Liverpool v Brighton (H) PL

[el matador]

We are laying the foundations for a new style of play. There are some major teething problems and it may need a rethink. In trying to get our 8’s making the play like Man City for example we’ve put all our major weapons on the shelf. Robbo, Trent one assist between them and Mo doesn’t look like himself. And our 8’s haven’t done much either.

[Shaggy]

I'm still so deflated by it all that I'd rather we weren't playing this weekend too

Nah I'm ready for the punishment again. Bring it on.

I think this relentless run of fixtures before the World Cup represents a huge opportunity for us to get back into the race. With so many games even City should drop some points. If we can have a solid spell then we can go into the break with some optimism at least.

How you feeling now?

I'm absolutely hating every second of it. The problems appear to be so deep and numerous I just can't see a way out. It's caught me hugely off guard. Why do our collapses have to be so steep, sudden and dramatic? Seems to only be us.

I'm going tomorrow night and I really don't fancy it. Another ****ing slog. Can't be arsed.

[Pablo]

How you feeling now?

I'm absolutely hating every second of it. The problems appear to be so deep and numerous I just can't see a way out. It's caught me hugely off guard. Why do our collapses have to be so steep, sudden and dramatic? Seems to only be us.

I'm going tomorrow night and I really don't fancy it. Another ****ing slog. Can't be arsed.

FFS . Yeah it is painful. What happened to reinventing ourselves? That was exactly the same mistakes as we've seen all season. A massive break between matches yet we still looked knackered. City look so, so fresh, and we are the complete opposite.

I thought Thiago starting poorly really hurt us. When he is off we are all off.

You're right though it is hard to see a way out right now. It feels like it could get worse before it gets better. We had almost our first XI out there and we still got battered.

I have no idea what the cause is (apart from the obvious physical and more importantly mental fatigue), and I suspect Klopp and the team don't either. How can you fix something when you don't know how it broke?

[Doc_Piptorious]

FFS . Yeah it is painful. What happened to reinventing ourselves? That was exactly the same mistakes as we've seen all season. A massive break between matches yet we still looked knackered. City look so, so fresh, and we are the complete opposite.

I thought Thiago starting poorly really hurt us. When he is off we are all off.

You're right though it is hard to see a way out right now. It feels like it could get worse before it gets better. We had almost our first XI out there and we still got battered.

I have no idea what the cause is (apart from the obvious physical and more importantly mental fatigue), and I suspect Klopp and the team don't either. How can you fix something when you don't know how it broke?

Said it in a few threads in here six or so weeks back that I do not think we look like we are suffering from that.

But rather that our players looked totally undercooked.

As in they under trained physically and mentally pre season which led to starting the season not having approached the timed peaks needed.

Cannot speak with any certainly for the footy side of that as it would be based on a series of peaks and plateaus that repeats intself in a pattern over the course of a season. But I suspect the general idea is the same save for in boxing it being a long trek to one point and in footy it is made up of of a series of shorter treks leading to many mini peaks over the course of a season until those mini peaks lead to the target peak after five or six months and that final peak carries you to the end of the season

However in boxing terms it means trying to time your training so that you are approaching(or ideally hitting) your peak mentally and physically as close as possible to the first bell going.

You time it right and you are fast and crisp at the bell. You are reacting to shots, you are instinctively picking up on the other fighter's movements, you are working your patterns, landing your shot and you feel physically like a warrior god. You take the hits that land on you and push forward.


You come into a fight having peaked too far in advance, well then you can still go at the opening bell, you still will look sharp early on, you look good though your body will look a bit too well trained (Zapater I suspect will know what I mean by that), you can still go, but you will gas easier than if you had not passed your peak too early during your prep. Mentally you will still be able to call on reserves then that well will not be quite as deep compared to hitting your peak on, or closer to, the night.

However if you were undercooked. And this is something that can happen even with the best of trainers and coaches about and is something that can hapen to the best coashes too. If you go into the ring undercooked. You look gassed from the first bell. You will look sluggish, you still will read the movements of the other fighter but by the time you are reacting he has already snapped off the jab or hook you saw his body shaping up for.

Mentally you simply do not have your usual resolve and your determination may focus on survival rather than pushing forward. The mental well starts to run dry really really fast.

A fighter who is undercooked will be, assuming he stays in the fight for a number of rounds, looking second best for most of those rounds but usually has a round in which he rallies and you think he is about to turn things around only for that good round to take it all out of him and he slumps again the next round.

And all the above is with a really good boxer as an example. A club fighter who is undercooked just gets overwhelmed and outfought badly against a fighter who was better to begin with, whereas the pedigree fighter who is undercooked gets dragged down to the level of the club fighters and may scrape a win.

Some of the best boxing coaches in the world have gotten their schedules wrong and undercooked fighters. Sometimes it is down to bringing in new members to a coaching team and all the parts are not quite on the same page, sometimes the fighter is simply off for one reason of another, sometimes a new training regime is being tried or a new base camp is being tried. There are a hundred and one reasons. Some preventable, some just bad luck.

