Liverpool FC Forum

And I blame Mignolet for the goal at WBA as much, if not more than Toure.  Toure didn't see Anichibe, Mignolet did see that they had 3 players within 10 yards of where he rolled the ball out instead of hitting it up the pitch.

ethanr » Mon Feb 03, 2014 4:18 pm wrote:And I blame Mignolet for the goal at WBA as much, if not more than Toure.  Toure didn't see Anichibe, Mignolet did see that they had 3 players within 10 yards of where he rolled the ball out instead of hitting it up the pitch.

Come on. Let's not get silly now.

Firstly you never pass a ball across your own 18 yard box.

Secondly, Toure played that ball blind. Even the briefest glance would have seen Anichebe, he is hardly a small chap is he?

Mignolet is marginally at fault for the goal. In hindsight Mignolet shouldn't have rolled the ball to Toure in that position. However if you watch the goal again, Toure has 3 options available to him other than a square pass to Skrtel.

1) Quick pass to Gerrard. Not the easiest, would require quick thinking, but I would've backed Skrtel or Agger to make it.
2) Boot it.
3) Play it back to Mignolet. In fact if you watch the goal again, Gerrard indicates to Toure to play it back to the keeper.

No doubt about it Toure takes a minimum of 90% of the blame for that goal.

or play it to the left where cissokho was stood on his own...

SouthCoastShankly » Mon Feb 03, 2014 8:42 am wrote:

ethanr » Mon Feb 03, 2014 4:18 pm wrote:And I blame Mignolet for the goal at WBA as much, if not more than Toure.  Toure didn't see Anichibe, Mignolet did see that they had 3 players within 10 yards of where he rolled the ball out instead of hitting it up the pitch.

Come on. Let's not get silly now.

Firstly you never pass a ball across your own 18 yard box.

Secondly, Toure played that ball blind. Even the briefest glance would have seen Anichebe, he is hardly a small chap is he?

Mignolet is marginally at fault for the goal. In hindsight Mignolet shouldn't have rolled the ball to Toure in that position. However if you watch the goal again, Toure has 3 options available to him other than a square pass to Skrtel.

1) Quick pass to Gerrard. Not the easiest, would require quick thinking, but I would've backed Skrtel or Agger to make it.
2) Boot it.
3) Play it back to Mignolet. In fact if you watch the goal again, Gerrard indicates to Toure to play it back to the keeper.

No doubt about it Toure takes a minimum of 90% of the blame for that goal.

Have to disagree.

I find it hilarious that so many people say "never pass it across your own 18" Yea, that was a rule when you were 12… This is professional football, and you see people make that pass 15-20 times per game without a problem! It's only pointed out on the extremely rare occasion it results in a goal for the other team.

You gave 3 options he had, one of which is not the easiest pass, one is right back to Mignolet, and one is to boot it. As the keeper it is your responsibility, when rolling it out, to make sure your team mate is not put in any type of pressure. Mignolet put him in a position where he either had to make a hard pass in a dangerous area, or just boot it, or give it back to Mignolet so Mignolet could boot it under pressure. Now would we rather have Mignolet just booting it, or would we rather have him have it in his hands where he had control? Booting it does nothing for us, especially considering we are a club full of shorter players who aren't great in the air.

Why were 3 attacking players surrounding our defenders? Because, just like everybody else, they know how weak Mingolet is with distribution and that he prefers to roll the ball out and leave his own defenders to struggle with it, than trust himself to get the ball to somebody in a better position. 

Mignolet just doesn't work in our system. He's a decent shot stopper, but that's not as important as aggressiveness and distribution for us.

ethanr » Mon Feb 03, 2014 6:29 pm wrote:

SouthCoastShankly » Mon Feb 03, 2014 8:42 am wrote:

ethanr » Mon Feb 03, 2014 4:18 pm wrote:And I blame Mignolet for the goal at WBA as much, if not more than Toure.  Toure didn't see Anichibe, Mignolet did see that they had 3 players within 10 yards of where he rolled the ball out instead of hitting it up the pitch.

Come on. Let's not get silly now.

Firstly you never pass a ball across your own 18 yard box.

Secondly, Toure played that ball blind. Even the briefest glance would have seen Anichebe, he is hardly a small chap is he?

Mignolet is marginally at fault for the goal. In hindsight Mignolet shouldn't have rolled the ball to Toure in that position. However if you watch the goal again, Toure has 3 options available to him other than a square pass to Skrtel.

1) Quick pass to Gerrard. Not the easiest, would require quick thinking, but I would've backed Skrtel or Agger to make it.
2) Boot it.
3) Play it back to Mignolet. In fact if you watch the goal again, Gerrard indicates to Toure to play it back to the keeper.

No doubt about it Toure takes a minimum of 90% of the blame for that goal.

Have to disagree.

I find it hilarious that so many people say "never pass it across your own 18" Yea, that was a rule when you were 12… This is professional football, and you see people make that pass 15-20 times per game without a problem! It's only pointed out on the extremely rare occasion it results in a goal for the other team.

