Liverpool FC Forum

[stmichael]

good afternoon all. new season, same old story i'm afraid. the game yesterday left me with more questions than answers to be honest. we are already 8 POINTS behind arsenal and chelsea so i guess we can write off the title for another season then. just a few questions though which quite simply have to be answered.

1. how long are we going to persist with jerzy dudek making errors which cost us points? for the goal yesterday he got caught in no mans land.

2. why was stephane henchoz not on the bench? we lose our best centre half after 10 minutes and end up bringing djimi traore on. it was always going to be an uphill struggle after that. get him sold to everton sooner rather than later.

3. why play 4-5-1? baros was completely isolated. if cisse was fit enough to be on the bench he was fit enough to start surely. having alonso, gerrard AND hamann in the same side is just not going to provide enough in an attacking sense.

4. why was warnock taken off? i thought he was one of our better players in the first half. he produced one run which i haven't seen harry kewell do for half a season. it also meant we ended up with garcia on the left and gerrard on the RIGHT. he's wasted out there.

5. speaking of garcia, have you ever seen a player give the ball away as much as he did? infact our passing was abysmal for the majority of the game but garcia seemed to be the main culprit.

6. when are linesmen going to realise that borderline offside decisions should see the benefit of the doubt go to the ATTACKER?

all in all just very disappointing. rumours of us signing another spanish defender before tuesday is encouraging but we badly need another striker imo.

[banana]

I agree with most of your comments. But I have to say that I thought Garcia looked good. By far the best of the two debutants. He scored one goal that should have stood. He had one or two excellent runs and he almost scored from a volley in a good position. Also he showed some good skills and trickery with the ball. Alonso on the other hand looked slow and uncomfortable throughout the game. Warnock should neved had been taken off as he was the only wide player in midfield. I think Benitez needs to play either Hamann OR Alonso. Not both. Also I must say that Bolton looked real good. They put pressure on us from the start and kept it up the whole game. I can easily see them way up there when the season ends.

[Redrider]

Two, very realistic assesments of the game. I thought Garcia was giving the ball away only because he was taken by surprise at the pace of the game. Alonso was a bit overawed with the rough house, Bolton style of play. Both I hope will be good once they have played one or two more Premiership games. Cisse needs to toughen up and Baros will eventually have to replaced. Dudek can start warming the bench as soon as Kirkland is fit.

[madred]

While Garcia did give away possesion rather cheaply he did look the brightest Liverpool player yesterday and i think he will turn out to be a big crowd fav. Alonso also started off well but but opted for too many longer balls later on. Im sure once Alonso gets adjusted we might be talking about him just as much as we do Stevie. Warnock being taken off was a strange one as i thought he did ok. Im sure Rafa will be in the hunt for a new goalkeeper as soon as a top class one becomes available because again i thought Jerzy didnt do enough on the Davies goal. The Henchoz one is baffling?? Was he injured? Does Rafa not like him? 

[anfieldadorer]

IMO warnock was taken off because we need more attacker to score (Cisse), why not taking off Hamann, we need balance in attacking and defending. Just a quick opinion.

[stmichael]

Watching yesterdays game I'd summise that we're halfway there..

Every Liverpool fan wants to see the ethics of "pass and move" return to the club, and anyone who's watched Rafa's Valencia team would know that this, built on a solid foundation, is Rafa's general idea about attacking play.

The team looked like they were trying too hard to string more than 3 passes together to keep posession, without really penetrating the Bolton back line. Well thats half the mentality of what Rafa wants to achieve, to keep the ball.

What we need now from the team is movement off the ball. The only player who looked willing to make intelligent runs into space was Luis Garcia, but the team is so oblivious to this kind of play that he was rarely picked out when in good positions. Players like Hyypia, Carra and Gerrard are still adjusting to this kind of football and it's going to take time before they function on the same wavelength as the new lads. Once they click though the quality is there to open up defences consistantly.

I guess my point is that the team are slowly adjusting to getting the ball on the deck and "trying" to pass it around. At least they dont start playing hoofball when they run out of ideas, even when we were trailing with 10 minutes to go we still tried to pass our way through the Bolton rear guard. The longer we try passing the ball around we will begin to reap the benefits of knowing were each player is and what their strengths are.

It's not all doom and gloom, and we've got an "easy" game up next giving us the opportunity to put these ideas into practice against lesser opposition than Bolton. Though with 10 men behind the ball, I'm sure West Brom will still offer a stern test at breaking teams down..

[kindaconfuzed]

I gotta agree movement of the balls was a big issue for me

Anfeld Adorer

There seemed little point in taking off the only player that was penetrating the Bolton defence don't yer think?