Originally posted by fidget
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Like Chechen citizenship papers..Was muß, das muß. -
I liked the way Grujic addressed the ball and moved forward rather than just play it backwards to safety all the time. Definitely a player there.Originally posted by Fuzzy View Posthttps://twitter.com/arghappy/status/1026927446984151040
What did everyone think of Grujic? I thought he was class, especially in midfield but at CB also. Very composed, assured and willing to get stuff going, which is very encouraging. Hope he'll be a regular on the bench this year with lots of minutes, otherwise there's no point keeping him here.
If Milner isn't ready for West Ham, I'd have it so:
Alisson - TAA Phillips/Gomez VVD Robertson - Keita Wijnaldum Henderson - Salah Mane Firmino
Karius Fabinho Lovren Grujic Lallana Sturridge ShaqiriWas muß, das muß.Comment
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2 observations from pre season. Phillips could do a job if called upon. Shak is good enough to start.
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Philips looked really good last night (apart from the goal when the whole defence was caught napping) alongside VVD. What was surprising, he looked better alongside both Fabinho and then Grujic when they partnered him. If he continues like this he has a big future at the clubOriginally posted by Big-Red-Ed View PostComment
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Shaqiri and Sturridge will be very important for us this season, especially against the bus parkers.
The third goal demonstrated this, normally we would be pinging the ball backwards and forwards along the front of the buses, subsequently going nowhere. The ball from Shaqiri into the box was sublime and Sturridge has the game knowledge to know how to make use of the space in a packed defence, he just drifted in and deftly placed the header into the net
There were many examples of good football from both Shaqiri and Sturridge last night. One the stuck out yesterday. Sturridge picked the ball up in midfield and was being pressed by an opponent, a quick shuffle and flick of the foot and he put Ings in with a superb pass
For me, when the buses are parked and the keys are thrown away. These two have the abiltiy to be game changers for us this seasonComment
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The key question is were Torino parking the bus? Well?One tit for another.
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Yes, its a good question. Torino, were not out and out bus parkers last night. However, they are typical of the dogged blanket defence tactics used by Italian teams when they need to defend. Organised and difficult to break down, having said that we opened them up several times in the first half with our "first choice" attack. The second half was tighter but we still found plenty of opportunities to open them up, which bodes well for the seasonOriginally posted by BigChief View PostComment
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I think Fabinho has been struggling since day one. I will be surprised if he isn't on the bench on Sunday. He has plenty of time to find his feet with the talent we have in midfield.Are we winning?Comment
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Belotti has all the attributes to push on, and become a top class forward player, but he's being priced out of a big move. Think he'd be amazing under a quality coach.
I also wouldn't read too much into yesterday's game, given the 4 day gap until our first competitive matchday. Some of our passing and movement was so precise though, which was great.Comment
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Originally posted by Phoenix07 View Post
He's very impressive. We'd struggle to attract him due to the strength of our attack but he'd be a very able deputy for Firmino.Comment
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Originally posted by labourRed View Post
He's very impressive. We'd struggle to attract him due to the strength of our attack but he'd be a very able deputy for Firmino.
Or imagine him and Firmino in the same starting XI with the two usual suspects out wide
I don't hate people. I just feel better when they aren't around.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindednessComment
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Liverpool unluckiest Premier League team & Manchester United luckiest, says study.
Liverpool were the 'unluckiest' team in the Premier League last season while Manchester United were the 'luckiest', new research claims.
The study found Liverpool's 0-0 draw at home to Manchester United in October would have become a 1-0 win had the Reds been awarded a penalty
The Reds dropped 12 points in matches affected by wrongly disallowed goals or incorrect decisions on penalties and red cards, says a study conducted by ESPN, Intel and the University of Bath.
It says United gained six points over incidents that went in their favour.
Manchester City remain top in a new simulated table accounting for 'luck'.
However, the study found Huddersfield should have been relegated instead of Stoke when 'incorrect' refereeing decisions were taken into account.
