Three games in...... - A snapshot so far.

Liverpool Football Club - General Discussion

Postby sgs » Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:00 am

bigmick wrote:
sgs wrote:Most of the static play IMO is coming from poor movement in the last 3rd, and the lack of sharpness by Gerrard and Torres, esp the former...a point peeps never mention as all the focus is on Lucas.

What Rafa has done so far is not simply play Lucas as replacement for Alonso; he's effectively playing two CMs and pulling Yossi esp, and Kuyt centrally to provide the creative impetus starting from the 3rd zone, along with SG dropping into the hole; while using the wide backs to provide width.

The option of SG in CM is fraught with all the limitations that led to he's being played further upfield in the first case. His performance in that role in the 2HF proved it...

What Liverpool fans are doing is killing a young talent, Lucas, with OTT criticism and expectation, to the point where he IS everything wrong with the team atm. That is simply wrong and at this rate, I seriously doubt if he will survive...To see it unfold right before my very eyes makes it even worse! I seriously doubt, if this were Spearing, if he would be treated in this manner...

That said, rather have poor form in August than January as we did last season...

I disagree with just about every word of this post.

I don't FWIW think that most of the poor play is coming because of "poor movement in the last third", particularly not from Gerrard and Torres. Look, the main difference for us this season to last is the straight swap alonso for Lucas, and Riera not being selected and Benayoun playing in his place. Put Insua in instead of Aurelio, and Johnson in for Arbaloa and you have four changes, only one of which has been beneficial to the team.

Now it's pretty obvious that we are missing Alonso, and that's coming from someone who was not slow to play down the amount of influence he had over our play. The key though is we've replaced him with Lucas, who is by no means an awful player but he's not performing at the moment in a manner which is beneficial to the team. He's being asked to fill a role which he isn't capable of filling The lad looked absolutely lost tonight, he wasn't dropping in and picking it up, he wasn't picking it up off of Masherano, he was reduced to moving round and round in and around the centre circle but never actually receiving the ball. When he did get it, like Masherano and Carragher, Villa simply stood off and invited him to play. Because none of the three are liable to pick a pass, you very quickly run out of ideas. We either need to play Masherano OR Lucas on a sustained basis, but not both.

Funnily enough on the question of movement, our limitations on that score from wider areas is getting exposed right now. I know he huffed and puffed, but I thought Kuyt was very poor toinight in terms of his awareness and build up play. He's not normally very good, but tonight he was awful. Similarly, Benayoun constantly tracks inside so it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. The passers aren't great but nobody creates an angle. Essentially, without a good enough mover of the football in the centre of midfield it's too easy to cut Gerrard and Torres off. As they are our two best players, to prosper we must get them on the ball, and the only way to do that currently is to move Gerrard back into the centre (where despite his rash challenge tonight he is absolutely World Class lets not forget). If we do go down the route of moving Kuyt central (not my choice but there you go) moiving Benayoun right would probably give us more chance of getting Johnson on the ball too.

It's not down to Gerrard and Torres's movement though, not in a million years.

Wonder if u actually read my post!

First Lucas may have replaced Alonso but his role in the team is not the deep-lying playmaker Xabi was.

2ndly, width in the team is being increasingly made to come from the wide backs, with kuyt and yossi taking more of the mantle for creative play from central areas..Poor play from yossi is esp hampering the team...

As for gerrard, he has played in patches and has repeatedly given the ball away or had his touches not come off successfully. Torres in turn has looked jaded...They maybe running aroundm but they are not creating spaces..
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Postby Irelandsbest » Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:08 am

Disgrace last night.  2-0 down at half time and does not change the team.  He is a joke of a manager and as I predicted although I admit longer than I thought, he has finally been found out.  Two defensive midfielders against a very poor villa team is bad bad management.  I want to start a Poll.  Yes for Rafa to stay No for Raf to go.
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Postby The_Rock » Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:37 am

Time for the great one to make his prediction for this season...

1)We are gonna finish 6th this season
2)But we are also gonna win ......
   a)League Cup
   b)FA Cup
   c)Champions League

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Postby TheLad » Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:40 am

Irelandsbest wrote:Disgrace last night.  2-0 down at half time and does not change the team.  He is a joke of a manager and as I predicted although I admit longer than I thought, he has finally been found out.  Two defensive midfielders against a very poor villa team is bad bad management.  I want to start a Poll.  Yes for Rafa to stay No for Raf to go.

