Liverpool vs PSG - Champions League (Group Game 1)

[The_weatherman]

They should have some of the better players like Verratti back for it, but our team will have had even more time to gel and get into it's collective groove and our new boys will have had that bit more time to get up to speed.


So as much improvement that PSG will have between now and then, so should we.


If we beat Napoli in our next CL game, then we would be shoving PSG and Napoli into a position where they need to go all out to beat the other in their games in order to avoid being the team that finishes third in the group.

The room for improvement in our team is actually a bit scary

[The_weatherman]

Not an important point, but half the outfield players yesterday were English and 6/11 were British.

[Shaggy]

[ame]https://twitter.com/Jon_LeGossip/status/1042336361766891520[/ame]

[danperkins]

Just looks like what some crappy thing values squads at not what they actually cost. Mancs are cunts, get new friends.

pmsl

[Assassin]

Harsh on everyone but Neymar and Cavani

[danperkins]

Hendo was great, picking them apart in the middle

https://twitter.com/Liverpool_World/...71576110948352

brilliant performance

[topscorer]

The return game in Paris is going to be a bit tasty

I think it's going to be a dead rubber for us, I can see this being PSG vs Liverpool reserves. And we will win.

[gratziani]

https://twitter.com/Jon_LeGossip/sta...36361766891520

6 for Wijnaldum and Milner , yeah righto

[Gray]

I think it's going to be a dead rubber for us, I can see this being PSG vs Liverpool reserves. And we will win.

Hope not, I'm going.

[RedReet]

8 for Trent. Played like he had '4 lungs'.

[topscorer]

Hope not, I'm going.

You'll enjoy it much more [emoji16], all the fun minus the stress

[Liverpool]

did the tv show mbappe giving it loads to the kop? after he scored and celebrated with the team, he turned to us rather pleased with himself, only to slowly trundle off at full time

[Cormack74]

Watching again earlier l feel ever so slightly sorry for Tuchel.

I'd be really surprised if last night was his preferred tactics but equally I'm doubtful if that mob would ever play his preferred tactics, it just isn't in their DNA.

I suppose if he walks away this season or next sacked or otherwise, he will still have won the French title and he'll have several million in the bank but it must be frustrating managing a team that's unlikely to ever have his identity.

[dom9]

Watching again earlier l feel ever so slightly sorry for Tuchel.

I'd be really surprised if last night was his preferred tactics but equally I'm doubtful if that mob would ever play his preferred tactics, it just isn't in their DNA.

I suppose if he walks away this season or next sacked or otherwise, he will still have won the French title and he'll have several million in the bank but it must be frustrating managing a team that's unlikely to ever have his identity.

PSG are not playing Tuchel football. It may not even be football

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/sep/19/psg-liverpool-thomas-tuchel-football

Leaving three forwards to float about and occasionally pull off a trick may be enough in Ligue 1 – but not when it comes to elite level. How have PSG not learned?

A net €750m spent in eight years and that’s all you get? Success without money is all but impossible in the modern game, but wealth brings no guarantees. Football still has the capacity to make the richest of men seem very foolish if they pursue glamour at the expense of substance – a heartening moral, so long as you don’t think too closely about the source of the wealth that is paying for Neymar to squander his immense talents in an entitled fug of self-indulgence.

For Paris Saint-Germain, there has been no development. The lessons of last season have not been learned. All the flaws that undid PSG against Real Madrid in last season’s last 16 were there again at Anfield on Tuesday.

Leaving three forwards high up the pitch to float about and occasionally pull off a trick may be enough in Ligue 1 – given PSG have begun the season with five successive wins and have scored at least three goals in every game, it demonstrably is – but it is no way to play against proper opposition. The Air Jordan branding may be intended to add an extra shot of glamour, but in context it appears to say little more than: “Please nutmeg me while I appeal half-heartedly for offside.”

There is an irony to this, of course, that PSG’s domination of the French league is precisely what prevents them being truly competitive in Europe. This is the great paradox of the financial structures of the modern game and it is one of the factors that will probably lead, sooner rather than later, to some sort of pan-national super-league. When there is no challenge, it’s only natural complacency sets in. When there are no predators at home, why would you flee the red-faced men with sticks and guns? When there is no peril in your league, why would you bother to track Trent Alexander-Arnold?

Is Thomas Tuchel happy with this? This, after all, is a man who grew up in the hard-pressing world of the Bundesliga. He was regarded as the new Jürgen Klopp, a manager forged at a similar school. He is somebody who dined with Pep Guardiola after his Dortmund side had lost 5-1 against Bayern, whose love of the theory of juego de posición outweighed the sting of defeat. There can be no version of that conception of the game that features three men standing 50 yards upfield from their midfield, barely raising a jog as a defender surges past them again. PSG football is not Tuchel football; it may not even be football.

In the end, perhaps it was too easy. The second half became a stroll, despite Thomas Meunier halving Liverpool’s lead five minutes before half-time, hooking in a loose ball in the box. Almost 40 minutes of it had passed and PSG not only hadn’t had a shot, they had managed only eight passes in the 30 yards closest to Liverpool’s goal. The game had taken on a weird aspect, as Liverpool, charged for an epic, found it a stroll and found their own focus slipped as a consequence. A lax pass from Mohamed Salah, a quick turnover and Neymar had laid in Kylian Mbappé to equalise. Indulged they may be, but they are still good players. Give them a chance and they will still take it, just as the most decadent of the late Romans would still eat a grape so long as you peeled it first and popped it in their mouths.


But most damning of all was what followed. PSG had been gifted a point. They had got away with one of the most disgracefully negligent performances a club of their resources has ever put on. They could go back to Paris and fuel their self-regard with a useful away point. All they had to do was compete for the final seven minutes plus injury time. But they could not.

Liverpool, to their immense credit, were able to re-engage. And when placed under pressure again, PSG’s swagger became a whimper. Look at Roberto Firmino’s winner and count how many PSG players have turned away rather than attempt a block: these are basics of defending, of professional self-respect, and they cannot do them.

Each season the question seems to become more fundamental: what are PSG? A vanity project for Neymar? A strangely misplaced Nike marketing ploy? A laundromat for Qatar’s international reputation? They’re certainly not a football club in any traditional sense. And if they are supposed to be an agent of Qatari soft power, they really need to start emphasising the power aspect of that phrase rather than the soft.

[Cormack74]

I like that last para' - absolutely on the money.