Liverpool FC Forum

[LiverpoolMadman]

Hope that with this win, we will continue and beat "As-snail" Can't wait for that match ... Hope to see Torres in that match ...

[Ola Mr Benitez]

i think the gaffa is on dodgy ground.  I thought he set the team up badly, no one on the right as giveing Gerrard a free reign meant we left the whole left wing open for EFC.  But what was worse for me although we where getting buggered down there the whole first half, rafa never changed it??? Why??

Sissoko was awful..  for me he is simply not to the standard Liverpool need.. Yes I know he is a destroyer and gets stuck in, but the lad cannot pass to save his life..  He is not good enough, full stop.

Rafa's substitutions where laughable.. No one in their right mind takes their most dynamic player off.

Im afraid I am losing faith in Rafa.  Its hard to say that, as we are still unbeaten in the league, our squad is stronger than it has ever been before in Premiership history, and I feel we could still win the league.  My problem is I don't think Rafa understands the Premiership, or he is trying to be too clever.  A truly great man once said that football was a simple game, we make it complicated every game.

I'm not calling for Rafa's head, but he does need to change his mentality.  My big fear after todays game is that he may have lost the confidence of his captain and that could be the start of losing the dressing room.

Will he change.. no he won't, he has an awful lot of people to convince that his way is the right way and for the first time I cannot give him my full backing.  (not that he will be @rsed)

[RUSHIE#9]

Having had a few hours to think back on the game now I do feel that we were somewhat lucky to come away with the 3 points today. The bitters certainly did have a case for a penalty during the 2nd half, but hey small clubs don't get these decisions do they? 

The starting 11 was definitely set up for a battle of attrition and not to play sexy football and I think we definitely got that.
The defence operated at it's usual level and the bitters didn't look like getting anything on goal, this being backed up by the fact that approaching HT they had 4 shots with 0 on target and were only leading thanks to Sami's unfortunate fuck up.
The midfield was set up to break things up but there was a shortness of real creativity in there and it showed. As a whole the midfield isn't operating well lately but Sissoko really just doesn't look good enough lately and I feel that we are being hindered when he is in the team. Up front Voronin looked the more likely to be the man that would strike but his finishing certainly was poor. The same can be said of Kuyt who just doesn't look capable of finding a goal in open play at the moment. However his penalties were well struck and hopefully will bring him confidence.

Rafa's initial tactics worked well for the 1st 1/4 of an hour or so but certainly once the bitters went down to 10 men he really didn't take advantage of it soon enough for me. I'd have preferred to see something a bit more offensive brought on sooner than he did.
The Gerrard sub was just plain baffling simply because he was starting to assert himself on the game and looked the most dangerous threat we had. Rafa no doubt has his reasons (maybe S@INT is very close with his guesses) but the one he gave is one that has truly dumbfounded me. I hope it was purely Rafa just trying to dodge the question over his seemingly untouchable captain. If his reply is what he really felt then my faith in the man ain't what it used to be and the questions over how much Pako really brought to the partnership will continue to mount.

We'll have to be a damn sight more clinical next week against the gooners other wise the lads will be fighting a losing battle.

[The Manhattan Project]

Everton lose.

Liverpool win.

A Neville is sent off.




Pretty much a perfect match.

[metalhead]

Everton lose.

Liverpool win.

A Neville is sent off.




Pretty much a perfect match.

Everton denied a penalty.

What can you ask more?

[Dundalk]

We got out jail today big time but as we always here it will even itself out at the end of the season. In the end it was funny that it had to happen to them but unless we get a few back then I worry about next week against the gooners

[account deleted by request]

Like goalscorers on a barren patch need to knock one in off their backside to get them scoring again, I think we needed this win to get us back on track. I think we will start to play better again now, and don't forget we have some good players coming back from injury now. I think we will knock the stuffing out of Arsenal when we play them, as long as Rafa doesn't rest everyone after the CL game.

[Bad Bob]

One of the strangest matches I've witnessed in a while, TBH.

I'll start by saying I never expected fantastic, free-flowing football.  You just don't get that in a derby, first off, and especially not a derby that immediately follows a two-week international break.  Under those circumstances, and given that all of our rivals won, it was a huge result to take 3 points.  We may have ridden our luck but it really was our turn to get some luck on the penalty front after what happened to us at the start of the season.  So, I'll gladly take the result and move on.

