Liverpool FC Forum

[Number 9]

And keane misses a sitter again costing us 2 points.

How many sitters does this guy miss? im sure he missed a blinder from 4 yards last week too!

is gonna be 1 goal for every 20 chances for Robbie Keane?

Concentrate when the ball comes in will you for f sake.

What age are you mate?

[maypaxvobiscum]

will Bermenstein please start the next match thread

[aCe']

Lucas had a pretty good 2nd half imo...
First half the whole team did very little and Fulham pretty much ran the show...
2nd half we looked alot better and Lucas had alot to do with that... cant understand why people were complaining about Mascherano being taken off... he was sht and did nothing going forward...
Keane was sht...Kuyt was sht in the 2nd half.. Riera had almost no impact on our attacking play today, he seemed exhausted and had to be taken off really... our left side was pathetic and bar Arbeloa so was our right side..

Alonso should have started... Benayoun should have come on for Keane with Kuyt playing upfront imo, Arbeloa pushing higher up.. surely if Benayoun was ever going to come off the bench to make an impact on a game where we dont seem to have someone providing forwards with good passes higher up, it would have been today ?!

The subs were not all that bad but Rafa seems to have subbed like for like instead of trying to change the shape of the team or the style of play... we looked flat for 90 mins and never seemed like making anything happen... thought he'd go with Kuyt,Keane,Torres and 2 wingers when Elzhar was about to come on but he ddnt...

With Gerrard and Alonso playing in the middle though i think its gonna be a whole different ball game.. We need players who are direct and will attack the opposition without having to pass the ball 20times to get to advanced positions (Gerrard, Torres, Pennant) ... Without Gerrard in the side we'll always struggle to score imo unless the wide players step up their game...

January... get owen ffs , dont care if keane is only a few games away from finding his form or whatever... we need to have a good striker on the bench to call on if our starting pair cant get things going.... N'gog is not ready and dont think he even made the bench today...

[Kharhaz]

I always find it difficult to understand perspectives after a game that hasnt gone well for us. The main one being, we must find a scapegoat. Lucas or Keane? or both? This is the problem in many peoples eyes.

The problem for me, from what I see of the match was not individuals, it was the overall attitude. First half especially, we just didnt look to be at the races. Another for me, and a reason I can use because the same thing has happened with the other top clubs, International matches. Friendly matches played at a stupid time during the season. People will look at the key players left out of the england match, players like lampard, gerrard and rooney and of course guess who returned for the other clubs, but there are multi national players in all the teams that play in pointless international friendlies and from what I can see this interrupts the flow of there game when it comes to playing at there clubs.

I can look at today in total hindsight, although at the time I was pretty miffed, we had players who didnt play pointless friendlies, like the other top clubs, but we also had players who did, and this for me has affected us, and fortunately, the other top clubs also. The difference this time is that there have been no dubious decisions (barring man united and vidic of course, but that has become commonplace), and therefore its not just us who have looked out of form.

[Bam]

I'd be quite happy to see this formation (below) although I've always had reservations in the Mascha/Alonso pairing. Also Kuyt in the past has looked ordinary on the right side of a four man midfield, I dont care what the likes of Stu said in the past about players positions not being that different on paper from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-4-2. The main reason Kuyt has been scoring recently is because he is pushed on more in the 4-2-3-1 formation and is given more room to roam, thus the possibilities of him hitting the onion bag are increased IMO. But in the past in a 4-4-2 he's just looked a stop gap, simply because he's been asked to play as a  midfielder as opposed to an attacking midfielder. So he is pinned back more in the 4-4-2 and then ontop of that he doesnt have the pace or ability to beat a man from a deep counter attack, he doesnt carry the ball well enough and usually looks for an option in passing it back to a teamate. Sometimes by playing the easy option the momentum to an attack has gone, where as when he is playing as an attacking midfielder 80% of the time his starting positon is well inside the oppositions half and even though he doesnt have that "ability to beat a man" his movement in the final third and his recent instinct in scoring is a much added/needed bonus. I think we generally get the better out of him in the 4-2-3-1 formation.

Then we have central midfield where Alonso and Mascha dont really hurt or penatrate the oppositions defence. We maybe fortunate to be playing a side like Fulham this weekend in the hope they'll come to open up a bit and play a bit of football themselves, like WBA did. If they turn up and do a "Stoke" I can see Alonso and Mashca struggling for creativity and string pulling in the final third aswell as Kuyt.

It will be interesting to see whether Torres and Keane can work something out uptop, as they (although they havent had the game time really) havent really worked it off as a partnership just yet.

