SouthCoastShankly » Mon Aug 18, 2014 8:08 am wrote:stmichael » Mon Aug 18, 2014 7:39 am wrote:Poor display but a win is a win.
Last year against Stoke we played equally as bad, and we had Suarez.
I struggle to remember any opening day where we have played well. I mean look back at previous opening games of the season, they're riddled with draws and losses.
In fact a quick look at our last 10 seasons shows 3 wins, 2 losses and 5 draws. A nice little meaningless stat is each time we've won our opening game we've finished the season in a CL position. I'll take that little omen.
Suarez was banned at the start of last season mate.
The side that struggled against Stoke on the opening day of last year was remarkably similar to this one, for instance the midfield 3 were Gerrard, Lucas and Henderson and we finished the game with Sturridge, Coutinho and Sterling as our front 3. In fact 8 of the players were the same, the main difference being the 2 CB's (Toure and Agger as opposed to Lovren and Skrtel).
To be fair to Brendan I'm sure if he had the likes of Moreno, Markovic and Lallana fit and available that side yesterday would have looked a lot different although why he went with Lucas and Gerrard in the middle when Can and Allen were there I'm not sure.