Liverpool FC Forum

It will be interesting to see what side he puts out, the game is pretty much a dead rubber but if he fields a weakened side and Napoli smash us it just  exacerbates our current situation.

Don't worry Yakka, Naby Keita's back soon.....      

On whether he will rest players or go as 'strong' as possible...

First and foremost, it’s a pretty quick turnaround since we played against Leeds. I'm not fully aware of the situation with the players who played against Leeds and we still have to wait for that exactly. For sure we will not take risks, but we cannot – if you watch football a little bit, international football, then you would probably know, or will know, that Napoli is in incredible shape, plays incredible football, top of the table in Italy, maybe the team in form in Europe at the moment.

So, this is not a game for massive rotation, probably, it's not about that we have to win 4-0 or whatever to go top of the group. We want to win the game, obviously, that's clear. But the result in the moment is not really important. I have to make the line-up later today, maybe tomorrow morning – we will see – and then we go from there.

We would need to win by 4 goals to top the group so there isn't much riding on this but judging by the above Klopp will be wary about putting out a side to get spanked. Napoli have probably been the form team in Europe this year. They’ve yet to taste defeat, sit top of the league in Italy with 10 wins and 2 draws from 12 matches, and have comfortably won their 5 Champions League games. But I would be surprised if we don't see a fair bit of rotation from them as they more or less have top spot secured and face 2nd place Atlanta on Saturday afternoon.

Keita and Ox are not registered for the group stages of the CL and with Arthur, Jota, Díaz, and Matip all injured we don’t have a whole bunch of squad players to come in. Can’t see Klopp sending out a team full of teenagers to get battered because that will more likely harm rather than help their development. But you’d expect game time (even if it’s from the bench for some) for Ramsay, Tsimikas, Konate, maybe Phillips, Bajcetic, Milner, Jones, and Carvalho. As Klopp mentioned it's a short turnaround time after Leeds but this game is at Anfield rather than in Italy and we then have 4 full days before we take on Spurs on Sunday so plenty of time to recover for that. Maybe something like the below with some strength coming on in the 2nd half.

                               Alisson


Ramsay          Gomez          Konate          Tsimikas
(Trent)

           Jones          Henderson          Milner
                              (Fabinho)          (Thiago)

             Elliott          Firmino          Carvalho
            (Salah)          (Nunez)

I say play a strong attacking side to gain the advantage. Napoli have been in good form but we are playing better in the CL and why can’t we beat them 4-0?

I'd definitely start Nunez the guy needs as much game time as possible. I'd play him central with Salah and Carvalho either side of him. I'd start Hendo,Thiago and I'd throw young Bajcetic in as CDM to see how he gets on.

Strong starting line up. Jones instead of Nunez is a concern. Would like to see us put on a strong confidence building performance.

COYR

YNWA

Good result and good impact by Darwin after coming on from the bench. We stopped their 13 game win streak aswell.

I'd say we did OK in the group stages at the end. We finished second but only Bayern Munich finished with more points than us. Even Man City, who have a game tomorrow, can't get to 15 points, even if they win their last game.

Spurs scoring with the final kick of the game and finishing top of their group isn't great for us. We would have had Frankfurt as potential opponents since they would have finished first had Spurs not won. Now we might get Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Porto or PSG/Benfica. I'd prefer Porto obviously or at least Benfica if they can finish top, but we all know we're getting Bayern and we play against Mane.

Good result against one of the competitors and continents form sides, have to say we looked really sharp when those 3 young lads came on near the end, okay 10 minutes or whatever it was is not the largest sample size but some of our passing particularly when extricating ourselves from tight spaces was really impressive.

It was an okay performance at times our defense was shaky, however, was no progress upfront until the introduction of Nunez was a game-changer with two goals.   

We need to avoid Bayern Munich at all costs!

Good result and for once thank gawd for VAR !! I failed to share the enthusiasm demonstrated by some of the match pundits with regards to  Jones. Nunez made a massive difference when he came on. An assist and a goal is just what he needed. Hopefully the result will be a real confidence booster going into the weekends game against Spurs.

It was a great result and what will be will be with the draw. We have enough time between now and then to sort ourselves out with injuries and have a fresh approach. When we get back we will have a few weeks as well to get match fit. We are unseeded so its either Porto, Benfica, Real or Bayern. One of the first 2 would be ideal. 1st leg will be at home as well.

We have 3 games to go till the break so Nunez has got to play every minute possible. Hes definitely a handful and we need something to get defences nervy again. Having Konate back as well makes some difference so hopefully he's 100% fit.

The game itself wasn't great but we stuck to the task and put in a good shift. I do accept we aren't at the level we once where but we need to find consistency at some level. Following this up with a win against spurs will be a massive confidence boost.

As bad as we’ve been this season we’ve still beaten the likes of City (twice) and Napoli not to mention putting 9 past Bournemouth and inflicting Rangers heaviest ever home defeat on them so amid all the doom and gloom we are still capable of digging out the odd good performance.
Where we seem to struggle is when teams come to harry and outwork us, when teams want to outplay us (usually the better sides) we tend to be able to hold our own