Liverpool Thread

Re: Liverpool Thread

You guys did alright last night. So long as you dont commit suicide in Italy you are basically through.

I still dont understand why you guys play Lucas? I think he is one of the Dodgiest Midfield players ive ever seen!
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

If we would half decent at Set Pieces we'd probably of put 4 past them last night, even 11v11.

I can't see Inter scoring 3 against us, i really can't

Yes they are capable of tonking anyone and everyone but they will be under immense pressure and our defensive record in Europe is second to none. As long as the key players are fit for that game, I'm confident we can nick a goal on the counter giving that Torres will have a lot more space.

Funny, I thought Lucas was brilliant last night.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Lucas is an exceptional talent and will be a world class player, trust us on that DJ. Last night wasn't one of his better games, true, but we've seen enough of him already to see he's got unbelievable talent. And remember he's only 19 and learning a very different style of play to what he's used to.

Shame he didn't do so well against Inter, they were one of the teams he turned down to sign for us. Would've been nice to play well and show them what they missed out on.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

I agree, I read Gerrard's book, where he says that his aim is to get a 'Well done' from Rafa. He also pointed out that Ged was much more closer, and asked him about family etc. While Rafa only thought about the game on the pitch and nothing else. Whole Chelsea think was made up, but Gerrard is a Liverpool supporter. He realized that didn't he? And made a public apology. But Gerrard is a sulker, no doubt about it. And I think the Everton incident sparked the whole thing. Gerrard didn't care if we won, but he wanted that he himself won the match on his own.

But letting Gerrard go? Surely not Dags. Gerrard is Mr. Liverpool. He and Carra are the heartbeat of the team. He is not really the great player he's made out to be (don't get me wrong, he's awesome, but very inconsistent), but Liverpool = Gerrard. But then again, I thought the same about Owen. But really, I can't imagine a Liverpool without Gerrard.

At the same time, I would be devastated if Rafa left as well. Surely, he deserves another year at least. Rafa is Liverpool class through and through, and honestly, which other manager in the world, who is available has a CV as impressive as him? Mourinho? Lippi?

I assure you Mourinho would not be greeted happily by the fans, plus he's going to Barca anyways. And Lippi doesn't want to coach in England. They you have the list of Hiddink, Prandelli etc, great coaches, but they will require another 2-3 years to settle in.

The best situation would be that Gerrard and Rafa solve there disputes, DIC come in, back Rafa in the transfer market, and get Rafa a no. 2, who can communicate with the players like Ged did, but leave the football stuff to Rafa. Let the no.2 do the man management.

Dilemma's indeed....

DJ Doc4 said:
I still dont understand why you guys play Lucas? I think he is one of the Dodgiest Midfield players ive ever seen!
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:shock:

And you rate Anderson? :shock:
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

DJ Doc4 said:
You guys did alright last night. So long as you dont commit suicide in Italy you are basically through.

I still dont understand why you guys play Lucas? I think he is one of the Dodgiest Midfield players ive ever seen!
Click to expand...

Are you sure you're watching the right Lucas? He's neat on the ball. He's a very good passer and he defends well. I think he's a very good player.

Anyway, amazing night. What a strike by Gerrard. Tie ain't over 'til its over though.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

I also thought Lucas was shambolic yesterday. Couldn't get a pass right to save his life and was lost in midfield that was dominated by Masch.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

He had on off day yesterday, but was still decent. But he's been absolute class for us before.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Ah, ok. Was the first time I saw him play, so I can't judge him on one performance solely.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

DJ Doc4 did you watch Liverpool's Lucas or did you watch some other Lucas... he's quite a find... one for the future thats for sure... He did his job while he was on with masch... kudos Liverpool... great game totally killed Inter....
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

very good post, tiktiktiktik ;)

actually i read many good points brought by many of u, guys... of course someone pushes a bit to far, but it's pretty normal, coz liverpool was coming from a bad period so yesterday's victory must have been such a good relief.

