Real Madrid vs LIVERPOOL - Champions League QF 1st leg

[Doc_Piptorious]

You're the son of a thousand fathers! All *******s like you! And your mother? Your mother... it's better not to talk of her...

all the way

Best quote from a film full of great quotes

[Doc_Piptorious]

Fab just looked knackered last night. Keita who was an absolute embarrassment & Gini who apart from one good burst forward was dreadful, we were completely dominated in there but we let it happen. We let two of the best passers in the game in Kroos & Modric have the ball the whole game without pressing or closing them down and we got punished for it. We brought Thiago on the get some sustained possession, that worked for about 10 mins and then he just made up the numbers.

Personally I can see Klopp playing the 4 lads up top and using Bobby to put pressure of the their deep lying play makers. Madrid are not a great side, we just let them dictate the midfield and gave them opportunities to pick holes in our weak spots & our main weak spots all season are "Ball over the top behind Trent & the space between Trent and the any one of the 400 CB's he has played with this season. The lack of communication last night was shocking and we allowed them to expose us.

Maybe they are not a great side, but they are still a really good team with a very strong squad.

Said it before the game that their form over the previous ten home games was really good despite their injuries in the back line. 5 goals conceded in ten games with a depleted back line is not the sign of an average team.


One of the biggest differences before the game started between the two teams was that their back up back line loked stronger than our back up back line. Up front we are pretty close (us shading that imo), in the middle I thought was where it would be won and lost but that was with me thinking we would be starting both Fab and Thiago.


What we got from the first whistle was them targeting the right side of our back line almost straight away. They went straight after Trent and Philips and kept doing that for most of the game. Think it was three times in the opening 12 minutes or so that Kabak had to come over into the RCB slot to guide a Madrid player out of play after Phillips did that thing of getting got up the pitch that he does a lot. Then Trent decided to get in on the act and start getting caught even further up the pitch and not busting a nut to get back, where Phillips at least tried to get back when he was out of position.

Did not help that Wijnaldum started the game misplacing passes and kept that up for the entre game. Keita was very poor for the time he was on the pitch and Fabinho had an average game.

Mane was muck up front and offered noting at all.

For me only three of the starting XI did well or deserved credit last night.

Salah played very well. He got the goal, he tried to set up players over and over and he bust a nut tracking back and doing defensive work all game long.

Kabak had a mostly solid game and he covered for Phillips a hell of a lot. What you could see with him last night was that he was our youngest player on the pitch and the one with the least experience of our club/system but looked like this is the level he is going to belong at.

Robertson I also thought looked ok last night. He shuttled up and down the pitch, but had his workload increased thanks to Mane losing the ball so often, Mane being ineffective when defending and also Wijnaldum losing the ball a hell of a lot on the left side.


The return leg I would not be starting Keita and Wijnaldum. I would have Thiago starting with Fabinho and one of Jones or Shaqiri in the more advanced role.

Mane up front is a problem too as Firmino simply is not offerening much more than Mane at the moment and Firmino as the AM does not have the pace to trouble Casemiro in their DM slot. Think with regards to Mane I would might think outside the box a bit and start with both Robertson and Tsimikas on the left flank and let them interchange all game.

I had thought of maybe Shaqiri out wide left if Jones went into the centre but think Shaqiri is better when he gets a more central role from which he can roam and link play or when he is in the wide right slot that he plays in for the Swiss team and that right slot is a no as we need Salah in it.

[wiw]

I thought the occasion got to a lot of players last night, Keita especially. He wasn't having a good game, but there was a moment where he miscontrolled the ball on the left edge of Madrid's box and his head completely fell off after that. Sadly though, mentality is what sets the top players apart from the decent ones. Think he may be in the last chance saloon. Some of the other lads need to have a long look at themselves too. They need to be doing more.

Not being funny though but rather than looking around in the tunnel and seeing Van Dijk and Henderson etc (confident leaders) they're looking and seeing Nat Phillips and Kabak who were playing the biggest games of their lives and were probably secretly bricking it. You're only as strong as your weakest link and all that. Our weakest links were playing next to each other up against Benzema

The only positives I can think of:

- we aren't out of it
- we know how mentally tough/weak some players are now
- we have to be looking at signing another front 3 player. Mane looks like he needs 2 months in Barbados

[Havors]

We need Bobby in for Mane and Jota on the left for the next game. Mane needs a wake up call, hes been ****e for months.

