Dejan Lovren

[topscorer]

Mignolet has improved a lot but his kicking still sucks. I still think he isn't good enough to be in a team aspiring to be champions but he has improved a lot and is justifying his place.

Lovren still looks extremely suspect and he would never have started if Sakho hadn't been injured.

It is telling that the young Can, whose main position is not a defender, was moved in order to accommodate our most expensive defender.

Toure was the only other option but I think he would have been too slow.

All in all the defense looked a lot worse yesterday than it has done for the past few weeks and the clean sheet was in no small part down to luck and problems Southampton have had scoring (wasn't this the third home game without a goal for them?)

We got away with it but he'll be back on the bench for the next game IMO

[frank the tank]

Lovren and lallana.....we'd take our money back in a heartbeat if we had the chance. Even 65% of what we paid.

The rest of the signings - even Mario - then im not so sure....

[Tee]

I like Lallana and think he will still be a key player for us. Lovren is just an absolute disaster of a signing in comparison.

[Rowan]

Lovren and lallana.....we'd take our money back in a heartbeat if we had the chance. Even 65% of what we paid.

The rest of the signings - even Mario - then im not so sure....

Agreed. I'd take £20 million of the £46m as Lallana is ****ing great and Lovren is proper dreadful. So bad he's not even going to acquire cult status. Lovren might come good. But then if my auntie had balls she'd be Bob Hope.

[RichC]

No issues with Lallana at all thought the occasion got to him a bit yesterday but he's a good player and has the ability to chip in with some important goals. Lovren however just looks out of his depth and seems so nervous not to make a mistake that he makes silly errors.

As Muddled said earlier it was telling how he swapped Can and Lovren over for yesterday's game

[Lecter]

Lovren and lallana.....we'd take our money back in a heartbeat if we had the chance. Even 65% of what we paid.

The rest of the signings - even Mario - then im not so sure....

Haha you bleeding joker

Lovren is utter ****e but Lallana I just dont get your vitriol regarding him

Maybe we did pay a little too much for him but hes contributed this season

[Mike]

You'd think we conceded five yesterday the way some people are going on about his performance.

Don't think he did too much wrong all things considered. Had the odd hiccup but then again so did Can and Skrtel.

If you'd have offered me yesterday's performance from Lovren beforehand I'd have taken it. Since coming back he's done what is required and done a job. Ok so he's no Sakho but that doesn't mean he can't fill in when needed.

Encouraging to see he is steadily improving and hasn't been the cluster**** he was at the start of the season - despite what some people are saying who must have it in for him regardless. I'm not a fan of Lovren, but I'm willing to give him time to recover and regroup which he's showing signs of, of late.

[danperkins]

Lallana will be excellent for LFC, he's just been unlucky with injuries & it's been stop start for him....very talented guy. Lovren has been an epic disaster.

[RedReet]

You'd think we conceded five yesterday the way some people are going on about his performance.

Don't think he did too much wrong all things considered. Had the odd hiccup but then again so did Can and Skrtel.

If you'd have offered me yesterday's performance from Lovren beforehand I'd have taken it. Since coming back he's done what is required and done a job. Ok so he's no Sakho but that doesn't mean he can't fill in when needed.

Encouraging to see he is steadily improving and hasn't been the cluster**** he was at the start of the season - despite what some people are saying who must have it in for him regardless. I'm not a fan of Lovren, but I'm willing to give him time to recover and regroup which he's showing signs of, of late.

I think people are forgetting that our other CB's that look so solid now, were far from convincing when we first changed to 3 at the back. Our first clean sheet was a very fortunate one against Burnley, not too dissimilar to yesterday's, but the result was all that mattered. Since then the players have grew in confidence and improved week by week, the more familiar they became with the new system.

Lovren obviously hasn't been playing and was thrown in at the deep end yesterday, so all things considered, I think he did well. Don't get me wrong, if he plays like that every week, we may have problems, but I see no reason why we won't see a similar improvement in him now if he gets the opportunity to play a few games back to back. Since we moved to 3 at the back, barring the United game, Lovren has made 2 starts and 4 subs appearances, resulting in 6 wins and no goals conceded. It may only add up to just over 2 ½ games, but it’s encouraging nonetheless and I think condsidering the turnaround we’ve seen in some of our other players, Lovren shouldn’t be written off just yet.