It also found Brighton would have finished six places higher - moving up to ninth and earning an extra £11.5m in prize money on their return to the top flight.
Conversely, Leicester would have finished 14th instead of ninth, ending the season with £9.7m less in prize money.
Fourth-placed Liverpool would have swapped with second-placed United, and champions City fallen three points short of their 100 mark.
How did the 'Luck Index' work?
Last edited by Vermilion; 08-08-18, 04:56 PM.Comment
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Cheers BenderOriginally posted by Vermilion View Post
Liverpool unluckiest Premier League team & Manchester United luckiest, says study.
Liverpool were the 'unluckiest' team in the Premier League last season while Manchester United were the 'luckiest', new research claims.
The study found Liverpool's 0-0 draw at home to Manchester United in October would have become a 1-0 win had the Reds been awarded a penalty
The Reds dropped 12 points in matches affected by wrongly disallowed goals or incorrect decisions on penalties and red cards, says a study conducted by ESPN, Intel and the University of Bath.
It says United gained six points over incidents that went in their favour.
Manchester City remain top in a new simulated table accounting for 'luck'.
However, the study found Huddersfield should have been relegated instead of Stoke when 'incorrect' refereeing decisions were taken into account.
It also found Brighton would have finished six places higher - moving up to ninth and earning an extra £11.5m in prize money on their return to the top flight.
Conversely, Leicester would have finished 14th instead of ninth, ending the season with £9.7m less in prize money.
Fourth-placed Liverpool would have swapped with second-placed United, and champions City fallen three points short of their 100 mark.
How did the 'Luck Index' work?
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After 28 years, is it finally time for Liverpool to win the Premier League title?
Oliver Kay, Chief Football Correspondent
August 8 2018, 5:00pm,
The Times
It was 6pm on Tuesday night, 90 minutes before kick-off at Anfield, and Jürgen Klopp and James Milner went walkabout. Grinning from ear to ear, they wandered out through the crowds, attracting double-takes from middle-aged dads and their star-struck children.
Klopp made his way to a stage and told the awe-struck supporters gathering in front of him that Liverpool’s final pre-season friendly had been billed as the “people’s match” — a chance to show their supporters that “even though football is getting bigger, this club will never change”. An hour after the end of Liverpool’s 3-1 win over Torino, Klopp and his players were still pitchside, signing autographs for fans and posing for selfies. It is the type of exercise that the leading Premier League clubs prescribe as a matter of duty on those money-spinning trips to foreign fields, but all too rarely on home turf. By all accounts it was Klopp’s idea, another attempt to create the sense of communion he enjoyed at Borussia Dortmund, and it went down a storm.
One Liverpool official suggested on Tuesday that the mood around the club is the best he has known. “We had years of acrimony and infighting,” he says. “For the first time in years, everyone — owners, manager, players, fans — is pulling in the same direction. Everyone is smiling. That’s nearly all down to Klopp. He has unified the whole club.”
This autumn will mark the third anniversary of Klopp’s appointment. His studied diagnosis at the time was of a fanbase that was “a little bit too nervous, a little bit too pessimistic, a little bit too much in doubt”. He spoke of his mission to “change doubters into believers”. Now, with a stirring run to the Champions League final followed by the acquisitions of Alisson, Fabinho, Naby Keïta and Xherdan Shaqiri for a combined outlay of £166 million, the Liverpool manager is more concerned with trying to temper what he now calls “crazy expectations”. These sound like what Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea, Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham Hotspur and particularly José Mourinho at Manchester United might regard as first-world problems.
“The expectations of Liverpool fans are going into the stratosphere,” the club’s former captain and assistant manager Phil Thompson says. “I can’t explain highly enough how the goalkeeper situation, with the arrival of Alisson, has lifted everyone. We could all see it needed that change. Maybe we’ve been a bit too nice at times over recent years and, in Keïta, we’ve got that ‘nark’ we’ve needed in midfield. Along with everyone else, particularly the former players, I’m thrilled with what I’m seeing and I can’t wait for the season to start.”
