  Can we afford to have a full back that bombs forward so much when the rest of our back four is so lacking in pace?  The balance is just not right, but I'd rather change other aspects of the back four to accomodate a player like Johnson rather than get rid of him or tell him not to go forward.

8)  Set piece defending.  Sure we are lacking in good headers of a ball in the team, but clearly even taking that into account we shouldn't have conceded 12 goals already from set pieces this season... more than Portsmouth.  Zonal marking has worked in the past for us, the stats prove it, but it certainly isn't working now.  The players have lost confidence in it, you can see how nervous they are defending set plays, this wouldn't be the case if they were comfortable with it.

I think zonal defending works best if you have good headers of the ball who can attack it and clear it.  No coincidence it worked better for us when we had players like Crouch, Hyypia, Riise and Sissoko defending - all big lads who would attack the ball.  Even Alonso and Finnan weren't bad at it either.

Given our playing staff I think man marking would work better - at least if we can't get a head on it we can put the opposing player off enough that he can't get clean contact.

[milou]

Forget the pros and cons of zonal marking.....

The most important thing is that it ain't working for us rite now. The players don't feel comfortable with it..... SO why don't we just go back to man-marking until we fix this problem in the post-season ?

It seems such an easy and lazy excuse to keep insisting on using this zonal marking....it begs disbelief.

Unfortunately, I think it is not as simple as that.

If you have always been a double-backhander in Tennis (a very good one at that), you simply can't and won't change overnight to be a single-backhander.. certainly not with all the training & philosophies behind.

We have been so solid defensively (conceding 0.7/game for the past 4 to 5 seasons compared to 1.5/game so far this season).. I seriously doubt the severity of the shortcomings of zonal markings prior to this year. It certainly look VERY bad now but I reckon it is more down to changed circumstances (ie, loss of Alonso's defensive positioning, a very off-form skytel, the greek chap, a perpetually injured agger, our defensively weaker fullbacks, etc) rather than the effectiveness of zonal marking itself.

That said, it will take some serious thinking and effort to correct what has gone horribly wrong so far

[milou]

Finding faults aside.. How would we plug the gaps if you were the manager?

Let's play some championship manager, shall we?

What would you do now (starting from the next match) after looking at the long list of injured players?
What would you do in the transfer market in January? You can assume you will have little to no transfer kit so you HAVE TO sell before buying...

[The_Rock]

Unfortunately, I think it is not as simple as that.

If you have always been a double-backhander in Tennis (a very good one at that), you simply can't and won't change overnight to be a single-backhander.. certainly not with all the training & philosophies behind.

We have been so solid defensively (conceding 0.7/game for the past 4 to 5 seasons compared to 1.5/game so far this season).. I seriously doubt the severity of the shortcomings of zonal markings prior to this year. It certainly look VERY bad now but I reckon it is more down to changed circumstances (ie, loss of Alonso's defensive positioning, a very off-form skytel, the greek chap, a perpetually injured agger, our defensively weaker fullbacks, etc) rather than the effectiveness of zonal marking itself.

That said, it will take some serious thinking and effort to correct what has gone horribly wrong so far

Actually it is a lot simpler than that.

why ?.....instead of marking spaces and not attacking the ball....the players will be marking opposition players while not attacking the ball. 

So we will still concede goals as long as we don't attack the ball.....but i guess we will concede less as we are gonna make it that much harder for the players to score when we man-mark them.

And i don't think the defensive unit has played together for that long for the saying "can't teach a old dog new tricks" to apply to them. Insua is a newcomer....Skertel is a newcomer. Agger is a newcomer every season  .

As for being defensively solid....well we did have
1)Finnan who was a pretty good defender 1st and foremost. Then followed by arbeloa who was exactly like finnan only about 10% worse than him in every aspect. (which means although he wasn't as good as finnan....he was still a very good rightback)

2)Hyppia....the most dominant aerial defender we ever had in the last 15 yrs.

3)Riise was pretty good too...he started out like johnson by being a good attacker than a defender...but he did improve his defensive game in the following seasons. In fact....his defensive headers were one of his strong points. (none of our leftbacks can head the ball as good as riise)

4)Carra was in his prime during those seasons.

Each of these players brought something to the plate which enabled them to gel as a good defensive unit. Now compare them with the defenders we have now.

To summarise to play zonal...we need the defenders to be on the same wave-length. We keep chopping and changing our backline almost every game (for various reasons). So i guess we have to go back to basics....then re-approach zonal marking when we do get players suitable for that system.

[REDTILLDEAD]

The solution is we need a new manager simple as that.You can see these lads are in desperate need of inspiration, a new challenge, its like the life has been drained from them lately. We can do better with what we have but just need a new angle and a fresh eye on things and thats no disrespect to Benitez who has given us some good times and had a real go at it. Whats happening on the field of late is just not good enough for this club and we have to move on now.

right...yeah, it doesn't matter that our first choice RB Glenn Johnson, our first choice striker Fernando Torres, our first chice LW Albert Reira are out injured or still recovering from injury and that within first 15 mins of the game our first choice CB Agger, and our back up LW Ryan Babel got themselves injured and had to be replaced with our back up CB the Greek and not fully fit Yossi Benayoun, now does it?

Stop making up poor excuses Reira is rubbish, Babel is a joke, Johnson is good at getting forward...but gets caught out defensivley Agger will always be prone to back trouble....sorry but none of these players are good enough for LFC...get shut of Rafa...and some of the sh1t he has bought, and move on.

