Ausage
Cricketer Of The Year
In general this is true, but there's always room for quality pieces of defense. Hanley's tackle on Campbell was special and those kinds of things are often the difference between a clean sheet and conceeding a goal.
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*Official* English Football Season 2011-12
- Thread starter Johnners
- Start date
Ikki
Hall of Fame Member
I'm really not sure what to make of this season. We play wonderfully style-wise and creating chances wise. Heck, we also have the 3rd best defensive record in the league. It is hard to say Kenny is failing because we've hit the post some, I dunno, 26 times? Missed 6 penalties? How culpable is he if pro players can't finish their chances? He can set them up to concede as few goals as possible and create as many chances as possible, but he can't stop brainfarts at either side of the pitch.
The QPR game was unbelievable. We utterly owned them and should have been out of sight...yet somehow managed to **** it up. I want to be critical because at this stage a lot of those would be blips (posts, missed penalties, keepers having the game of their lives against us) you can usually write off but this season they've happened too much. Is it possible to be extremely unlucky? I know it's an outlier of a season, even in terms of unluckiness, but are we that bad? I don't know whether to keep faith or write Kenny off.
I ask, because it is hard to be totally objective and neutral about this. IMO the team is set up right and should be winning so many games. We've only really been outplayed in maybe 2-3 games this season and we've dominated the grand majority of them. But we do not have anywhere near the points to show that. Even more confusing, we might end up with the Cup double.
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sledger
Spanish_Vicente
Maybe not individual quality in terms of technical skill, but I think individual quality in communication and organisational skills are pretty important in this regard as well. Have a centre back and/or a goalkeeper who can organise the backline properly makes a massive difference.
sledger
Spanish_Vicente
Just not clinical/ruthless enough I think. Not enough cutting edge.
The only player in the team who's capable of any playing in any incisive way is Suarez, but he lets himself down by so often failing to create the good opportunities presented to him.
The rest of the team can pass it round nicely and have reasonable movement, but there's nobody there you really feel is capable of splitting a team open.
Eds
International Debutant
Disagree with this to an extent.
We're definitely not clinical enough, but that's not because we haven't got someone who is "capable of splitting a team open" - that's exactly what Suarez does so well. We just need someone alongside him who is a world class finisher. Liverpool's Torres would have been perfect - ah well.
sledger
Spanish_Vicente
I dunno, it's just something I feel when I look at the players in the team. Apart from Suarez there's nobody there that plays in a particularly purposeful, incisive or dynamic way. I'm not sure how to describe it exactly, but when I see Suarez get the ball and set off on a run I think "hmm, something might happen here", whereas if it falls to Downing I'll think "ok, this is going nowhere, he'll probably have his cross blocked by a defender or kick it over the bar". Similarly, when the likes of Jordan Henderson or Charlie Adam get the ball my thoughts are that they're most likely to pass it to someone else rather than actually make anything happen themselves. Andy Carroll is just rank average, so no need to worry about him either. It's all a bit different when Gerrard is in the team, but he's missing so often these days that you wonder if he'll ever be as dynamic or threatening as he once was as well.
I'm not sure what it is, but when I look at the Liverpool midfield and Andy Carroll, it just seems so obvious to me that the right balance is not there somehow.
I'm not sure what it is, but when I look at the Liverpool midfield and Andy Carroll, it just seems so obvious to me that the right balance is not there somehow.
Scaly piscine
Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Who is this Liverpool team that creates bucketloads of chances?
I've never seen it. Their problem is they've no finesse or cutting edge whatsoever. They attack like a well drilled Championship/Stoke type side. They create the illusion of passing it around then it gets hoofed into the box from any old angle, usually there'll be 1 person in said box, on some rare occasions 2. Most of their threat seems to come from dead ball situations or getting the ball back in an advanced position.
I've never seen it. Their problem is they've no finesse or cutting edge whatsoever. They attack like a well drilled Championship/Stoke type side. They create the illusion of passing it around then it gets hoofed into the box from any old angle, usually there'll be 1 person in said box, on some rare occasions 2. Most of their threat seems to come from dead ball situations or getting the ball back in an advanced position.
Eds
International Debutant
BoyBrumby
Englishman
Pretty much it. Yer Scousers' top scorers are Bellamy & Suarez with six apiece. It's just not good enough for a team with CL ambitions.
They've missed Lucas too, but it'd be fanciful to imagine he'd have added much in the "goals for" column.
Uppercut
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They've been unlucky at times, particularly in a lot of their home games early in the season against weaker sides. But at other times they've just been extremely ineffective going forwards, like during the more recent games at Old Trafford and Sunderland. Dalglish doesn't value technique highly enough, as evidenced by his buying of Carroll, getting rid of Meireles and rarely playing Maxi, and it shows- a lot of Liverpool's attacks break down due to poor control. Their movement isn't especially fluid either and the team doesn't really seem to have a plan to unlock the defence, beyond sending in huge numbers of crosses from unthreatening angles against well-set defences. And they're mostly poor finishers- pretty important skill tstl.
Strangely, this has happened at just the moment when highly technical and intelligent football is becoming the dominant style- now everyone wants to keep the ball on the ground and play possession-oriented football. So their bumbling looks particularly bad in comparison to teams like Bilbao that play with crazy precision.
Also, they concede SO many goals from set pieces. Which is such a waste because their press is by far the best in the league and if they stopped conceding all the soft ones from corners they'd have a properly good defence.