Thompson stops himself and laughs. “It has been 28 years since we’ve won the league and, to be honest, ever since 1990, as daft as it will sound, I’ve always felt like we’ve had a chance of winning it. I suppose you could call it blind optimism at times. We thrilled everyone last season with the football we played . . . and we finished fourth. And then there’s Manchester City, who were absolutely exceptional last season, so it is going to take something unbelievable to win the league. But because of the football we played last season and the run to the Champions League final and the players Jürgen has signed, there is a real excitement.”
Their pre-season results include victories over Manchester City (2-1), Manchester United (4-1), Napoli (5-0) and now Torino (3-1). If anything, the impact made by the new signings — with Shaqiri again catching the eye on Tuesday — has been outweighed by the contributions of their established players. Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané, who were all involved in the World Cup, appear to have hit the ground running. So too has Daniel Sturridge, who, after his terrible injury problems over the past four seasons, has looked fit and sharp, scoring six goals and seemingly playing his way into Klopp’s plans.
It was a similar story last season, though, when they were unbeaten in pre-season, including a 3-0 victory away to Bayern Munich, only for optimism to fade as they won just three of their first nine Premier League matches – “and then you had people ringing in to talkSPORT to call for the manager’s head and you’re thinking: ‘What are you like? Where would we get another manager who compares to this guy?’,” Thompson says.
“The expectation can be difficult, though. After what we did under Gerard Houllier in 2000-01 [winning the FA Cup, the League Cup and the Uefa Cup, then winning the Community Shield and European Super Cup the following August] the expectation was absolutely huge. We finished second the next year and we were thinking: ‘This is it.’ And then, when it didn’t happen, there was such a downer and it became very difficult for us to right that. It was similar with Rafa Benítez after he finished second [in 2009] and wasn’t able to build on it. Then we finished second under Brendan Rodgers [in 2014] and again we fell away the next season. It’s not easy to make that next step.”
According to Neil Atkinson, host of the Anfield Wrap podcast, the title-or-bust atmosphere of the past couple of decades has given way to a different mood. “There is a lot of optimism, but it’s optimism about enjoying it — a feeling that we’re about to get our teeth into something we can really enjoy,” he says. “I think what a lot of people underestimate about last season is how much fun the whole thing was for us as supporters. I think this can difficult to put over for people outside the Liverpool bubble, but, for all the silliness and what might seem like over optimism, it’s more this feeling that we’re going to enjoy it. Whether it ends up with us winning something shiny, that’s massively down to what Manchester City do as well as what we do.”
At Liverpool of all clubs, though, is there not a demand for success — tangible, glittering trophy success — as well as having fun? “We definitely could really do with putting something on the sideboard, an FA Cup or a League Cup,” Atkinson says. “But the only thing that would really scratch the itch is the league title or the Champions League title. And you’ve got no option but to be level-headed when Manchester City have just got 100 points. We could get 90-something points and still finish second.
“There’s every chance Manchester City could get 100 points again. That’s how good they are. So rather than drive ourselves mad, the important thing now — and Jürgen Klopp has communicated it really well — is that we can’t only enjoy it if we win the league. We’ve probably had about as much fun over the past few seasons as it’s possible to have without winning something. There can’t only be one way of having fun in the Premier League. That would mean one team having fun and 19 teams not having fun. That would be madness.”
It would and there is no doubt that, under Klopp, Anfield is a happy place. Come kick-off against West Ham at 1.30pm on Sunday, though, the excitement and optimism will be at fever pitch. As was clear during his pre-match walkabout on Tuesday demonstrated, Klopp already enjoys Messianic status among Liverpool’s supporters. Leading them back to the promised land after 28 years, though, is easier said than done.Thanks very much for being ‘This Mornings’ Farmer’Comment
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Totally agree with all of that.
And, ironically, even though a big trophy would be nice, the atmosphere around the club is so great, the manager is so special, that I’m happy to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Good times indeed
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