Keita is useless in a game were we dont have a lot of possession so he needs to sit out, although the possession may be a lot different at anfield.

We really missed Hendo in that midfield last night for his energy. Wini looked one of our better players. If hendo was fit I would drop Fab back to CB for next game but he isnt so we cant haha

The whole top and bottom of it is we looked lazy off the ball and panicked on it. We need a balls to the wall performance next week at have at them. Few cans of red bull and some illegal substances are needed.

[Peter_Griffin]

You can almost tell how the games going to go within the first few minutes of games recently. Against Madrid it was misplaced passes, no press and bad touches and that just continued for the first half. We haven’t got anyone out there leading for me, we miss someone talking and shouting at them. We seem too nice at times.

[Irishnev]

Fab just looked knackered last night. Keita who was an absolute embarrassment & Gini who apart from one good burst forward was dreadful, we were completely dominated in there but we let it happen. We let two of the best passers in the game in Kroos & Modric have the ball the whole game without pressing or closing them down and we got punished for it. We brought Thiago on the get some sustained possession, that worked for about 10 mins and then he just made up the numbers.

Personally I can see Klopp playing the 4 lads up top and using Bobby to put pressure of the their deep lying play makers. Madrid are not a great side, we just let them dictate the midfield and gave them opportunities to pick holes in our weak spots & our main weak spots all season are "Ball over the top behind Trent & the space between Trent and the any one of the 400 CB's he has played with this season. The lack of communication last night was shocking and we allowed them to expose us.

I thought Mane wouldn’t play and Jota would have replaced him but we missed Bobby being a nuisance on Kroos and Modric. They had so much time to clip the ball into the gap between Trent and Nat so Zidane got his tactics spot on but we made it easy for them

That’s the most disappointing thing - our entire season was on this tie and we played so passively. Someone should have kicked Kroos up into the air but instead we allowed him time to stroll around. When you factor in the individual errors then it’s our season in a microcosm

[Doc_Piptorious]

I thought the occasion got to a lot of players last night, Keita especially. He wasn't having a good game, but there was a moment where he miscontrolled the ball on the left edge of Madrid's box and his head completely fell off after that. Sadly though, mentality is what sets the top players apart from the decent ones. Think he may be in the last chance saloon. Some of the other lads need to have a long look at themselves too. They need to be doing more.

Not being funny though but rather than looking around in the tunnel and seeing Van Dijk and Henderson etc (confident leaders) they're looking and seeing Nat Phillips and Kabak who were playing the biggest games of their lives and were probably secretly bricking it. You're only as strong as your weakest link and all that. Our weakest links were playing next to each other up against Benzema

The only positives I can think of:

- we aren't out of it
- we know how mentally tough/weak some players are now
- we have to be looking at signing another front 3 player. Mane looks like he needs 2 months in Barbados

Thing is I do not think they turned out to be our weakest links.

Yes Phillips is massively out of his depth at this level but last night from the first whistle it was hard to pick a single weakest link given how the quartet of Wijnaldum, Keita, Mane, and Trent started the game. For me the more senior players who

Kabak was certainly not our weakest link last night and did far more right than wrong over 90 odd minutes.

Think the same arguement can be made about last night as for our really woeful run of form from January onwards and that is that those that let the team down the most or who proved to be the weak links were not the reserve players standing in or the new players thrying to settle in, but rather a number of long established senior players at the club who have underperformed badly, particularly since January, and whose performances pretty much gave the stand ins and new guys a mountain to climb.

Last night was that all over again. Senior players who have all played to a very high level and in high pressure games many times over, all stinking the place out of it.

The two weak links, Phillips and Kabak. Kabak looked like one of the better players for us on the night and Phillips despite not being good enough on the night did something many of the senior players did not and that is not letting his head drop. Many times last night he was caught out and you could see the guy trying harder after a mistake, it was just that he did not have another level to push up to.

Our senior guys like Wijnaldum, Keita and Mane have so much more ability than Phillips, so much more experience, so much more talent and not one of the three seemed to be able to get fired up by theur mistakes and try to force something like Phillips tried to. Unlike Phillips those three have the talent to go up a level.

Then we had Trent who simply lost the head a number of times. Seemed to be trying to start a fued with Vinicius all night and then found out that Vinicius was more than ready to be scrappy and snide back as well as being willing to keep going at anyone that was in front of him.