Thats why I made the comment earlier on about " I hope it wont be a disjointed performance", I dont know whether that midfield will tick.

This is of course presuming we do go with a 4-4-2, but Rafa may have other ideas.

------------------------------------ Reina

                          Arbeloa      Carra      Agger        Aurelio

                          Kuyt         Alonso     Mascha        Riera

                                          Torres     Keane

^^ Swap Alonso for Lucas, and the statement above still holds water.

Dissapointed by a few of the lads performances today, Aurelio had a good game. Lucas and Mascha were OWNED by the Fulham midfield.

Dissapointed in the Anfield crowd aswell. 

[maguskwt]

Well when all is said and done, it wasn't a bad result as we haven't lost any ground. Yes, it would be nice to now be 2 points clear, but Chelsea fans will be thinking the same.

Another bend in the road...

precisely...

[ruskiy playmaker]

January... get owen ffs , dont care if keane is only a few games away from finding his form or whatever... we need to have a good striker on the bench to call on if our starting pair cant get things going.... N'gog is not ready and dont think he even made the bench today...

I absolutely agree, I don't think that we can afford to wait for Keane to get his together.  Also Owen would be a great purchase, he's still one of the best finishers in the world and I'm sure that the team would love to have such a legend back at the club.

[Sarge]

Just to sums up my thoughts for yesterday's game.

1. I'd say keane is too cra.ppy for 20M. He's an okay player but defo not worth even 15M.
2. Buying Owen will not solve our problem (due to our style of play). He'd be devastated with the rotation policy.
3. Yesterday's matchday was a bit "weird" for top teams; liverpool (D), chelsea (D), arsenal (Lost), MU (D). We are still on the level but we missed good opportunity to lead the league (same goes to chelsea fans).
4. The players (both liverpool and fulham) seemed not comfortable with the weather. Was it cold outside?
5. Reina is still the man.

[maguskwt]

January... get owen ffs , dont care if keane is only a few games away from finding his form or whatever... we need to have a good striker on the bench to call on if our starting pair cant get things going.... N'gog is not ready and dont think he even made the bench today...

I absolutely agree, I don't think that we can afford to wait for Keane to get his together.  Also Owen would be a great purchase, he's still one of the best finishers in the world and I'm sure that the team would love to have such a legend back at the club.

agreed

[maguskwt]

5. Reina is still the man.

maybe you like baldies? 

[Simari]

4. The players (both liverpool and fulham) seemed not comfortable with the weather. Was it cold outside?

-----------------
It was cold, but the other games - apart from Chelsea, Man U and us all had plenty of goals and attacking play. Nope, the weather did not play any factor in this result. It's been cold in November for decades

Fulham have been playing well in their recent games. They don't concede many goals - I believe they're 3rd after Chelsea and us.

Our midfield was bound to be out hustled, once I read Masch and Lucas as the duo. Without the midfield ticking, we really had no cohesion. Lucas had the opportunity to shine and Fulham at home was a good choice to do it against. I don't hold Rafa to sword for that.

Lucas isn't in the same mould as Gerrard or Alonso. These guys create plays in different ways.

What a strange day of football though. Could you ever imagine a saturday of league football when:

Liverpool
Chelsea
Man U
Arsenal
Villareal
Valencia
Sevilla

all fail to score a goal on the same day?

Freakish ...

[Rush Job]

4. The players (both liverpool and fulham) seemed not comfortable with the weather. Was it cold outside?

-----------------
It was cold, but the other games - apart from Chelsea, Man U and us all had plenty of goals and attacking play. Nope, the weather did not play any factor in this result. It's been cold in November for decades

Fulham have been playing well in their recent games. They don't concede many goals - I believe they're 3rd after Chelsea and us.

Our midfield was bound to be out hustled, once I read Masch and Lucas as the duo. Without the midfield ticking, we really had no cohesion. Lucas had the opportunity to shine and Fulham at home was a good choice to do it against. I don't hold Rafa to sword for that.

Lucas isn't in the same mould as Gerrard or Alonso. These guys create plays in different ways.

What a strange day of football though. Could you ever imagine a saturday of league football when:

Liverpool
Chelsea
Man U
Arsenal
Villareal
Valencia
Sevilla

all fail to score a goal on the same day?

Freakish ...

Fair enough the top four all failing to score is strange but why have you included three random spanish sides?
Im sure lots of teams failed to score, like they do every week.
Your point?

