Liverpool FC Forum

Bad Bob wrote:Hallelujah...after pages and pages of nonsense, I've found the one where people talk sense!

We bossed the game but failed to put it to bed when it was there for the taking and paid a price for it with two instances of ropey defending.  We move on.

Bad Bob wrote:Hallelujah...after pages and pages of nonsense, I've found the one where people talk sense!

We bossed the game but failed to put it to bed when it was there for the taking and paid a price for it with two instances of ropey defending.  We move on.

Erm so didnt my match post make sense then

bigmick wrote:

LFC2007 wrote:It's a serious psychological knock back because of the way we conceded the game. The points were as good as ours for 65 minutes and just thinking back up until the equaliser, I thought it was too easy, way too easy. There seemed no way for them to get a foothold in the game, and that kind of turnaround could cause doubts to arise in the players' minds if we let this result fester.

I'm just glad we don't have any extra-difficult away fixtures in the near future. It should at least enable us to reassert our confidence, a bit like Chelsea have done against Hull and Sunderland. Leading up to the Arsenal game at the Emirates we need to be confident, and we need to maximise our points total.

I like this post, and theres a couple of points I'd like to make leading off it.

Firstly, this psychological angle. I think that's the nail on the head right there for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we were unable to put the shutters up and close the game down despite being quite obviously a class above Spurs. The potential ramifications of that are far reaching in the teams minds, as every time you go into the last 10 minutes a goal to the good you'll find yourself getting pretty jumpy pretty quick if we do what we did here very often. The team needs to know that it can close a game out, and on the odd occasion your opponent gets lucky it should be a draw. To lose the game was absolutely criminal given what had gone before.

secondly, I'm going to come back to this "winning mentality" which we all talk about sometimes. Once we didn't get the second goal (and I know we were unlucky on occasions) there was an air of inevitability about them getting back into it. FWIW I actually found our first half perfromance a bit disappointing. Yes we were on top, yes we were a goal to the good but I'd like to see us really go to town at that point. They were absolutely shambolic and nthere for the taking. We had obviously worked on hitting Kuyt with diagonals from deep against their left fullback who was absolutely awful, and they had absolutely no answer to it whatsoever. Now during that period, despite making them look silly we barely made a chance, which for me isn't good enough.

For too long now we kind of wait for things to happen in games. That aspect of our play has improved immeasureably this season, but we still have the mindset of "fourth of big four" as opposed to Champions sometimes. It was fairly obvious that Spurs would have to make changes at half-time, and the switching of Corluka to left full back was probably the most significant of all. The Mancs or Chelsea though would have been going hell for leather in that first half though to put the thing to bed there and then. I can't help thinking we need to be much more ruthless sometimes.

Dalglish wrote:Football is a bit like life...............you don't always get what you deserve and today was an example of that. We dominated the match until the Spurs equaliser and Redknapp as good as admitted as much.

The problem was NOT with who Rafa substituted and when, the weather, the Redknapp effect or whatever other straw you want to clutch onto. It was simply that we didn't convert many of the chances we made after the initial goal by Kuyt. We hit the bar once, the post twice and the hapless Gomez pulled off a couple of decent saves and that gave Spurs hope even though they were (like on Wed against Arsenal) outclassed.

How we respond to this loss is important and I fully expect that Rafa and the backroom staff will be working on the players but to be honest as anyone will tell you who has played competitive sport, you don't really need to be lifted when you know you have played well as we did today. The players will know that this time they were unlucky and are unlikely to play as well again and get beat. The mind games only start to bite when you have played badly and lost so I wouldn't expect an adverse reaction to be honest.

We've rode our luck this season at times and it ran out tonight. Time to eliminate luck and play your way back to winning ways.

Chelsea responded to their losss last week by winning 3-0 away at Hull and 5-0 at home today against the Mackems. We need to do the same and I think we will because this Liverpool team is as good as any that Rafa has had since he joined.

Walk on ..........

Spot on, as usual.

Simari wrote:

jedwards wrote::angry:
A match should have been won comfortably only for Benitez to apply his old negative tactics once again, bad, aimless, and useless substitutions, LFC team should have killed this game, Spurs is very ordinary team, only for woeful and hurried shooting, the score line should read 5-0.
We will find out in the next coming days, if Benitez's team to recapture the form of last season!!.