Trent is a young player but he is very experienced and talented for any age let alone his age, but Vinicius is even younger again and not as though Trent was being outclassed and outsmarted by a wily experienced pro (although Vinicius is stupidly talented). It was on Trent to be the leader on his side of the back line and once it became obvious that Vincius had the sort of pace and direct running he has, then Tent needed to recognise that threat and stay closer to Philips and not just stand watching after he went on a run up the pitch.

What did bother me was every time Trent went on a big run up the pitch, Phillips seemed to follow him up about two thirds of the same distance. Leaving Kabak to have to come across from his own LCB slot and marshall players out of play where one from our RCB and RB should have been. This was happening from the third or fourth minute of play.

[Mark79]

Agree, Kabak is not a weak link and was one of our only anywhere near decent performers last night.

The high line defence with almost zero pressing from midfield is killing us with easy balls over the top.
Our defence is being hamstrung by our tactics.

[Fredo]

Apparently one of our players got racially abused on social media last night.

[Fredo]

Actually, the players are Trent and Naby.

[Buzzo]

It seems to be every team getting their black players racially abused, every game. Taking a knee in an empty stadium is not working.

[Fierce]

We looked miles, miles better when Naby came off. Had we started with Thiago I think we'd have fared much better

Trent is bizarre. If someone is playing ****, the smart thing would be to get back to doing the basics right. But there he is on the edge of their box, meandering back

[danperkins]

Maybe they are not a great side, but they are still a really good team with a very strong squad.

Said it before the game that their form over the previous ten home games was really good despite their injuries in the back line. 5 goals conceded in ten games with a depleted back line is not the sign of an average team.


One of the biggest differences before the game started between the two teams was that their back up back line loked stronger than our back up back line. Up front we are pretty close (us shading that imo), in the middle I thought was where it would be won and lost but that was with me thinking we would be starting both Fab and Thiago.


What we got from the first whistle was them targeting the right side of our back line almost straight away. They went straight after Trent and Philips and kept doing that for most of the game. Think it was three times in the opening 12 minutes or so that Kabak had to come over into the RCB slot to guide a Madrid player out of play after Phillips did that thing of getting got up the pitch that he does a lot. Then Trent decided to get in on the act and start getting caught even further up the pitch and not busting a nut to get back, where Phillips at least tried to get back when he was out of position.

Did not help that Wijnaldum started the game misplacing passes and kept that up for the entre game. Keita was very poor for the time he was on the pitch and Fabinho had an average game.

Mane was muck up front and offered noting at all.

For me only three of the starting XI did well or deserved credit last night.

Salah played very well. He got the goal, he tried to set up players over and over and he bust a nut tracking back and doing defensive work all game long.

Kabak had a mostly solid game and he covered for Phillips a hell of a lot. What you could see with him last night was that he was our youngest player on the pitch and the one with the least experience of our club/system but looked like this is the level he is going to belong at.

Robertson I also thought looked ok last night. He shuttled up and down the pitch, but had his workload increased thanks to Mane losing the ball so often, Mane being ineffective when defending and also Wijnaldum losing the ball a hell of a lot on the left side.


The return leg I would not be starting Keita and Wijnaldum. I would have Thiago starting with Fabinho and one of Jones or Shaqiri in the more advanced role.

Mane up front is a problem too as Firmino simply is not offerening much more than Mane at the moment and Firmino as the AM does not have the pace to trouble Casemiro in their DM slot. Think with regards to Mane I would might think outside the box a bit and start with both Robertson and Tsimikas on the left flank and let them interchange all game.

I had thought of maybe Shaqiri out wide left if Jones went into the centre but think Shaqiri is better when he gets a more central role from which he can roam and link play or when he is in the wide right slot that he plays in for the Swiss team and that right slot is a no as we need Salah in it.

I did think we might be turning a corner but this season has just been a ****fest. Lads out of form & lads over played and Madrid took advantage of that and dominated that game.

For me, the midfield was where it was lost and was always going to be key. Starting Keita ahead of Thiago was just plain stupidity. Apart from that it's on the players, the standard of passing in that first half and the complete lack of effort and desire was embarrassing. we had a 10 mins when we scored and some powder puff moment in the latter stages when Madrid dropped but it was just typical LFC this season. Mo has been brilliant, I feel sorry for him considering the bizarre drop off in form in almost all of our top class players, it's just so weird. The worst thing about it is Trent, Robbo, Gini, Mane, Bobby all need dropping but we just don't have the squad.