I understand that you are upset, we all are, but before starting a poll on Rafa, you should spend some time here on the forum... Welcome mate!  :D
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Postby LiverpoolMadman » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:10 am

REDTILLDEAD wrote:I agree we are nowhere near winning the title this season....not with the mediorce :censored: we have in our squad....its just not good enough!....Those fukkin yankee b@stards are to blame for this.....without the funding we are going nowhere....it shows how bad our squad is when rafa takes Lucas off and replaces him with vorinon.... :censored: replacing :censored:.....forget the title this season (yet again) we had our best chance last season, if anything we are weaker this season. :down:

I agree , those 2 yanks are the root cause of all problems. If only the money that they pay to the bank, use to buy players instead i think we are as good as RM and Barca .... They need to sell the club and give the money to Rafa so he can buy new players.
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Postby Octsky » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:10 am

Firstly our defense must be tight, the goals conceded against villa, 3 are set-pieces (if you count the penalty too). So the team must address the zonal marking system.

Secondly, the team must address opposition double or triple teaming Torres, that means Torres couldnt hold on the ball too long or he will risk loosing it. If Torres is our point of attack, he will become our point of weakness. That why rafa should really consider playing 2 forwards, if Torres is marked, that leaves the other forward open.

Thirdly, who can play the 2nd forward? Frankly i prefer Babel rather than Voronin, Voronin plays like a championship player. of 2 full seasons, when has Rafa ever trusted Babel with his preferred role? That lad isnt given a chance, it like playing Anelka in the wing and complaining about his poor performance.

Finally, the blind faith Rafa has shown to Lucas, if the boy did not perform we should move him on. Lucas may perform ok, but this is not what we are looking for, we cant have players who are average if we want to win the title, at least not in the starting 11. Lucas should help the team, not the other way around.

And of coz, the title fight is still alive. walk on.
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Postby SundanceKid » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:15 am

Well we still have a shot at CL...
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Postby JoeTerp » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:16 am

Lucas spent far more time in the box than Xabi would have.

We had a glorious chance somewhere in the first ten minutes (the one where both Torres and Gerrard should have scored), if that goes in, we win the game.  We certainly controlled the game, we got it out wide plenty of times, but we did lack a lot of creativity, especially Mascherano for me, but that is to be expected of him.  I think instead of taking Lucas off, we should have taken mascherano off.  Not that he was playing "his game" poorly, but his game isn't needed when we desperately need goals. I actually thought Mascherano got fractions better in an attacking sense when he drifted wide right for a couple of minutes. But centrally, with a bunch of bodies in and around the edge of the box he is like a deer in headlights and sometimes he thinks a long shot is an option, maybe for Aquilani or Gerrard, but not for him.

Gerrard had lots of nice flicks and stuff working early, or just barely not coming off, but despite trying really hard he missed a good chance and gave away a penalty, you could make an argument that Lucas played better. Don't buy anybody selling that moving Gerrard back in CM for Lucas suddenly made us play better. We dominated the first 15 minutes of the 2nd half in the same manner with Lucas in CM.

The referee was being an idiot and wasn't protecting Torres at all, fekcing kun.t :angry:   But Torres was getting frustrated too easily and wasn't putting it out of his head.

Again the header was on the edge of Carra and somebody elses zone (this time it was Torres)


Glen Johnson was a great buy, it seems like he is going to be a threat in EVERY game, had some nice tackles too :D

I don't want to be a big anti-Voronin poster, but he didn't offer anything, would have been more useful to have N'gog on the bench and subbed on




maybe at home, in the future we should play:
                Gerrard          Aquilani
Kuyt                    Yossi               Riera
                            Torres
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Postby The_Rock » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:27 am

On the left, assuming Riera is going to be sold/has fallen out with the manager/isn't doing well enough in training or whatever, that leaves a gap.


Heard a rumour that we are gonna buy Rafael van der vaart (with Riera going to barcelona as to finance the deal).

Well if that happens, it will be a good move. Finally we will get a winger who is pacy....has a good 1st touch, can dribble and can put in decent crosses.

