Liverpool FC Forum

[Benny The Noon]

It all stems from the front players - many times i saw the midfield players looking to pass it forward put there was no one making runs to pass it to which left both poulsen and lucas only able to either pass it sideways or backwards

[aCe']

It all stems from the front players - many times i saw the midfield players looking to pass it forward put there was no one making runs to pass it to which left both poulsen and lucas only able to either pass it sideways or backwards

Most forwards do very little to help with possession play anyways.. Unless you're an Anelka or Rooney or so...

Imo the problems are obviously not higher up the pitch but rather in our own half of the pitch.. Particularly when Lucas, Mascherano and now Poulsen get on the ball and have a decision to make... More often than not, the decision is the wrong one... Whether the pass is completed or not is irrelevant.. Also irrelevant is whether the pass was a 3yard pass or a 50yard one..
All 3 sadly have neither the passing range nor the creativity to dictate the flow of a game in our favor..

It doesnt only affect the defenders who come under more pressure when theyr on the ball, it also affects the forwards who have to work harder higher up to get to the ball or to close down opposition.. With players like Cole, Johnson, Aquilani, Gerrard, and Torres in the side you'd expect out attacking fluidity to be of the highest level.. Only problem is that we are yet to find the right balance in midfield .. 

I still maintain that having Aquilani in the side playing alongside Gerrard and Mascherano would have been a huge bonus for the side.. He's the best passer of a ball in the side and probably does more in terms of effective possession retainment than Gerrard and Mascherano combined..

[metalhead]

Yeh well Ace, you can kiss Aquilani good bye

[In and Out]

I remember the days when our center halves would knock the ball about with all the time in the world until something materialised further up field, now it seems Mr Carra especially is hellbent on hoofing the ball up top without any consideration of 'build up'.

[jacdaniel]

I remember the days when our center halves would knock the ball about with all the time in the world until something materialised further up field, now it seems Mr Carra especially is hellbent on hoofing the ball up top without any consideration of 'build up'.

is it Carra's fault though?  Or is it that the personnel in the midfield don't come back to get the ball.  or when they do... they just pass it back.

[Thewaykokid]

I remember the days when our center halves would knock the ball about with all the time in the world until something materialised further up field, now it seems Mr Carra especially is hellbent on hoofing the ball up top without any consideration of 'build up'.

is it Carra's fault though?  Or is it that the personnel in the midfield don't come back to get the ball.  or when they do... they just pass it back.

Personally, i don't think its anyone's fault, the more direct style of play is obviously something implemented, atm its just not working out. We've showed before that we have the patience to outpass teams, and i don't know why this has been abolished for a mid-table team tactic of desperation.

[In and Out]

I remember the days when our center halves would knock the ball about with all the time in the world until something materialised further up field, now it seems Mr Carra especially is hellbent on hoofing the ball up top without any consideration of 'build up'.

is it Carra's fault though?  Or is it that the personnel in the midfield don't come back to get the ball.  or when they do... they just pass it back.

yes it is Carra's fault. Okay granted the midfield may knock it back now and again. Patients is a virtue though when you've got one man upfront. Players like Kuyt and Jovo should move wide and further up the field to stay in touch with our solo striker. But Carra has had the options to pass it simple multiple times and he thinks he's Xabi Alonso and can play a 60 yard pass but it ends up going to nobody.

[Owzat]

Patients is a virtue though

In most hospitals and doctor's surgeries it is an absolute must!

I don't blame Carra, I think I'd play long if the players in the side to make or at least link play kept passing it to me. I mean what are you suggesting, they're playing little 'give and goes' in front of their 18 yard box?!?!? I think poncing about with passes in front of your box, and that includes back to the keeper, is a good way to gift soft goals and if Carra were caught in possession he'd be slated.

And flip it round and look at it this way, if everyone 'knows' Carra will only hoof the ball upfield, why f in well pass it to him?!?!?! Ultimately the blame has to lie with the manager, has he given no instructions to the midfield on how to distribute the ball!?!?!? (referring to Rafa in particular, but equally applies to Woy)

[andy_g]

y'know what, those guardian chalboards are great the knocking myths on the head. i just spent 5 minutes going through a few games from last season and the one from this season to see how many balls carra hoofed upfield. turns out its actually very few, and that in some matches he even had a 100% pass completion rate. obviously as others have said before, the quality of the pass and the placement of the receiver is as important as whether its been completed or not, or which direction it went, but at least we can get a better idea about the hoofing myth.