Can we come back? Absolutely, we have the talent and they can be got at but we are not the same team and you never know what you are going to get with us. The way they play, two lads dominating possession in the middle sitting deep and then quick countering is going to make it very difficult for us at Anfield. It's not even an advantage anymore as zero fans on a European night & our form at home has been awful.

2-1 imo we had a chance, 3-1 I just don't see it. One last thing, Madrid are so snidey and cute when it comes to getting decisions from the, imo we are just too nice and that has to change.

[Doc_Piptorious]

I did think we might be turning a corner but this season has just been a ****fest. Lads out of form & lads over played and Madrid took advantage of that and dominated that game.

For me, the midfield was where it was lost and was always going to be key. Starting Keita ahead of Thiago was just plain stupidity. Apart from that it's on the players, the standard of passing in that first half and the complete lack of effort and desire was embarrassing. we had a 10 mins when we scored and some powder puff moment in the latter stages when Madrid dropped but it was just typical LFC this season. Mo has been brilliant, I feel sorry for him considering the bizarre drop off in form in almost all of our top class players, it's just so weird. The worst thing about it is Trent, Robbo, Gini, Mane, Bobby all need dropping but we just don't have the squad.

Can we come back? Absolutely, we have the talent and they can be got at but we are not the same team and you never know what you are going to get with us. The way they play, two lads dominating possession in the middle sitting deep and then quick countering is going to make it very difficult for us at Anfield. It's not even an advantage anymore as zero fans on a European night & our form at home has been awful.

2-1 imo we had a chance, 3-1 I just don't see it. One last thing, Madrid are so snidey and cute when it comes to getting decisions from the, imo we are just too nice and that has to change.

The way they play is actually forced upon them as last night was only their third game in a row going with three at the back afaik. So that was them playing with in a formation that was different to what they had been using for most of the season.

They are in a very similar situation to us injury wise. Their best CBs are all out (Though as said pre match I do think their back ups, even though some are not true CBs, are better than our current back up CBs) and they are having to tweak their team to allow for losing out on their best ball playing and most dominant CBs.

Where they are not similar to us is that since they started racking up injuries at the back, especially from mid January on, their midfielders and attackers have really stepped up and worked their arses off on and especially off of the ball.

We have guys that have reputations of being excellent midfielders or of being much lauded midfielders, but since January many of our more senior midfielders and attackers have gone missing an awful lot in games. No fight, no trying to out work the other team, no sheer bloodymindedness to go to the final whistle.

We had four stand out awful performances in particular last night that if two had turned up I think we might have gotten something more from the fgame or at the least lost by a single goal. Those four being Keita, Wijnaldum, Trent and Mane. Hell I would go as far as to say if the two midfielders had shown up last night it would have been enough to paper over the cracks as Fabinho would not have been having to run around like a headless chicken as space opened upon both sides of him time after time. If the two midfielders had tracked back more then maybe Trent and Phillips going out of position so often might have created smaller gaps on the right flank and on the right side of the centre of our defence.

And I get the arguement that it is a year unlike any other and that off the pitch issues will be getting to people, however our team is not unique in this. We all crowed about how our team were mentality monsters last season, this season we are seeing other teams facing the same shyte from the real world and seemingly using being on the pitch as an escape.

What is really bothering is the fact that the team that started last night is close to being a full strength team. Other than the two CBs you could make a case for every other player being a first team starter or at least being at that level. Yet we played like we had 7 or 8 starters missing.

I don't think we are at the stage where we need a massive rebuild of first team players, but I do think we are at a point where we do need an influx of good quality squad players that can compete with the starters and be strong stand ins when needed.

Watching Militao pissed me off as well last night as he was available on loan right up to mid to late January. Was baffled at the start of January why we did not go for him as he is very good at CB and can play RB.

Valverde coming on was another I did not want to see as he is the player I would most love to see us get from Real if there was even a tiny chance of it. Think the guy is going to be an amazing box to box midfielder.

Then there is Vinicius. Long been a favourite of the Fifa playing folk . The guy is so talented and has such a big future ahead of him.

But that is what happens when a team brings in squaddies/ressies that look like they are going to become good players. You get proper quality in depth rather than just quantity in depth.