good victory... i' not saying "deserved" victory just coz i think every result is always deserved....
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little note
i read somewhere Peter Eyres talking about milan and liverpool robbing each others in the past few years. Well i couldn't disagree more, Peter. i think liverpool and milan deserved both results.. their win and their loss.... football is not a beauty contest. it's not about who creates more scoring chances, or who plays more attractive footie.... football is about scoring goals, and avoiding your opponents to score.
u got to set up an offensive strategy to surprise your opponents and predict your opponent's strategy, displacing the most appropriate line up to keep them harmless. if u are able do both things then u win... pretty simple. u might win coz u did the right choices....or maybe u might win coz your opponent didn't take the right decisions... or because your players wanted to win more than your opponents....
it doesn't matter. in each of theese cases...u deserve to win.
so IMO there are no undeserved winners or loosers. football is much more complicated than most of the fans usually think... but this is probably the only "simple" thing in football....
btw Peter i'm not trying to correct u, of course. that's just my opinion and i just wanted to express it ;)
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as i wrote before, the causes of a result can be pretty different. and, if u wanna be objective u always have to consider the viewpoints of both teams.
otherwise u might exagerate. u might go too far in praising (or blaming) your team, if u don't keep in your mind that there are 2 teams on the pitch.
i'm saying this coz i noticed some guys are talking about dominating the opponent, dominating the midfield. on the other side, some guys are talking about a fantastic defensive performance by inter.
both theese statements are wrong.

liverpool didn't dominate the midfield. the word "dominate" implies the presence of someone else...u can dominate somebody if u have somebody to dominate in front of u. but if u're alone, who are u supposed to dominate?
that's the point. liverpool didn't face any opposition at midfield yesterday, because there wasn't anybody..

maxwell is not a winger, he's a left back, an offensive left back, sure, but still a left back. and what happens when u put a left back at midfield? he will naturally tend to stay as deep (in his own midfield) as possible. so yesterday inter played with 2 left backs, fighting for the same spot; chivu and maxwell. and this brought chivu to move at the centre .... (then, after matrix red card, chivu "officially" became inter's left internal cb).
The funniest thing is that this was the first time mancini tried something so stupid. he always put chivu at midfield, as internal centre\left midfieder, and maxwell as left back. this way chivu provides coverage at midfield, leaving spaces for maxwell overlaps. and maxwell, starting his action from inter's box, can take advantage of his acceleration.
why did mancini decided for such a silly and "untested" change of positions??? i don't know. but sure it was a nice gift to rafa.

stankovic was a ghost, exactly as in his previous matches in serie a. he clearely needs a lot of training sessions to regain a decent condition. definitely it was not appropriate to risk him in such an important match.
jimenez and cesar were out, ok. but what about figo? i know, he just came out of an injury... but so does stankovic.... and i can't believe figo is in a worse condition than stankovic.. because i can't even figure out how could somebody be in a worse shape than stankovic.

cambiasso and zanetti were fantastic yesterday.... but they didn't play at midfield. they looked more like "advanced sweepers", staying deep in their own midfield (too deep).
they did an awesome job, containing torres, anticipating kuyt and closing the door to babel. they did an awesome job "cleaning the box".... but each time they got the ball on their foot, they did those useless long passes (wich turned into ball possession loss). this way they raised liverpool confidence, inviting the reds to press higher and to push even more. on the other side, this way, inter defense didn't have a second to take a breathe, and had to work hard for the whole match.
it wasn't just cambiasso's and zanetti's fault, of course. they kept doing those long passes, becaus there wasn't anybody close to them, there wasn't anybody along the midfield line, so they had to try to reach ibra and cruz with those passes... but ibra and cruz were alone upfront, so it was a pretty easy job for the whole liverpool defensive line con contain them.

tv commentators and pundits usually say that it's mostly important to keep the distance between midfield and defence "short". and that's true.
but there's a difference between being close each others and being adjacent.
when defence and midfield are close each others, the midfielders can filter the opponents plays and receive clean short passes from the cbs, wich helps the cbs getting rid of the pressure.
but when the midfielders are too close (adjacents, contiguous) to the cbs, then they can't help the cbs anymore. they can't offer the cbs an easy target for short passes. the midfielder can't push the game in the opponents midfield. this is a terrific tactical mistake. this is the difference between being conservative and balanced. yesterday inter wasn't balanced at all. they were conservative, they gifted the whole midfield to mascherano and company, putting in serious troubles inter defensive line and forcing matrix, cordoba and chivu to a backbreaking work.

a good defense begins from the midfield line. So, gifting the midfield to liverpool, inter's defence was everything but good yesterday.
i agree that cordoba, matrix and maicon were fantastic yesterday. but this is talking about individual performances. A good defence instead is not "composed" by many great individual performances. a good defense is composed by an appropriate line up.
a good defense must fill, occupy the spaces, while yesterday inter left those spaces free, giving liverpool the chance to besiege inter's box.