[LFC2007]

Heimdall chatting absolute garbage as usual

'Insua not the shortest'

Insua, at 5'4'' is THE shortest player in the premier league... fact.

The defensive problems are not easily solved, there are several reasons I feel we are leaking goals.

1)  Lucas is criticised for not offering as much as Alonso in an attacking sense, but the truth is he doesn't offer as much defensively either.  Alonso's positioning and tackling were also better than the Brazilian's and he along with Mascherano shielded the back four superbly.  We haven't had that solidity, nor the control of the midfield this season and teams can get at us through the middle more easily.

2)  Carragher's form has been dipping for a few seasons and continues to deteriorate.  He is as slow as ever now and especially on the turn.  He can't get close enough to strikers to get his blocks in, which was one of his best attributes as a defender.  The United game apart, he has been horrendous this season.

3)  Aurelio was excellent at left back last season and had his best run of fitness.  Insua is not up to scratch.  He is painfully slow and the rest of his game is not good enough to compensate for this.  Good effort, good play at times, but overall not good enough imo.  SWP and Valencia both destroyed Insua, so will any other good winger with pace.

4)  Skrtel is not good enough.  Simple as.  He ball watches too much and losing Adebayor for the goal yesterday is the latest example.

5)  Agger can't stay fit.  To be honest I'd consider selling him, the guy is a good footballer but has an injury record similar to Kewell.  His constant injuries are a problem because we never have a settled centre back pairing.  Chopping and changing the centre backs is another reason why we are suffering.

6)  Kyrgiakos, when he plays, is awful.  He is nowhere near Hyypia's standard in terms of back up centre half.  Buying him was a mistake.

7)  Johnson has been excellent going forward and a good buy, but his marauding runs leave us exposed.  Can we afford to have a full back that bombs forward so much when the rest of our back four is so lacking in pace?  The balance is just not right, but I'd rather change other aspects of the back four to accomodate a player like Johnson rather than get rid of him or tell him not to go forward.

8)  Set piece defending.  Sure we are lacking in good headers of a ball in the team, but clearly even taking that into account we shouldn't have conceded 12 goals already from set pieces this season... more than Portsmouth.  Zonal marking has worked in the past for us, the stats prove it, but it certainly isn't working now.  The players have lost confidence in it, you can see how nervous they are defending set plays, this wouldn't be the case if they were comfortable with it.

I think zonal defending works best if you have good headers of the ball who can attack it and clear it.  No coincidence it worked better for us when we had players like Crouch, Hyypia, Riise and Sissoko defending - all big lads who would attack the ball.  Even Alonso and Finnan weren't bad at it either.

Given our playing staff I think man marking would work better - at least if we can't get a head on it we can put the opposing player off enough that he can't get clean contact.

More or less spot on, IMO. And Heimdall 

Regarding zonal marking: The coaches and manager obviously haven't been able to drill the players well enough into knowing how to operate ths system. We just seem so flat-footed and inflexible when the players should really be on their toes and taking command of the area. Under these circumstances, it might not be a bad idea to change it to a man-marking system (with one on either post) to simplify the task and to provide a greater degree of accountability. That's not an indictment of the zonal system (it's worked well in the past, at Liverpool and elsewhere), it's an indictment of our sheer inability to make the thing work.

[maguskwt]

The solution is we need a new manager simple as that.You can see these lads are in desperate need of inspiration, a new challenge, its like the life has been drained from them lately. We can do better with what we have but just need a new angle and a fresh eye on things and thats no disrespect to Benitez who has given us some good times and had a real go at it. Whats happening on the field of late is just not good enough for this club and we have to move on now.

right...yeah, it doesn't matter that our first choice RB Glenn Johnson, our first choice striker Fernando Torres, our first chice LW Albert Reira are out injured or still recovering from injury and that within first 15 mins of the game our first choice CB Agger, and our back up LW Ryan Babel got themselves injured and had to be replaced with our back up CB the Greek and not fully fit Yossi Benayoun, now does it?

Stop making up poor excuses Reira is rubbish, Babel is a joke, Johnson is good at getting forward...but gets caught out defensivley Agger will always be prone to back trouble....sorry but none of these players are good enough for LFC...get shut of Rafa...and some of the sh1t he has bought, and move on.

you carry on... 

[REDTILLDEAD]

The solution is we need a new manager simple as that.You can see these lads are in desperate need of inspiration, a new challenge, its like the life has been drained from them lately. We can do better with what we have but just need a new angle and a fresh eye on things and thats no disrespect to Benitez who has given us some good times and had a real go at it. Whats happening on the field of late is just not good enough for this club and we have to move on now.

right...yeah, it doesn't matter that our first choice RB Glenn Johnson, our first choice striker Fernando Torres, our first chice LW Albert Reira are out injured or still recovering from injury and that within first 15 mins of the game our first choice CB Agger, and our back up LW Ryan Babel got themselves injured and had to be replaced with our back up CB the Greek and not fully fit Yossi Benayoun, now does it?

Stop making up poor excuses Reira is rubbish, Babel is a joke, Johnson is good at getting forward...but gets caught out defensivley Agger will always be prone to back trouble....sorry but none of these players are good enough for LFC...get shut of Rafa...and some of the sh1t he has bought, and move on.

you carry on... 

As long as Rafa dosen't......and take Kuyt with you Rafa