Will be good for the champions league campaign.... :D
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Postby bigmick » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:34 am

LFC2007 wrote:
bigmick wrote:The passers aren't great but nobody creates an angle. Essentially, without a good enough mover of the football in the centre of midfield it's too easy to cut Gerrard and Torres off. As they are our two best players, to prosper we must get them on the ball, and the only way to do that currently is to move Gerrard back into the centre (where despite his rash challenge tonight he is absolutely World Class lets not forget).

That's it. Overall I thought the poor performance was a symptom of a midfield that didn't do nearly enough in possession.

It didn't just lack the subtelty and the technical range of passing Alonso provided in years gone by, most importantly of all it lacked intelligence as unit. For most of the game I thought we lacked tempo in our passing, something you need to take opposing players out of the game. To find that tempo (at this level) your midfielders in particular need to be able to pass it without almost a seconds thought; you need to have a mental image of the play so that you know when to move to receive and where, and when you receive, who to play it to - if you think for too long, you'll get closed down, if you get closed down you need to be strong on the ball, and have a bit of skill in your locker to evade your man. This was essentially Alonso's value to the team, and it's why we should to be concerned, because his short-term replacements offer a tenth of that ability in possession. We didn't have a player in there that knows how to master these aspects of midfield play to the required standard; abilities needed to cut opposing players out of games, abilities that help maintain a steady tempo to our passing, and abilities that by default will also help minimise our defensive exposure.

Too often it when it came to Masch or Lucas it would take a fraction too long, sometimes far too long before they made a choice, and when the choice was made it did little to open the play up. As Bob's already pointed out the overall pattern was too lateral. Obviously, a little bit of that's ok when you need to, but over and above that style of passing, we saw very, very little. Conversely, when we were eager to get forward in the first-half, it was actually often quite rushed aswell, when it needed to be built up. How often, for example, did you see Lucas centre the ball in their semi-circle, turn and play a crisp, early diagonal ball out wide? Alonso would do these sorts of things instantaneously, and it's a key reason why we struggled to keep our passing going for very long. Late in the second half it was painful to watch with Masch passing five yards to Kuyt, who in turn would pass another five yards to Johnson, before the move would eventually fizzle out. That kind of passing is too easy to defend against; it's all in front of you, lacking in tempo and they're all five yarders. Just what you want if you're defending a lead, you want to be able see it so you can get at it, you don't want it to move too fast and you want their players in front of you. One early ball spotted by a quick-thinking midfielder is infinitely more effective, and if the receivers are on their mettle you've a recipe for a solid, consistent midfield.

This was compounded by poor general play from Kuyt and Benayoun; the ball didn't often stick in these areas because of a lack of awareness, sloppy touches and shoddy passing. Gerrard was culpable at times too, especially in the first-half where he made a number of stray passes. In these attacking areas we didn't do well enough in pulling into space and holding it, which if we had done may have steadied us a bit in an attacking sense thus providing said platform for Gerrard and Torres, whilst it may also have prevented the numerous free-kicks we conceded.

Good post that mate, on the money for me.
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Postby LiverpoolMadman » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:47 am

The_Rock wrote:
On the left, assuming Riera is going to be sold/has fallen out with the manager/isn't doing well enough in training or whatever, that leaves a gap.


Heard a rumour that we are gonna buy Rafael van der vaart (with Riera going to barcelona as to finance the deal).

Well if that happens, it will be a good move. Finally we will get a winger who is pacy....has a good 1st touch, can dribble and can put in decent crosses.

Will be good for the champions league campaign.... :D

If riera going to Barca and we get the money to buy player to replace him , that's OK but what happen if Riera is going to Barca, no one coming in because of the money that coming in is going to the bank to pay the loan ..
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Postby Owzat » Tue Aug 25, 2009 7:01 am

s@int wrote:Its almost 30 years since a team lost their opening fixture and went on to win the league, how many years is it since a team lost 2 out of their first 3 fixtures and won the league ?  :(

Sorry S@int but perhaps you misheard that stat you quote, maybe they said THIRTEEN SEASONS since a side lost their opening fixture and went on to win the (top flight) English league

19/08/95 Aston Villa 3-1 Man Utd

The mancs won the Premiership ahead of Newcastle by just four points. We are in deep doodoo, not because we've lost two games since the mancs have lost one and I'm sure Chelsea will show vulnerability, but because we've looked ordinary for a lot of those two defeats and even for some of the game we won.