a side note about maicon: he defended pretty good yesterday. but he's not a defending sideback. he's a "flying sideback". forcing him to stay deep was a suicide move by mancini (and i'm absolutely sure it was mancini the one who told him to stay deep, coz maicon would never play that way. he just has to push foward, coz that's his nature).
this way mancini litterally "invited" babel to push. i really can't understand what mancini was thinking.

another big mancini's mistake was his offensive line up.
his strategy was pretty evident. he wanted to stay deep in his own midfield, attracting liverpool's midfielder close to inter's box, to hit them with counter attacks (that's why liverpool didn't dominate.... liverpool players just took what mancini decided to concede them...and this is not "dominating" ;)).

mancini's gameplan wasn't wrong, imo. afterall he had no reason to push, to dominate the game. actually, if we consider that this was the first leg, that inter was playing away, and that liverpool players were expected to give their best (to give some relief to their fans, after that shameful loss), mancini's strategy was probably the most appropriate.
but he didn't pick the right players neither he choose the right line up to apply that strategy on the pitch.
If u wanna base your strategy on counters, then Cruz is not your man. Suazo should be your man. when u see that the 2 fowards are all alone upfront, u should move ibra backwards, using him as a "bridge" between cambiasso and Suazo (since stankovic was absolutely invisible).

so to sum up, i'd say that yesterday's result comes from inter's faults, more than liverpool merits.
DagsJT, i'm not trying to bring liverpool down or to underestimate their merits. i'm a neutral. i don't support inter neither liverpool (and i don't give a fuck about the italian teams going through. the only thing i care about is watching some nice football). my comments just grow out of what i saw at the television yesterday, and that's all.
if inter would have tried to push, without success, then we could say that inter didn't push coz liverpool didn't allow them to do it. but that's not what happened. inter never tried to take control of the match, because they based their strategy on counters..... but mancini picked the wrong men to play a counter strategy, and, most important, inter played with 1 man less for the whole match...... and i'm not talking about materazzi. i'm talking about stankovic, who clearely is not yet able to play again (inter missed dejan much more than matrix yesterday).

liverpool sure played a good match, and they deserve credit for beating inter.....
but if we deeply analyze the match.... we'll realise that liverpool forced inter in his own box for the whole match, without creating any serious scoring chances.... well, actually they did create some scoring chances.... but it was nothing, compared to their ball possession (70% :shock:).
especially during the first 60 minutes liverpool's performance, talking about attacking, was really poor. not even 1 clean scoring chance from insed the box, despite all the ball possession time, despite the pressure they put over inter's defence, despite 51 crosses (how can u cross the ball 51 times without creating a serious threat to julio cesar! this is crazy :shock:), despite 10 corner kicks......

beating inter sure it's better than loosing against barnsley...... but if we consider how bad inter played yesterday... well it's not that big step foward. :roll:

one last note about materazzi. the red card was just ridiculous. the first yellow card wasn't even a foul (torres clearely dived). the second yellow card was harsh too. it was just a slight holding (we see hundreds of them every week in premiership). it was a foul, that's for sure... but it wasn't yellow card worthy.
the only reason why materazzi was sent out yesterday is the same reason why many people here keeps calling him a "cunt", despite not knowing him: prejudice. and this is really sad :roll:
no need to say, anyway, that this doesn't decrease liverpool's merits. as Peter already pointed out, even before matrix went out, it was pretty evident mancini messed up inter formation (and probably even with 11 players on the pitch, inter would have lost).

btw congrats guys;). it will be very, very, very hard for inter to go through now.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

:applause::applause::applause:

One of the best posts (football-wise)I had the pleasure of reading recentely!
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Bloody hell mate, talk about a large post! :lol:

Oh, and cheers for the comments Blue, nice to hear you giving us praise for a change ;)
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

We've got the 2nd leg to play first Delta, then I expect it to be broadcasted on Evo-Web TV :)
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

I agree, we werent brilliant. But we havent been confident for a long time, we were under pressure to get two goals. Put simply we had to get 2 goals as a minimum in the circumstances. We did it, give us credit.

Inter approached it all wrong. So what, Rafa exploited it. This is what European football is about. Spotting weaknesses and exploiting them. Bringing on Pennant for instance. Instructing Finnan to get futher forward. Lucas and Gerrard got much quicker in the 2nd half and their distribution really piled on the pressure. Thats why I was impressed with Lucas. He did some really quick turns and he doesn't dwell on passes. He gave the ball away twice but it was down to the receiving player not playing at the same tempo at he was. He keeps it simple while Gerrrard looks for penetrative passes (to torres for example for his shot on the turn)

Our crossing was diabolical. No news there. Every man on the planet knows Liverpool lack quality wide players with consistent delivery on them.

