Liverpool FC Forum

shawnk wrote:Owzat, I suggest you dont waste your time to come out with stats as some people dont really look at it for decision making.

Festy wrote:

Lando_Griffin wrote:I believe that the performance, whilst far from pretty, has finally dispelled the myth that Rafa has lost the players.

Because the one thing we weren't lacking was determination.

Most pathetic post of the season by far. 

JoeTerp wrote:Skrtel looked like he was about to make a mistake any second, but Kyrgiakos looked very useful and should probably play against all the other Stoke like teams this year, especially on the road.  For 97% of the game the defense played great and handled the pressure well.  We did not do a good job of holding onto the ball, but we were not getting any help from the ref. To me, it seemed like Stoke were allowed to play as physical as they wanted, and we were not allowed to do the same things back to them.

Didn't create much, but we didn't have creative players out there. I would have preferred Aurelio at LB and Riera at LM, but Reira could not have been fit to play for very long, and although he has good height for a midfielder, doesn't deal with physical play all that well. Maxi hadn't played in a few weeks and didn't have many 90 minutes under his belt this year either, and Stoke away is a terrible game to make your debut.  This didn't seem like much of an Aquilani game either, at least not at this stage of his LFC career.

ALthough Yossi is small and tricky, he is pretty tough, really could have used him, and obviously Gerrard and Torres. Johnson would have been useful too, even if we were playing him at RM, he would have been better than Degen. And if we played him at RB, then we could have kept Skrtel on the bench

Thought Lucas could have earned two penalties, and of course that header at the end would have made a world of difference.

Owzat wrote:

LFC2007 wrote:In fairness, we played quite well given the players we picked. You couldn't have reasonably expected a team that contained none of our recognised creative players to play good football or make too many chances. It was a team that was setup to keep it tight and try and nick something on the break, which was successful until about the final 10 min's when we ought to have done more to prevent them getting near our 18 yd box.

I thought our defence did especially well considering how shaky it's been thus far. Kyrgiakos was in his element out there (he'd slot right into that Stoke team btw). Lucas did surprisingly well considering he isn't the biggest, while most of the others did their jobs well, which was basically to put themselves about. Within the confines of our strategy, the major problem was, IMO, Ngog. He was our main striker and he couldn't hold the ball up for sh!t (or, if you like, he did nothing). It may not be his fault that he's not good enough but it was a major factor today, IMO.

Certainly if he was doing his job to a decent standard he probably would've stayed on the pitch, which, in that final 10' where Stoke were pressing for an equaliser could have helped to ease a bit of the pressure on the defence. Just imagine if Crouch were there....

The problem is we rather tied our hands and feet together with the selection, I mean with a midfield and attack comprising Mascherano, Lucas, Aurelio, Degen, Kuyt and N'Gog where is the creativity? We could have won it with a dire team selection, but what if our two most creative players had started instead of coming on (late) ?

But what it boils down to is trying to hang on for a 1-0 win and conceding a late goal, we're simply not scoring enough goals and without me saying "I mean with a midfield and attack comprising......................" and listing the same six players, where was a second, third or fourth goal going to come from that was going to bring about the goals we need to win. Let's make no mistakes about this, as much as we might ALL love to be a 1-0 Arsenal-esque side of the past that grinds out results with a clean sheet, we're not with the current personnel and system. So we have to look to get the second goal and we don't have it in us this season.

We've played 31 games this season, we've scored one goal in FIFTEEN of those 31 games (nearly half) - P15 W4 D3 L8 F15 A21. The four (1-0) wins were over league one Lids, two over Hungarian side Debrecen who everyone else in the group scored freely against, and a last gasp Torres winner at villa park.

We've also taken the lead in shedloads of those one goalers, here's results when we score one goal by when we scored (first, last etc)

One Goal Wonders

1-0 vs Lyon - lost 1-2
1-0 vs Arsenal - lost 1-2
1-0 vs Reading - lost 1-2
1-0 vs Fiorentina - lost 1-2
1-0 vs Lyon - drew 1-1
1-0 vs Stoke - drew 1-1
1-0 vs Debrecen - won 1-0
1-0 vs Debrecen - won 1-0
1-0 vs Leeds - won 1-0
1-0 vs A Villa - won 1-0

1-1 vs Reading - drew 1-1
1-1 vs Tottenham - lost 1-2
1-1 vs Arsenal - lost 1-2
1-1 vs Fulham - lost 1-3

1-2 vs A Villa - lost 1-3

So essentially in the games we've only scored once in we've gone in front TEN TIMES, gone behind but equalised four times and only once were we more than one behind before we scored.

Took Lead 1-0 - P10 W4 D2 L4
Levelled 1-1 - P4 W0 D1 L3
Other (0-2 then 1-2) - P1 W0 D0 L1

So we've tossed away six games we led 1-0, not even drawing four of them. We equalised on four occaisions but still lost three of them and only ONCE have we lost this season without being level at 1-1. We need to score more goals, playing nine defensive/back five players is not the best way to go about it. There were so many on the pitch it did increase the chances of a defender scoring, there weren't enough attackers on the pitch for it not to be more likely a defender would score - 4-1 ratio of outfield defenders to attackers. Even them I'm not convinced Kyrgiakos scored as much as it was pushed onto him and it went in off him, what you might call a "block goal"

Lando_Griffin wrote:I believe that the performance, whilst far from pretty, has finally dispelled the myth that Rafa has lost the players.

Because the one thing we weren't lacking was determination.

Festy wrote:

Lando_Griffin wrote:I believe that the performance, whilst far from pretty, has finally dispelled the myth that Rafa has lost the players.

Because the one thing we weren't lacking was determination.

Most pathetic post of the season by far. 

Owzat wrote:I'd rather have lost the game going all out for it and trying to play them at football rather than what they play.

you would rather have lost