You gave 3 options he had, one of which is not the easiest pass, one is right back to Mignolet, and one is to boot it. As the keeper it is your responsibility, when rolling it out, to make sure your team mate is not put in any type of pressure. Mignolet put him in a position where he either had to make a hard pass in a dangerous area, or just boot it, or give it back to Mignolet so Mignolet could boot it under pressure. Now would we rather have Mignolet just booting it, or would we rather have him have it in his hands where he had control? Booting it does nothing for us, especially considering we are a club full of shorter players who aren't great in the air.

Why were 3 attacking players surrounding our defenders? Because, just like everybody else, they know how weak Mingolet is with distribution and that he prefers to roll the ball out and leave his own defenders to struggle with it, than trust himself to get the ball to somebody in a better position. 

Mignolet just doesn't work in our system. He's a decent shot stopper, but that's not as important as aggressiveness and distribution for us.

I should have clarified, you never pass across your 18 yard box, square. Sure you see passes around the 18yard box. Typically at an angle and rarely square. There's too much risk in a square pass in terms of recovering from an interception. That rule is still taught and you rarely see square passes near you 18 yard box under you have no opponent near you at all.

Regarding Mignolet - few will blame him for that over Toure. I'm no different.

Edit: just watched it again from another angle. Mignolet is looking for an outlet, Toure opens his body towards the keeper (I.e. Faces with his back to the rest if the pitch) - he clearly is indicating for Mignolet to play that ball.

In fact the pressure situation comes from two west brom players reacting quickly to the situation. All in all an unfortunate situation that was made worse by poor decision making on Toure's part.

Ethanr - you say Mingolet doesn't fit into our system - why? We are scoring more goals than we have in a very long time so his distribution doesn't seem to be that much of a negative. He save what, looked like a certain goal and yet you actually hold him partly responsible for the Toure horror pass. He has also earned us valuable points through some brilliant saves in several other matches. I think your criticism is harsh in the extreme and I'm afraid that Toure was fully responsible for that debacle. Toure had his worst game so far in a red shirt and nobody else was to blame for that except him.

I can accept some of that SCS, I just feel that, as a keeper, you have the advantage of seeing the full field, and so you need to be intelligent enough to make the proper decision, which I feel he clearly didn't.

Dev, the reason I don't think he fits is because our system involves using 11 players who are all capable of playing as part of the attack. He's awful with the ball at his feet and often panics. Our system is also to take advantage of the counter attack, but his distribution is extremely poor and does not set up the counter attack like we saw Pepe do so successfully. To say we are scoring a lot has anything to do with him… C'mon, you're smarter than that. We have arguably the most in-form striker in the world, and our other striker is the third top scorer in the division despite missing so many games. We have a great attacking force, that's why we're scoring, not because Mignolet has good distribution. 

The problem with Mignolet is that he has a very valuable strength, but he's inconsistent with it. If you lack certain aspects of your play, you have to be the very best at your strength, or you are just an average player. Nobody will tell me he's good at distribution, and another glaring weakness is his aggressiveness when attacking crosses or set pieces in the box. He's a very good shot-stopper, but as others have pointed out he likes to make saves for the camera… That save he made against WBA, I'm sorry he didn't need to throw himself on the ground like that. It didn't make sense he reached out to his left, than threw himself directly backwards. Physics would tell him to be diving to the side, and maybe a little backwards. I also feel he has made more glaring errors that have cost us points than saved us points. Man City was the obvious one. A lot of people blame Skrtel for the goal Eto'o squeezed past, but I felt he could have done so much better considering how slow it was rolling and he got a full hand to it. He also had the goal go straight underneath him from Walters when we played Stoke, and the goal against Villa when he came out and tipped the ball away from our defender, into the Villa player to knock it home.

And those aren't the only mistakes he's made.

I'm not saying he hasn't made great saves, he's made quite a few great saves, but when you have such glaring weaknesses, you can't afford to make mistakes in your strongest area so much. I really liked him at first and will support any Liverpool player that gives their all, but I'm starting to come to terms that he's closer to an average keeper than I originally thought.

So we're seriously blaming the keeper again? It's like I'm 12 again, when we used to blame the fat goalie for every loss because, you know, it's the easiest to blame him.

Like Toure said so himself, he wasn't surprised that Mignolet passed to him. In fact, he asked for it. Why? Because that's how we play (I thought that would be obvious by now, to our fans at least). Toure had a few options, but chose the worst one.

Ethan mate, if you want a scapegoat, blame Cissokho or some other donkey, not someone who was one of our better players and kept us in the game. I also find it laughable to call some of those saves "camera saves". I'm pretty sure that those who say that don't watch too many other games apart from Liverpool or are not objective enough.

I give up.

People clearly aren't reading my whole posts, so I'll keep it less than 20 words.

Ethanr - would have always preferred Bergovic. Just so you know exactly where I'm coming from. I agree Mign has a lot to learn and he certainly has weaknesses. His distribution is definitely one of them. All goalies to some extent perform for the camera. Job preservation is perhaps a motivator. The point that I was trying to make is that his distribution is not causing us a problem within the system per se because we are scoring plenty of goals. I was not suggesting that was because his distribution was good. He has certainly made mistakes in the same way as every goalkeeper. However on this occasion especially as Kaolo asked for the ball, and later admitted to doing so, I certainly don't think Ming was to blame.