[Toffeehater]

Lucas had a pretty good 2nd half imo...
First half the whole team did very little and Fulham pretty much ran the show...
2nd half we looked alot better and Lucas had alot to do with that... cant understand why people were complaining about Mascherano being taken off... he was sht and did nothing going forward...
Keane was sht...Kuyt was sht in the 2nd half.. Riera had almost no impact on our attacking play today, he seemed exhausted and had to be taken off really... our left side was pathetic and bar Arbeloa so was our right side..

Alonso should have started... Benayoun should have come on for Keane with Kuyt playing upfront imo, Arbeloa pushing higher up.. surely if Benayoun was ever going to come off the bench to make an impact on a game where we dont seem to have someone providing forwards with good passes higher up, it would have been today ?!

The subs were not all that bad but Rafa seems to have subbed like for like instead of trying to change the shape of the team or the style of play... we looked flat for 90 mins and never seemed like making anything happen... thought he'd go with Kuyt,Keane,Torres and 2 wingers when Elzhar was about to come on but he ddnt...

With Gerrard and Alonso playing in the middle though i think its gonna be a whole different ball game.. We need players who are direct and will attack the opposition without having to pass the ball 20times to get to advanced positions (Gerrard, Torres, Pennant) ... Without Gerrard in the side we'll always struggle to score imo unless the wide players step up their game...

January... get owen ffs , dont care if keane is only a few games away from finding his form or whatever... we need to have a good striker on the bench to call on if our starting pair cant get things going.... N'gog is not ready and dont think he even made the bench today...

Spot on , it didn't help though that fulham parked the bus , but that was expected from them . We really need to start taking our chances and torres i getting back to his best and keane needs to get his act straighten out , he's a top striker , about time he starts acting like one .

[Owzat]

A very disappointing match.  We just looked out of sorts from the off and never really found a cutting edge.  Fulham bossed us about for a lot of the first half, which was worrying, but we took control of the game completely in the second half.  As ever, though, we looked well short of ideas against a team that sat back and the game just fizzled out.  Alonso was sorely missed from the start and the Torres/Keane partnership was simply not clicking.  Like many, I'd like to see us go back to 4-2-3-1 when Stevie returns and hope to get Torres back into the kind of scoring groove we know he's capable of.  Once that's established, we can think about how to integrate Keane--if indeed there's a need to.

While I'm not blaming Lucas himself, I do blame his selection as inexplicable. Rafa replaced arguably our best player who is out injured, with someone who is an irregular first teamer and yet to really prove himself instead of a player who has been a CL winner and is arguably our most creative source. I don't know why we needed Mascherano to be honest, I gather Fulham had the worst away record in the league before yesterday (may still have) so why play 4-4-2 with a DM alongside a still inexperienced and unproven CM?

So the first name on my teamsheet from a midfield perspective would have been Alonso.

As for Keane, well I was ticked off enough by his effort yesterday, but looking at the replay (again) on SSN this morning is he looking at the ball or the goal/keeper? How can he beat the keeper if he is watching the ball? Or even know if to square/pass/cross or shoot if he's looking at his feet. If I'm right then I wonder if his airshots of recent weeks aren't the cause psychologically.

All that said we should still have created more chances and arguably better chances. At least we didn't lose ground, but we don't want to start dropping points at home and our title challenge fade because we can't beat sides we should. I'd say our draws are causing me more concern than the defeat, drawing at home to Stoke and Fulham, and not even scoring in those games, or away to villa, is worrying - even if the mancs couldn't score at VP either.

Good news is the "pride of london"  are not that convincing at home and surely can't keep winning away from home. But never write off the mancs, had they won they'd have been six points behind with a game in hand and that is how dangerously close they are. I notice that Ashley Cole, Joe Cole, Lampard, Ferdinand AND Rooney all played yesterday while Gerrard was out injured. Who had to prove he was injured to Cappello and who just excused themselves and played Saturday as WIDELY PREDICTED by every fan of more than seven years of age and who's followed football for more than a season or two? I think Liverpool should demand compensation for the 'humiliation' and time spent confirming what should have been accepted

[Owzat]

Fair enough the top four all failing to score is strange but why have you included three random spanish sides?
Im sure lots of teams failed to score, like they do every week.
Your point?

I did wonder what the significance was of randomly picked Spanish sides. Maybe if it had been Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan and Inter then I would have thought "hey, how often do top sides in England, Italy AND Spain ALL fail to score on the same weekend?"

Must be quite a while since the 'big four' all went goalless on the same weekend, and all played on the same/Satur day for that matter