For most of the game we were playing against the inform team in europe, an ITALIAN team, where they parked the bus, however, we had some of our most creative players on the bench who only came on until late, and did the job. Personally i was screaming out for Benayoun to come on, I really thought he'd unlock the defence.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

delta619 said:
wonder what happened to plan m's eating poo thing?? imagine it being posted on youtube...
Click to expand...

Oh don't worry, I'll cook it up in the oven and post it on YouTube my friend. ;)

Remember; Inter only have to score TWICE in the San Siro to take it to extra-time - don't start sucking each other's dicks yet! ;)
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

sucking each other's dicks?? what a mature come-back... somehow I had a doubt you would say that line... wait till the next leg... you the cook man I mean chef.. cook it up in oven, garnish it, toss it up in salads hahaa... waiting for that link on YouTube plan m....
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Peter Eyres said:
I agree, we werent brilliant. But we havent been confident for a long time, we were under pressure to get two goals. Put simply we had to get 2 goals as a minimum in the circumstances. We did it, give us credit.
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and i'm giving u credit, mate. football is not about being brilliant. football is abut performing better than your opponent. that's what liverpool did yesterday, and that's why the result was fair (as i remarked before the results are always fair, imo).

Inter approached it all wrong. So what, Rafa exploited it. This is what European football is about. Spotting weaknesses and exploiting them
Click to expand...

i absolutely agree with u ;) yesterday inter showed some weaknesses they already showed before (in the last month, except their last match, they did almost the same mistakes).
and liverpool took advantage of those mistakes, so congrats :applause:


DagsJT said:
Bloody hell mate, talk about a large post!
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i know mate. i've got some serious problems in containing my posts lenght.
but afterall it's not easy to sum up 90 minutes of football in just a few words.... especially if english is your 3rd\4th language ;)


Abhishek said:
Screw you Ben, Liverpool 2-0 Inter
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:lol::lol:
i don't care about inter mate;)
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

delta619 said:
sucking each other's dicks?? what a mature come-back... somehow I had a doubt you would say that line... wait till the next leg... you the cook man I mean chef.. cook it up in oven, garnish it, toss it up in salads hahaa... waiting for that link on YouTube plan m....
Click to expand...

Oh grow up mate! :lol: It was a figure of speech.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

holly christ, its as if you played an 11 man inter. For the first 10 to 15 minutes of the match liverpool were flying around like ferries on crack. Then the game settles down, inter starts probing a little.... then materazzi gets sent off(i didnt think the first offense deserved a yellow). From then on Mancini employs the dreaded padlock. But what choice did he have, he had to somehow make the field smaller, so his players could run less. Thus he pulled everyone back before the half-way line into the padlock and was hoping for quick counters. Liverpool were going to have an open man somewhere to pass the ball too, finding that open man would sureley tire out the inter players. The padlock seemend to be working, then for some reason he throws veira in the mix as an attacking midfielder, which put less pressure on liverpools back four to distribute but left the wings wide open. This is when the trouble began for inter, they obvisoubly were getting tired mentally and physically chasing the ball all over the pitch, and they conceeded two goals that both containend defensive lapses. NOW im not saying that werent well deserved, they actually were very deserved under the circumstances. The pool players kept moving the ball around quickly and accuratley as much as they could for most of the game, realy wearing down the inter defense and midfield(i doubt zanetti and cambiasso can walk today), the strategy worked and pool has a 2-0 lead. BUT i cant help to think the ref runiend this game. I hate materazzi as much as the next guy but did anyone really think both offenses deserved yellow cards? The first one should have been a warning and the second a yellow. The San Siro is not an easy place to play so i would not get too confident just yet...
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

2nd one did. First one didn't. But the way he was going, he could have got a 3rd in the next minute. Forget the game, the Inter players were dirty!
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Just saw Carra's post match interview. He praised Rafa a lot, which is great to see. At least everything's rosy with Carra. Let's hope he can sort out him mate.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Gomito I sort of see what you are saying but L'pool deserved the win; simple as that. They carefully passed the ball & waited for an opening. They didn't go "Gung-ho" because there was no need - Inter put 10 men behind the ball for most of the match.

As for Inter's players - they were shocking. Vieira alone handled the ball 2 or 3 times.
 
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