The players had ALL THE CHANCES IN THE WORLD to put the game beyond Spuds.

They didn't do it.

How in god's name can you blame Rafa for that?

We bossed the game and really should have scored. Keane may have had link-up play, but he didn't score a goal !

We conceded because of our defense today. Carra and Agger had a torrid 2nd half. The goals were coming, the weather and pitch didn't help either with tired legs.

I really wish people would stop blaming Rafa. In fact, why the did Keane not score? Have a go at him ffs. Sure he was great with the link-up play, but we had nothing to show for it after Kuyt's goal in the 4th minute and we still bossed the game.

The only thing this tells me is that Keane needs to start chipping in with the goals sooner, rather than later. He's had plenty of time to bed in.

And what is negative about putting on a fresh Babel and an attacking player in Yossi? The fact that neither actually did anything useful in the final third is entirely down to their lack of desire to grab the winner. It has nought to do with Rafa's tactics, which were spot on.

The Redknapp factor was always on the card and Rafa was keen to mention that in his pre-match interview. He knew we had to kill the game off.

inglis5 wrote:Please excuse me, I've just got back from the pub. I'm going to write what I am thinking right now and worry about it in the morning...

First things first, our performance. OK. Started brightly, sat back too much for the rest of the first half after scoring. After 60 minutes we should have then conceivably been 5 up after sevearl great efforts (brilliantly saved) and poor finishes. Anyway... this season we can all agree that we've had our fair share of luck, suffice to say, today we had none. But what can you do... This brings me to reason why I am so very, very p*ssed off.

I live in London, I'm an 'Ooter'. I'll hold my hands up. I was born in the Midlands. I grew up in the Midlands and I moved to London 5 years ago. When I was growing up I resisted the attempts of my Dad and older brother to support their team (Coventry City) and, like the majority of 4 - 5 year olds, I supported the best club at the time. I have always justified this through my scouse roots (my Mum's side of the family are all from Kirby) and over my 30 years I have never waivered, I've never questioned, I've always supported my team. Although, like many, I find it difficult to get tickets to games I never miss a match, if I can't go, I watch it on tele, if it's not on tele, I watch it over the internet, if I can't watch it I listen to it on the radio and if it's not on the radio I sit on the internet refreshing the BBC website every 30 seconds. Anyway, I consider myself a Liverpool fan in every sense of the word.

So, tonight I go to my local in North London and watch the game with my best mate, a Spurs fan. The pub I go to is known as a Liverpool pub. The ex-landlord (a great man called Pete) left recently and it has now been taken over by somebody else. The problem I have always had is that you go into this pub and there are some gobsh*tes (2 scouse one from London) who, depsite professing to support the club, are a nightmare. As the ball rolled to Kuyt the cry of 'don't shoot you c*nt' rang around the bar. Everytime Babel got the ball they were on his back immediately. They cheered the substitution of Keane.

I'm not religious but I believe in Karma. My girlfirend is from Stoke and tonight she was justifiably delighted to have her team win again. Before the season my previously menitoned Spurse fan and a Arsenal fan were taking the p*ss out of Stoke. Saying they would get less points than Derby, that they would be going straight back down. The results of the last two weeks were consequently put down to Karma.

I don't put on our loss down tonight to anything the team did wrong. I put the blame solely at the feet of those arseh*les who - took the out of the opposition fans, shouted at our own players & rejoiced before nothing was won.

Sorry for the rant, I'm dissapointed. I just hope that people think before they talk. That the term 'supporter' is based around the word 'support'. And if any of those people are reading this they take a look in the mirror and respect their own team and the opposition...

Amen, brother.

NANNY RED wrote:

Bad Bob wrote:Hallelujah...after pages and pages of nonsense, I've found the one where people talk sense!

We bossed the game but failed to put it to bed when it was there for the taking and paid a price for it with two instances of ropey defending.  We move on.

Erm so didnt my match post make sense then

Sorry, Nan, I must have missed your post, ducking as I was to avoid all that falling sky everyone kept yelling about.