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***Official*** English Football Season 2017/18

Spark

Spark

Global Moderator
Ikki said:
Klopp's a fine manager and, if anything, overall he is doing well. But the problems with Liverpool are so obvious and predictable it's maddening. We have no game management plans and it's obvious. If Liverpool want to actually challenge, as Klopp says he wants to, then we'll never make the next step if we can't hold onto leads. It's not just the Sevilla game. If Liverpool are two goals up I still feel like we can **** it up against anyone.

A lot of that has to do with Henderson. He no longer has the engine of a few years ago and he has injury issues. On the game side he was fine a few years ago when he would recover the ball and give it to a more able and intelligent passer - like Gerrard - and play box-to-box. But now he sits at the base of midfield and sees too much of the ball. He neither has the technique nor game IQ to dictate a game. What's worse is that he isn't a leader, defers and shouts a lot at the same time.

IIRC his stats for the Sevilla game were like 55% passing accuracy, 0 tackles, ball recovers and aerial duels. And if anything the stats often flatter him a lot because watching him is awful. Like, why is he starting anymore? It's legitimate to ask why he should even be at the club. We win in spite of him and rarely because of him. I'd say he's the rich man's Lee Cattermole but it's more like upper-middle class.

Then you have several years of errors by Moreno and Lovren. We're not talking about 1-2, but something like every other game and often multiple goal-causing mistakes in the same game. It's clear they are not up for playing at this level. To be fair to Moreno he has largely been good this season but there's no reason he should feel his place is settled and that's the feeling you get: that Klopp might be supportive (or deluded) to a fault.

If we don't get top 4 again IMO we should be looking at Rafa again. If he had the kind of backing FSG have given our recent managers I'm fairly positive he could do great things.
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Couldn't everything you just said about Henderson be said about Can and Wijnaldum too? Serious lack of quality options in there without Lallana.
 
Uppercut

Uppercut

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Spark said:
Couldn't everything you just said about Henderson be said about Can and Wijnaldum too? Serious lack of quality options in there without Lallana.
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I do rate Can and (especially) Wijnaldum higher than Henderson. They always sign the same type of CM- fast, strong, good dribblers but not especially great passers. They all seem to be incredibly inconsistent. The gap between the best Can/Wijnaldum performances and the worst ones is ****ing huge.

Henderson is in a similar-ish mould to the others but the weakest of the bunch, except possibly Ox. In any case they already have a solution lined up, Keita is like the Klopp Midfielder's final form.

I heard someone argue that because Liverpool aren't pressing as hard, the base-of-midfield role becomes more about Makelele-style defence-shielding rather than Kante-style front-foot ball-winning, which Henderson is much better at. It makes a lot of sense. But even allowing for that his passing was just never close to being good enough, and that Sevilla performance was an atrocious low point for a player that can only aspire to be dependable. I'd probably pick Can at the base of midfield for a while but he isn't ideal, and he seems to be on the way out. The further back up the pitch you go the weaker their options get.
 
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Lillian Thomson

Lillian Thomson

Hall of Fame Member
Furball said:
Well the first step towards winning a European trophy is qualifying for it.
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Well, you could go around in circles all day. My point was that his remit from the owners would have been to make them genuinely likely contenders to win the two big trophies. In my opinion he hasn’t done that. If you think he has then deep joy.
 
Ikki

Ikki

Hall of Fame Member
Spark said:
Couldn't everything you just said about Henderson be said about Can and Wijnaldum too? Serious lack of quality options in there without Lallana.
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Can can look like a Rolls Royce of a player at times but he has also shown many lapses in certain phases in the game where he just turns off and it has bit us in the ass hard. Whenever he is in the holding position he seems to gas. I think his worst qualities are still improvable and he is young.

Wijnaldum for me is a specific kind of player we need. His close control ability, his circulation of the ball with regards to ball retention is top quality. He's just not very expansive or inventive with his passing. But defensively and on the press he is one of our best players - every game he puts in a shift in that would give him a positive review from me - and he picks up the slack where the others aren't as aware of the space around them. He's a true product of the total football country, just pops up everywhere and sees the game differently. It wasn't something I appreciated from him when he was at Newcastle.

At this point, I don't see Henderson's positives outweighing his negatives. I think it's almost a case of the club/manager not taking the armband off Henderson and sitting him on the bench more because they don't want it to look bad or insulting or something. I don't think he makes any other top 6's midfield and I don't think any of the other top managers would put up with it for this long.

Lallana is very important too because he leads the press better than anyone. We look a much better team whenever he is there and even more deadly on the counter. But talking specifically about the collapses, even with Lallana in the team, I think that stems from a lack of leadership and nous from Henderson. We could actually not make the next round in the CL because of that Sevilla game and you'd think it would dawn on the-manager-on-the-pitch to put his foot on the ball, take the pace of the game down and get the players around him positioned better when it's 3 ****ing 0.
 
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Furball

Furball

Evil Scotsman
Lillian Thomson said:
Well, you could go around in circles all day. My point was that his remit from the owners would have been to make them genuinely likely contenders to win the two big trophies. In my opinion he hasn’t done that. If you think he has then deep joy.
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I don't think he has either but he's got Liverpool to the brink of the knockouts for the first time in at least 5 years.
 
Cabinet96

Cabinet96

Hall of Fame Member
Circumstances also play a huge part. Klopp's Dortmund peaked when Bayern were having a bit of a poor spell, which decisively ended in 12/13 and he never got close to winning the Bundesliga again. In his first full season at Liverpool Conte got 93 points and in his 2nd City have gone 34/36. Falling short of those two by a reasonably significant margin isn't in itself a failure, because half of the sides that have won the Premier League would've done the same.
 
Cabinet96

Cabinet96

Hall of Fame Member
Apparently it really is the first time a team has got points from 4-0 down in Europe's top five leagues since Newcastle-Arsenal.
 
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