[The Birdman]

Thought Lovren was ok considering he's been dropped the team has been flying without him playing and his comeback game was away to Southampton.

The relevance of Can playing left hand side is that he can move into midfield when Sakho comes back in keeping Lovren on the right side of the 3.

I still think his biggest problem is he's trying too hard to impress or to justify the fee, he just needs to settle down and be a bit calmer.

Mingolet and Skrtel played well, they all did really but we're now wining and using the squad. Not reliant on 1 or 2 players every week.

[Lecter]

You'd think we conceded five yesterday the way some people are going on about his performance.

Don't think he did too much wrong all things considered. Had the odd hiccup but then again so did Can and Skrtel.

If you'd have offered me yesterday's performance from Lovren beforehand I'd have taken it. Since coming back he's done what is required and done a job. Ok so he's no Sakho but that doesn't mean he can't fill in when needed.

Encouraging to see he is steadily improving and hasn't been the cluster**** he was at the start of the season - despite what some people are saying who must have it in for him regardless. I'm not a fan of Lovren, but I'm willing to give him time to recover and regroup which he's showing signs of, of late.

The thing is on another day we could have conceded a couple of goals or at least conceded a penalty and possibly our keeper might have gotten sent off

I am not saying all that is down to Lovren but we looked less assured at the back than we have done

A few weeks ago there was some posts on here claiming that it was the system change that made us look better and not that we also had a change in personnel along with the change in system

For me we have had a system change that has been complimented by the change in personnel that happened around that time

Injuries have forced us to bring back some of those players that were dropped at that time and although results have gone our way our performance levels have dropped, we also look a little more vulnerable

[Lecter]

I think people are forgetting that our other CB's that look so solid now, were far from convincing when we first changed to 3 at the back. Our first clean sheet was a very fortunate one against Burnley, not too dissimilar to yesterday's, but the result was all that mattered. Since then the players have grew in confidence and improved week by week, the more familiar they became with the new system.

Lovren obviously hasn't been playing and was thrown in at the deep end yesterday, so all things considered, I think he did well. Don't get me wrong, if he plays like that every week, we may have problems, but I see no reason why we won't see a similar improvement in him now if he gets the opportunity to play a few games back to back. Since we moved to 3 at the back, barring the United game, Lovren has made 2 starts and 4 subs appearances, resulting in 6 wins and no goals conceded. It may only add up to just over 2 ½ games, but it’s encouraging nonetheless and I think condsidering the turnaround we’ve seen in some of our other players, Lovren shouldn’t be written off just yet.

There are two things that worry me about Lovren

Firstly positionally he is terrible and no matter what system you use players have to have some positional nous

Secondly is his propensity to dive in to challenges

Personally I think hes done better the last few games, but it was hard to do much worse and long term I would hope his involvement would be minimal

[RichC]

The positional stuff is something that can be improved, Skrtel is a prime example of this.

The jumping into challenges though is a worry he did it a few times yesterday with no hope of getting near the ball although again Skrtel has been guilty of this in the past but is something he's really improved upon as well so much so that most of the balls he's been in for of late he's won.

I agree though if we have a fully fit defensive unit to pick from I'd want minimal first team action for him

[Lecter]

I am not sure its that easy to improve positionally

A lot of it is intuitive

[RedReet]

There are two things that worry me about Lovren

Firstly positionally he is terrible and no matter what system you use players have to have some positional nous

Secondly is his propensity to dive in to challenges

Personally I think hes done better the last few games, but it was hard to do much worse and long term I would hope his involvement would be minimal

I don’t disagree. I posted recently about my concerns about his suitability in a back 3 and why Johnson may be preferred and I was more concerned yesterday when I seen Sakho out than Sturridge, but to be fair to Lovren he has did ok in recent weeks and some of the recent cricicism/abuse is harsh to say the least.