I don't blame Lucas, weakest player in the XI as he undoubtedly is, but the fact that we can't afford to have him and Mascherano in the side as that just leaves a lack of quality in terms of passing, bossing the game etc. People on here love Mascherano, I have reservations and the reservations are quite evident this season that on his own he is of no great benefit going forward and is not going to make us defensively impenetrable. He can't stop players by-passing him, he is not going to stop us being vulnerable for corners and what he offers going forward is barely worth a mention.

But the key problem for me is the manager :-

- sold our key playmaker, replaced him with a crocked Italian so effectively hasn't replaced him yet as we're left with Lucas as next best option
- doesn't make a substitution until way too late. We were 2-0 down at half time, did he make even ONE change? Did he feck, he waited until his usual substitution time - maybe he thinks there is a "substitution window".
- people bemoan a lack of funds but he went and blew about half our budget on improving our RB. Whether he's worth £17.5m or not, whether he's same, better or worse than Arbeloa is immaterial, he's not stopped us losing twice and maybe better spending on players we need ie creative attacking/midfield players would have fixed the problem. Or put another way, Rafa has fixed one of last season's problems, buying Johnson alone isn't going to fix the problem caused by the sale of Alonso and we spent enough getting Johnson.
- we give away way too many free-kicks and corners, where did their three goals come from.......................?

RAFA'S 'SUBSTITUTION WINDOW'

vs A Villa (Lost) - 66, 75
vs Stoke (Won) - 81, 82, 84
vs Tottenham (Lost) - 67, 75, 79

And last five league games in 08/09 we didn't win

vs Arsenal (Drew) - 74, 86
vs Middlesboro (Lost) - 68, 71, 76
vs Man City (Drew) - 63, 76, 83
vs Wigan (Drew) - 72, 75, 84
vs Bitters (Drew) - 67, 85, 89

Sometimes he does make changes just after half-time, but he doesn't (seem to) react to the match situation with any urgency. 2-0 down at half-time is pretty demanding of a change, in scoreline if not in personnel.

Many reckon Rafa is a man of tactics, do those substitution timings look like those of a tactical genius or a man of ritual, habitually changing the players at the same time regardless of situation? We didn't win those last five games, 2/3 of the game was gone before Rafa tried to change things in terms of personnel. Want to know why we didn't win the league last season? "Rafa" is the one word answer, no great ability to change games we needed to win and shouldn't have needed to make changes to win. We had the team last season, beat Chelsea and Man Utd home and away so some reckon that is Rafa as a tactical genius, but then we lost to those sides the previous season with much the same side and couldn't beat Stoke, Fulham, West Ham etc at home with much the same side either. Whether we won or lost was mainly dependant on how well we played, had we scored early last night as we should have, then the scoreline might have been very different. But Rafa's ability to change the direction a game is going is seriously questionable, we scored early against Stoke or it might be one point from nine and Rafa walking out the door.

Many laugh at spudz and their spending, I reckon they have the kind of players we need and while many mock 'arry, I reckon he's got more chance of winning the league than Rafa.
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Postby cheras » Tue Aug 25, 2009 7:18 am

This is turning out to be one heck of a disappointment so far.

We got close, the Mancs have weakened tremendously, yes we lost Alonso but we should still be there and thereabouts.

Maybe the players are down because we let Alonso go when we didn't need to - hold on to him 1 more year and we could have done it.
Gerrard's not playing normal, Torres is not playing normal, Riera is out of sorts (or just out).

The 2 Yanks are to blame but Rafa must also look at his 'tactics'.

Why can't he shift Gerrard back to mid and have Benayoun running behind Torres for all those games Aquilani is not available?

All the good work of last season, down the tubes in the first 3 games.

Depressing.
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Postby Greavesie » Tue Aug 25, 2009 7:35 am

needless to say I'm gutted with how we've started. Its very testing times for Rafa indeed. With City looking strong, Arsenal playing well, the scum and chelsea all winning, the pressure is really on and so early in the season. I just hope we're not fecked before Aquilani comes into the side, but I'm afraid it may very well be :( :(
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Postby mistyred » Tue Aug 25, 2009 8:46 am

My theory that Alonso going would add a new dimension to midfield has so far blown
up in my face (No suprise their then) dramatically.

Maybe the new dimension only works when Aquilani is fit :D
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