Another thing when it comes to both undercooking and peaking too soon. The latter you can see coming a lot easier and you can adjust your training routines to try and prevent it. The former however is more difficult to spot and you cannot just simply speed up training to counter it.

Another problem with being undercooked is if you are training and are undercooked you need to pretty much reset and begin the training camp schedule from scratch and rebuild towards your peaks again. Otherwise you are trying to build on a bad foundation.

We had a preseason that had more travelling and media time than training time, so looked a very disjointed train schedule from the outside looking in.

Leading to coming into the season undercooked. We start the season undercooked and look a step off the pace.

We have a number of undercooked performances then a single good one then back to undercooked.

Then we slowly are showing signs of some players getting up to speed with some looking miles off, and keep in mind with a boxer one person needs to be peaking whereas in a team all need to be peaking or at least a majority at close to the same time. Then we get hit with a long break when the queen does and a lot of our players do not go back into a reset training routine for that period as many of them went on holidays.

So we get a mix of players who stayed behind and trained and a majority who basically retarded their fitness levels with the holiday and who then return not far off pre season levels of sharpness again.

And why is that not showing for every other team who also had time off for that queen period then, Jaco? The answer is very simple....the majority of teams that came back did not start the season looking badly undercooked so they went into that enforced bit of time off already at a higher level and as such any push back on their physical and mental side of things would not be as severe.

Having never coached or been coached to a decent level as a footballer, a lot of what I am saying about is just my opinion, but for a boxer being undercooked looks a hell of a lot like how a number of our players look.

Training load has to build to a peak training load that is relative to a fight load.

Or in the case of footballers, or any group in a team sport spread over a longer period of time, the accumulated training load has to build to a peak training load that has to be relative to the match load.

No quick fix for that either and as said earlier the best coaches in the world can and have been caught out by undercooking. Only real fix is a proper training reset to bring the levels back up again from a new solid base and anything else is just papering over cracks. And a reset would mean the players more or less having a second preseason whilst the season is ongoing. So preseason levels of training load with a match load at the end of it over and over until the training loads become peak training loads again.

Our players may not be boxers, but they sure as hell act like athletes that are badly undercooked and whose training loads are not in synch with the demands of a match load.

Imo of course .

[Kenneth]

Tbh, I’m surprised that people are so surprised. The signs have been there for a while, our football in the run in last season wasn’t pretty.

We have so many ‘decent backup options’ as first teamers on huge wages. Bobby, Keita, Henderson, Milner, Ox, Jones, and I don’t think a team serious about winning would have kept any of them this long, except maybe Jones. Harvey Elliott is not a world class talent, he’s a very promising player for sure, but we are relying on him and he’s 19 ffs. Still no useful cover at right back after all these transfer windows. We don’t make too many mistakes in the market but when we do we don’t fix them.

Salah, once a word beater, is a pretty average player now, has been for some time and likely will continue to be (on £350k+ per week).

Now we still have the bones of a very good side, but the squad is bloated and below par and the manager/coaching staff are struggling. We have seemed almost unbeatable for years, full of self belief, often trying the outrageous and succeeding, everyone trusting each other; ‘make the run and you’ll get the pass’ etc. That’s all but gone at the moment and it’s not something that is likely to come back like flicking a switch.

Our best Klopp years are definitely behind us imo. He was holding out until the end of his contract, hoping he could get away without too much chopping and changing, keep the captaincy as is, keep Milner on again, etc, and the quadruple talk convinced him things were healthier than they are. Fundamentally, it’s complacency that’s cost us imo.

[Pablo]

Tbh, I’m surprised that people are so surprised. The signs have been there for a while, our football in the run in last season wasn’t pretty.

We have so many ‘decent backup options’ as first teamers on huge wages. Bobby, Keita, Henderson, Milner, Ox, Jones, and I don’t think a team serious about winning would have kept any of them this long, except maybe Jones. Harvey Elliott is not a world class talent, he’s a very promising player for sure, but we are relying on him and he’s 19 ffs. Still no useful cover at right back after all these transfer windows. We don’t make too many mistakes in the market but when we do we don’t fix them.

Salah, once a word beater, is a pretty average player now, has been for some time and likely will continue to be (on £350k+ per week).

Now we still have the bones of a very good side, but the squad is bloated and below par and the manager/coaching staff are struggling. We have seemed almost unbeatable for years, full of self belief, often trying the outrageous and succeeding, everyone trusting each other; ‘make the run and you’ll get the pass’ etc. That’s all but gone at the moment and it’s not something that is likely to come back like flicking a switch.

Our best Klopp years are definitely behind us imo. He was holding out until the end of his contract, hoping he could get away without too much chopping and changing, keep the captaincy as is, keep Milner on again, etc, and the quadruple talk convinced him things were healthier than they are. Fundamentally, it’s complacency that’s cost us imo.