[In and Out]

y'know what, those guardian chalboards are great the knocking myths on the head. i just spent 5 minutes going through a few games from last season and the one from this season to see how many balls carra hoofed upfield. turns out its actually very few, and that in some matches he even had a 100% pass completion rate. obviously as others have said before, the quality of the pass and the placement of the receiver is as important as whether its been completed or not, or which direction it went, but at least we can get a better idea about the hoofing myth.

You don't need guardian chalkboards to see hoofing is now an embedded repertoire in Carra's box of tricks. It isn't a myth, he does hoof more often than not, just watch the game.

Owzat I bet you hated it in the 80's when our back four stroked the ball about for a good few minutes, without result to Wimbledon tactics. BTW, surgery isn't football but I guess you already know that.

[andy_g]

It isn't a myth, he does hoof more often than not, just watch the game.

are you calling the guardian a liar? 

[In and Out]

It isn't a myth, he does hoof more often than not, just watch the game.

are you calling the guardian a liar? 

No, I'm saying watching 5 minutes of football from thousands upon thousands tells you feck all really.

I'd prefer to watch 90mins of football a week and come to my own conclusions

[andy_g]

its not watching 5 minutes though, bam. these are stats collated from every game from the last few seasons. looking closely at carra's passing statistics you can clearly see that the hoof is not is usual tactic. i was surprised myself to be honest, but i also realise that we can easily fool ourselves into believing something. many are fooled into believing that kuyt contributes nothing to the build up, others that lucas only passes 5 yards sideways and backwards, others that gerrard plays too many hollywood balls into touch. when we watch the game we get caught up in certain acts and see things out of perspective. its like the phemomena of being able to pick out your name out of a full page of text in a microsecond, or to see faces in cliffs and tree bark. if we condition ourselves to believe we will see something then we will see it to the exclusion of everything else.

what i've seen in the stats contradicts my own suppositions too. i had believed that carra played too many hopeful but ineffective hoofs, but the stats show that he actually has one of the highest pass completion percentages of the whole team.

[maypaxvobiscum]

Jamie Carragher believes Graeme Souness is responsible for Liverpool losing their status as English football's top club.

Liverpool won the league 11 times between 1972 and 1990, but the second-place finish under Rafael Benitez in 2009 is the closest they have come to reclaiming the trophy in the last two decades.

Sir Alex Ferguson famously said in a 2002 interview that his "greatest challenge" as Manchester United boss was "knocking Liverpool right off their f****** perch", and he has since helped United match Liverpool's 18 titles.

Yet Carragher - who spoke of his admiration for Ferguson - believes that Souness, who managed Liverpool between 1991 and 1994, is to blame for the decline of the club as a domestic force.

"What would I ask him (Ferguson)? How long have you got? All day? If I was in his company, I would also tell him first off that Manchester United never knocked Liverpool off their perch as he put it," he told the Daily Mail. "That's nonsense. Graeme Souness did that.

"When United were going for their first title under Ferguson in 1992-93, they were competing with Norwich and Aston Villa. They weren't competing with Liverpool, were they?"

Souness was one of a number of people within the game to criticise Liverpool as they slumped to a seventh-place finish in the Premier League last season. Carragher feels the Reds may have been victimised to some extent, but he has also admitted that he does not feel the club has behaved in the right manner in recent times.

"I just think that last year people didn't like Liverpool," he added in the Daily Mirror. "Other managers, you know, they hated us, the media - it was all negative. I know we weren't doing well on the pitch, but I think it was just negative Liverpool all the time.

"We had situations like Martin O'Neill and Steve Bruce ¬criticising Liverpool and they were right. We shouldn't be getting involved with stuff like that. Everyone else should look at Liverpool and say they have dignity. It's just class.

"I mean, the way people look at Arsenal. They do things right, and you go, yep, they conduct themselves in the right way. I think we have been a club who were like that, and we need to get back to that, to do things right. -Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, that's football - you can't win all the time - but you can still behave in a way where people respect you.

"We need people to look at ¬Liverpool and think we have a bit of class about us, and I think we are getting back to that. I'm not getting into why we lost that, but we do need to get back to it."

[bigmick]

"We need people to look at ¬Liverpool and think we have a bit of class about us, and I think we are getting back to that. I'm not getting into why we lost that, but we do need to get back to it. "

Is right Jamie lad, well said