Trent Alexander-Arnold

[fidget]

Every time I hear people refer to themselves as "elite" I think of that prick Carl Froch and cringe for them.

[DerKrampus]

TAA is a modern day Matt Le Tissier - off the charts talent but lazy as **** and not really someone you'd expect to put a shift in so relies on others to do the graft.

Unfortunately, while you can get away with this in midfield or up front, you absolutely can't in defence.

[Mark79]

Did we not put up three 90+ point seasons with TAA at right back?

[Cerbie]

Depends where you look.

From what I can see he has been on 67k a week basic the past two season(yearly salary of £3,484,000) with the contract he signed in 2021/22 being one that started low but that went up almost every season.


https://salarysport.com/football/player/curtis-jones/

The £15k figure and others in that table are BS, just pushing a narrative.

[Doc_Piptorious]

Every time I hear people refer to themselves as "elite" I think of that prick Carl Froch and cringe for them.

He does not like to mention it, but he fought in front of 80,000 at Wembley.

[spud_gun]

Did we not put up three 90+ point seasons with TAA at right back?

And 3 European Cup Finals

[Doc_Piptorious]

Did we not put up three 90+ point seasons with TAA at right back?

We did and I don't think anyone can take away from how good he was during those seasons.

From the 2018/19 season to the 2021/22 season he was excellent for the most part. His attacking play was often sublime and the myth of his defending being poor during that spell was exactly that.

But think is is also fair to say that during the 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons that his form was patchy and you got more meh games from him that what we had seen in the four seasons prior to those two seasons.

For me he has improved this season compared to the two seasons just gone, but he rarely hits the heights of his four peak seasons imo, or rather he rarely hits those heights for runs of games.

You now seem to get an excellent game followed by a few decent games and then a game thrown in where he looks half arsed or more likely just off his game.

What he does not look this season or the previous two season is that best attacking right back in the game that he had looked. Sure he has looked great in some games but even a journeyman footballer gets a couple games a season where he just does everything right and looks a star.

That's not me saying TAA has been a journeyman footballer in the past or even that he is one now, but instead is me saying that this season he looks a decent full back rather than a stand out world class one. Certainly does not look like a RB that you should be rushing out to make the highest paid player at the club or close to it and looks nothing like the player he was during those 90+ point season, more's the pity.

[vlahka]

We didnt win those because of his defending. He had backup after backup helping him out. And our strikers were scoring happily. If his crosses werent godly, he'd be no different to any other mid tier defender. Sort of like hes been this season.

[Doc_Piptorious]

We didnt win those because of his defending. He had backup after backup helping him out. And our strikers were scoring happily. If his crosses werent godly, he'd be no different to any other mid tier defender. Sort of like hes been this season.

But his crosses and passing were top tier during those season so the "If" side does not apply.

He may not have been a world class defender in terms of being a pure out and out RB, but he was no mug either at the defenisve side of the role.

Did he have the right side of CM there to help him out? Yes he did but that was to ensure we could make use of his then constant stream of quality passes and crosses.

Think his form during the two seasons before this one are fair game for criticism and a chunk of his playing this season is also fair game, but there was a three to four season run where he was nothing short of excellent in his role and I think it is a bit too easy to let how he has been in recent seasons distort or take away from how good he was during those peak seasons.


And the use of the word peak is very much deliberate on my behalf as I do belive, as said in this forum a number of times, that TAA is one of those players that hits his prime early in his career and starts going the other way during the years when he should only be peaking.

[Mark79]

We didnt win those because of his defending. He had backup after backup helping him out. And our strikers were scoring happily. If his crosses werent godly, he'd be no different to any other mid tier defender. Sort of like hes been this season.

We put up elite defensive numbers in those seasons. With him as right back.

It's not like his crosses and the strikers goals were counter balancing a leaky defence.

[vlahka]

I'm just really looking forward to seeing how he does at madrid. He wont have the team covering all his defending issues. How quickly will the crowd turn on him. Because they love to turn. I like to think of them as an everton crowd how cheer for a big team.

[The_weatherman]

We put up elite defensive numbers in those seasons. With him as right back.

It's not like his crosses and the strikers goals were counter balancing a leaky defence.

He did have a midfielder doing a lot of running for him though, our CM's at the time were doing a lot of work to enable the full backs attack.

[Cerbie]

We put up elite defensive numbers in those seasons. With him as right back.

It's not like his crosses and the strikers goals were counter balancing a leaky defence.

I’d argue we had peak Matip and Fab dropping back in those seasons, and when Joel wasn’t fit, Gomez was there as a natural RB to cover. In possession, Hendo used to swap with Trent too before we started all the Hybrid bollox. I don’t think you can attribute 25% of our defensive strength solely to Trent. He used to at least out a shift in. Unfortunately his most recent performance was well below what we need. Virgil said as much on the pitch.

If it was a bad day at the office, fair enough, we all have those. It was a particularly miserable day too. If it is a trend, he needs to buck up his ideas in the next couple of games or I can see the club getting rid sooner rather than later to ensure it does no derail our title challenge.

[Doc_Piptorious]

He did have a midfielder doing a lot of running for him though, our CM's at the time were doing a lot of work to enable the full backs attack.

We also had the same midfielders covering for when Salah did not track the other team's left back in those seasons.

Just as with TAA in those seasons, the pros for having a RCM doing a lot of the covering work for both ends of our right flank outweighed the cons of being less creative in the centre.

Nowadays Salah's output still warrants having willing legs helping out on that right flank but TAA's does not imo.

[Mark79]

He did have a midfielder doing a lot of running for him though, our CM's at the time were doing a lot of work to enable the full backs attack.

I’d argue we had peak Matip and Fab dropping back in those seasons, and when Joel wasn’t fit, Gomez was there as a natural RB to cover. In possession, Hendo used to swap with Trent too before we started all the Hybrid bollox. I don’t think you can attribute 25% of our defensive strength solely to Trent. He used to at least out a shift in. Unfortunately his most recent performance was well below what we need. Virgil said as much on the pitch.

If it was a bad day at the office, fair enough, we all have those. It was a particularly miserable day too. If it is a trend, he needs to buck up his ideas in the next couple of games or I can see the club getting rid sooner rather than later to ensure it does no derail our title challenge.

This is how teams work, guys.

You want your right back to be your creative playmaker, then yes others will need to support him defensively as part of the system.

Did we as a team 'not get away' with TAA as our right back, or did we excell, with him being a key player?