Liverpool FC Forum

[Sabre]

In a penalty shootout, would you rather be at home or away?

It's difficult to imagine the pressure of taking a penalty on front of 45000 fans, but I'd pick home always! I can't imagine a reason to preffer away.

In fact, when you have finals and the goal is decided, normally the captain that chooses always selects the end in which there are placed his fans.

[Owzat]

for some reason I feel that that 2nd slot has the least amount of pressure of the first 5, if such a thing exists. The interesting thing is the later somebody takes the penalty the more pressure on them, but the latter you schedule someone to take, the less chance they will even get a chance to shoot.  I would put my best taker 3rd, 2nd best taker in the 4 slot and 3rd best taker in the 1 slot.

The earliest you can lose is the third set of penalties, you definitely don't want to be one behind with two left, so I'd put my (as much as they can be) home bankers towards the top of the list. Last thing you really want is a willing volunteer who rarely scores taking one and missing early on. Whether going first or second, the first to miss puts pressure on the keeper and subsequent takers. While you may want takers who can hold their nerve down the order, you need to score the early ones too. No point having Gerrard last to take one for a pressure situation if one doesn't materialise. So probs Gerrard, Alonso, Torres, Aurelio and A.N.Other. Every pen scored takes the pressure off the next taker.

Watched the citeh shootout last night, the Danes kept putting their pens to the keeper's right so Given was guessing right most of the time (excuse the pun) One (Evans?) took a long run up, I thought he'd miss but I did guess which way he'd shoot.

I would practise them though, if you watch the takers (even from the TV camera angle) you can sometimes tell which way they are going to go. Last thing you want is a taker who is so nervous they give away where they are going to put it, and if too conscious of what they're doing that can make them miscue/scuff/balloon. Practise 10 each the day or daytime before the 2nd leg, rate them on various factor including power, cleanness of strike and accuracy ie proximity to area aimed at. There may not be any pressure, but if they can't take them well in a non-pressure situation then what hope of taking them well under pressure? Besides, the confidence of taking won't do any of them any harm. Go into a shootout having scored 8 out of 10 in practice and you'll be more confident than not having practised, or having missed lots in practice. And it gives the keeper a chance to practise his reactions, reading the takers' body language and allow analysis from the keeping coach

[Toffeehater]

1. Alonso - Safe as houses hammers it into the top left corner
2. Benayoun - Class finish into the top right
3. Kuyt - Slips over scuffing the ball which dribble into the bottom right as the keeper dives wrong way
4. Gerrard - cool finish into top right, keeper no chance
5. Aurelio - Hammers it into the bottom left

do you have next week's winning numbers have well 

[LegBarnes]

carra is top pen taker he would be in my top 5 drop riera out but apart from that keep the same.

[Madmax]

i would have

Hyppia
carragher
lucas
ngog
plesis

[JoeTerp]

for some reason I feel that that 2nd slot has the least amount of pressure of the first 5, if such a thing exists. The interesting thing is the later somebody takes the penalty the more pressure on them, but the latter you schedule someone to take, the less chance they will even get a chance to shoot.  I would put my best taker 3rd, 2nd best taker in the 4 slot and 3rd best taker in the 1 slot.

The earliest you can lose is the third set of penalties, you definitely don't want to be one behind with two left, so I'd put my (as much as they can be) home bankers towards the top of the list. Last thing you really want is a willing volunteer who rarely scores taking one and missing early on. Whether going first or second, the first to miss puts pressure on the keeper and subsequent takers. While you may want takers who can hold their nerve down the order, you need to score the early ones too. No point having Gerrard last to take one for a pressure situation if one doesn't materialise. So probs Gerrard, Alonso, Torres, Aurelio and A.N.Other. Every pen scored takes the pressure off the next taker.

Watched the citeh shootout last night, the Danes kept putting their pens to the keeper's right so Given was guessing right most of the time (excuse the pun) One (Evans?) took a long run up, I thought he'd miss but I did guess which way he'd shoot.

I would practise them though, if you watch the takers (even from the TV camera angle) you can sometimes tell which way they are going to go. Last thing you want is a taker who is so nervous they give away where they are going to put it, and if too conscious of what they're doing that can make them miscue/scuff/balloon. Practise 10 each the day or daytime before the 2nd leg, rate them on various factor including power, cleanness of strike and accuracy ie proximity to area aimed at. There may not be any pressure, but if they can't take them well in a non-pressure situation then what hope of taking them well under pressure? Besides, the confidence of taking won't do any of them any harm. Go into a shootout having scored 8 out of 10 in practice and you'll be more confident than not having practised, or having missed lots in practice. And it gives the keeper a chance to practise his reactions, reading the takers' body language and allow analysis from the keeping coach

Is there a factor of the keeper getting better at his timing the more he sees? I know everyone's approach is a little different, but in some ways they are almost all very similar, and I could imagine that a goal keeper could improve on his ability to read where it was going the more shots he saw in a short period of time, as well as improving his timing so that he dove as early as possible without giving the shooter time to react and send the ball the opposite direction. If this were true, then my 3, 4, 1, 2, 5 order might make sense.


And to Sabre's point I guess it depends on how distracting you think fans can be. To some athlete's it can make them focus better because it gets their adrenaline pumping and you put a lot of energy in zoning out the crowd. Also I think your home crowd adds to the pressure, because you might already feel that you blew it, having the slight advantage of a 2nd leg at home and extra time at home. The away team might feel like they are playing with house money, and thus feel more lose when taking the penalties.