What was strange, of course, was Rafa's approach.  I don't mean the formation, which I expect was a bog standard 4-4-2 on paper.  Problem is, when you have Gerrard on the right and Benayoun on the left (or vice versa, as was the case in the 2nd half) were are definitely going to play very narrow, with lots of people in the middle of the park.  Neither are hug-the-touchline wingers, after all.  Add to that, the fact that, in Momo and Masch (sounds like pub food ), we have two central midfielders who don't excel at providing wide players and strikers with great service and you get what we saw: pandemonium at times, as Gerrard and Benayoun wandered all over the shop looking for the ball.  Frankly, I'm very surprised that Rafa picked Masch at all, given that he played twice in S. America this week.  I would have expected Gerrard to pair Sissoko in the middle but obviously Rafa wanted a team that would get stuck in and perhaps had some nightmares from the Marseille game, where the pair didn't cover themselves in glory.  Who knows?  It was a strange call for me, nonetheless.

Beyond that, the team selection made sense to me but, let me spare a word for Crouch.  Last week I questioned the notion that Crouch was no longer in Rafa's plans.  I figured, on the contrary, that Rafa wanted to use him more in the CL and would only give the big man rare starts in the league.  But, today was one of those occasions I assumed he would start Crouch, seeing as the lad played all of 10 minutes for England, while Voronin played every minute for Ukraine.  The fact that Crouch was an unused substitute in this match may just prove me wrong.  If he doesn't play in Turkey midweek, something is definitely up.

Okay, on to the substitution.  For me, as for most people, it was one of the strangest moves I have ever seen Rafa make.  Not that Stevie's untouchable but this is a derby and he was starting to boss proceedings.  He seemed the most likely to create chances against the 10 men and we just went flat as soon as he came off.  I won't comment on his post-match comments as I assume (hope) it's only a soundbite of a larger comment that I've read but what an odd, odd decision.  Having said that, I don't think that Rafa's lost the plot nor that he was happy to sit on a draw.  He surely had a reason but feck me if I know what it is.

[Kharhaz]

Cant comment on this match as I havent seen it as I was doing my charitable bit. (9-5 for sod all pay !) Anyway all I saw was the result so i'll comment on that. To go to goodison and lets face it everton have been in good form so far this season and come away with a victory is an excellent result. My opinion wont change with regards to the result but lets not forget this is on the back of 2 internationals so I guess a win is a win yeah? Who was it who said that to win games when not playing so well is the sign of a championship winning team?

[Rafas-Y-Fronts]

The reasoning for the way Rafa set the team up today was as follows in my opinion:-

In recent weeks we have played with width in an attempt to hurt teams down the flanks and deployed two wide attacking midfielders.

Due to the abscence of Daniel Agger we have had to play Sami Hyppia alongside Carragher which has caused a problem to the overall shape of the team.

Hyppia lacks pace so has a natural tendency to defend deep to compensate for this.

As a result of this the 3 other players in the back four 'drop off' to hold a good defensive line.

Our midfield quartet is playing too far away from the back four due to this and teams are using this space to retain possesion higher up the field against us than we normally allow.

The reason we didn't deploy wingers/attacking midfielders today against Everton was so that we would play with a more compact quartet across the middle of the pitch to close down the space Everton can use to control the game in our final third.

This tactic worked extremely well as Everton were unable to create anything of any note through the middle of the pitch and what limited joy they did have came from the flanks with Arteta.

In a derby game away from home....you have to be prepared to accept that the home team are going to have a good amount of possesion unless you nullify that and stifle their gameplan.

When Agger returns we will return to a more natural 4-4-2 and
defend much higher up the pitch as his pace allows for recovery if the pass is played long over the top.

This will mean that the midfield quartet and the back four are playing much closer together and so the space that our oppenents can play in between the two is no longer going to be there.

This in turn means we will be winning back a lot of possesion in this area due to being able to close down the opposition quickly and effectively.

Todays tactics were superbly deployed by Benitez and we controlled the midfield on the whole for most of the game.