Don't agree with all of that, but I do agree it is all underpinned by complacency. We've stood still while others have moved on. It would be easy to blame FSG entirely for that, but I think Klopp and the coaching staff are to blame too. Thinking what we had was enough, having his favourites and not pushing players he should have out of the door. He's talked about reinvention, but I don't see any signs of it yet.

I started a thread a while back about this but we need a rebuild. We need to create a new XI. To do that some big decisions will have to be made. Ferguson is the obvious example of someone who did this. It is no easy task of course but I don't think we made enough progress on that and now we're paying for it.

We're not in total freefall just yet, but fixing all this mid-season is going to be very tricky.

[Shaggy]

I agree the squad is largely at the end of the road, ageing and over the hill - but when push comes to shove, I find it hard to commit to which players should be binned. Who needs replacing? Aside from the obvious like Milner and probably Henderson and Firmino - Virg? Robbo? Trent? Salah? As you say some big decisions need to be made. Very difficult though.

[RichC]

Defence, I don't think needs much to change, I'd like some competition at RB (I know we've got the young Scottish lad but he's out). Midfield is the issue for me, too many players that aren't reliable for fitness Ox, Keita, Thiago and Fabinho have their issues and then you've got the players that are probably also past their best Milner & Henderson.

For me there's a lot of work to be done here and we will need some real investment which I'm not sure we'll get, certainly to the levels of what needs to be done.

[Rich]

Another game missed for Keita.

He's been removed from action hasn't he cos of his agent...

[Pablo]

I agree the squad is largely at the end of the road, ageing and over the hill - but when push comes to shove, I find it hard to commit to which players should be binned. Who needs replacing? Aside from the obvious like Milner and probably Henderson and Firmino - Virg? Robbo? Trent? Salah? As you say some big decisions need to be made. Very difficult though.

Yes it is hard and if you did have a massive clear-out it all in one go it could easily backfire.

I've tried typing out who I would axe about 5 times and I keep deleting it . It is too hard. I guess my point is it is even harder for Klopp as he has a deep love and respect for so many of these guys.

[RichC]

Another game missed for Keita.

He's been removed from action hasn't he cos of his agent...

We may as well cut out loses with him tbh, he's a good player but so unreliable and seems to have a strange view on things in terms of not getting enough game time, ignoring he's constantly out injured

[Shaggy]

Yes it is hard and if you did have a massive clear-out it all in one go it could easily backfire.

I've tried typing out who I would axe about 5 times and I keep deleting it . It is too hard. I guess my point is it is even harder for Klopp as he has a deep love and respect for so many of these guys.

Almost impossible isn't it.

The first that come to my mind are Milner, Henderson, Keita, Firmino and Gomez. Of course you can't totally butcher a squad over one or even two windows. So they'd be my first five. But I think one or two big and borderline shocking calls need to be made with some of the others. Possibly Fabinho for instance. What the **** has happened to him?

[The_weatherman]

I agree the squad is largely at the end of the road, ageing and over the hill - but when push comes to shove, I find it hard to commit to which players should be binned. Who needs replacing? Aside from the obvious like Milner and probably Henderson and Firmino - Virg? Robbo? Trent? Salah? As you say some big decisions need to be made. Very difficult though.

Maybe not so much bin everybody but getting their replacements in while they are here? Fabinho needs a proper back up, Hendo should really only be a back up, and we should start thinking about another CB as Matip and VVD are both ageing.

So two midfielders around 22-24 years should have been added already and a CB needs adding soon as well. Maybe Ramsey can be a back up though. I think we are OK upfront tbh but we'll need another body in soon for Bobby, preferably someone who can play on the right.

Ox needs binning, Keita should just leave, Hendo as back up. When Matips contract is up, he needs to be allowed to leave, Bobby too.

[Mark79]

Almost impossible isn't it.

The first that come to my mind are Milner, Henderson, Keita, Firmino and Gomez. Of course you can't totally butcher a squad over one or even two windows. So they'd be my first five. But I think one or two big and borderline shocking calls need to be made with some of the others. Possibly Fabinho for instance. What the **** has happened to him?

I think Fabinho (and Robbo and possibly Trent too) are suffering from being overplayed. Not just this season, but accumulatively over the past few years. I also think Fabinho (and maybe Trent) is being hamstrung by the new system too.

[Doc_Piptorious]

We may as well cut out loses with him tbh, he's a good player but so unreliable and seems to have a strange view on things in terms of not getting enough game time, ignoring he's constantly out injured

He is out of contract after this season anyway. Along with the likes of Chamberlain and Firmino

Personally I would be trying to see if, in January, we could do a swap deal or similar for some of our about to be out of contract guys for soon to be out of contract guys at other clubs.

Assuming players would make the move and any such caveats of course.


Keita for someone like Laimer. Would be a move back to Germany for Keita and Laimer has said he would like to play in the EPL.


Firmino to Barca and Depay to us.


Not sure we could trick Brighton to take Chamberlain for Mac Allister.


Basically bring in younger more mobile back ups for our current backs ups.