I think the introduction of Leiva was also a bit of a statement from Benitez as to how highly he rates this young Brazilian.

Taking off the captain for a relatively unknown youngster might seem like a completely crazy thing to do....unless you know the capabilities of the player who is replacing him!

Gerrard himself has gone on record to state what an excellent talent Leiva is and that in my book is a great accolade from arguably one of the best ever players to pull on the Liverpool Shirt (certainly the best all-round footballer the club has ever had).

Tactics and systems are the result of analysis and careful preparation.

I know from first hand experience having played under good coaches like Pat Rice and Steve Perryman that football is much more than fielding eleven better players than the opposition and relying on their ability to shine through and bag the three points every week.

Modern day football has become a strategic battlefield and a lot of this has come about due to the amounts of money now at stake.

Teams no longer want to risk losing as one point may save them from the disaster of relegation so the mindset of smaller clubs is often "How can we avoid being beaten today"...as opposed to "How can we win this game today".

Smaller clubs then defend deep and make it hard for the bigger clubs to break them down by playing two banks of 4 (or 4 and 5 if playing 4-5-1) about 10 yards apart.

Where are you going to play the ball against that??

There is no space in behind..and there is no room between the two banks of players. You have to resort to a moment of individual brilliance or toss hopefull balls into their penalty area and hope one of the three or so players you have arriving in the box to win something against approximately nine opposing players!

This is the brick wall that we came up against in Birmingham City.

People lambasted Benitez for failing to start with Torres in that game.....what could pace have done against a team that were set up to nullify anyone being able to sprint in behind them?

There are a lot of disgruntled supporters at the moment who are unhappy with 'rotation' and team selection in general and tactical and substititional decisions.

I think a lot of this is sadly down to them not really understanding what the manager is trying to do...and more perhaps having a lack of real tactical understanding of the game of football.

[Scottbot]

Am i happy? Of course, we won the game. Had it finished a draw I (along with every other red on the planet) would have been furious. Typical derby game in many ways, very little space to operate, tackles flying in, head tennis and a bunch of free-kicks and corners. i thought we were excellent for the first 10-15 minutes and then it was pretty even from there on in. Absolutely mystified by the decision to substitute Gerrard, i don't often criticise the manager because i'm pretty happy (and grateful) with what he has achieved at the club but that was IMHO the dummest decision he has ever made. I'd undertand if Gerrard was having a stinker but he had just played his best 10 minutes of the match and was running Hibbert ragged. More patient build-up play Rafa? I was quite enjoying seeing Gerrard running at them at 100 miles an hour thanks. It was 1-1 against ten men with 15 mins to play and our line-up included THREE defensice CMs while Pennant sat on the bench till the 88th minute! Also, i can't believe Carra got away with that wrestling move at the end of the game. funny as fook mind!!!!

Positives for me (apart from the result) were the play of Lucas when he came on, a decent game from Riise and once again, the effort and workrate of Voronin. And last but not least the fact Gollum must be feeling sick as pig sh...i.....t tonight!

[bigmick]

If he really did say the thing about "playing with your head not your heart" then I hopevery much he takes the to have a word with his captain man to man. Gerrard will probably point out that as he had single handedly dragged the team back into the game while being employed in an unfamiliar left-side role, and having in the previous ten minutes looked to be playing his best football for a month or so that the decision was a difficult one to understand. He may also make the case that at the time he was brought off, he felt that he was the most likely player on the pitch to have a positive effect on the result for Liverpool.

If the captain gets really fired up, he might also argue that he thinks he deserves a little more respect than being talked about as if he were some sort of headless chicken.

He would of course be absolutely correct. It was a cheap way of explaining a poor decision (if it was said) and I hope the reason is a language issue only or it may become a pivotal moment.

[Kharhaz]

I'd undertand if Gerrard was having a stinker but he had just played his best 10 minutes of the match and was running Hibbert ragged.

I think thats why he was substituted ! best 10 mins?

[Bad Bob]

Does anyone have a video clip of the Rafa's post match interview?  I'd love to hear his exact words as well.

[account deleted by request]

By the way whats happened to Rafa's goatee ? He looks like he shaved it off and then decided to grow it again.