The Liverpool FC Thread XII

Lucas and Skrtel between them are the worst spine of the team in the world.

Shy out of challenges, back off, slow and clumsy. Disgraceful. We knew this 3 years ago and we're still stuck with them. Absolute mediocrity.

I think its more to do with the defensive coaching tbh and anyway we've looked better since Lucas has been drafted into the team. But yeah it pisses me off to see them back off from the ball and not challenge for it, time and time again the Burnley players were able to turn and run at the defence and shoot at goal. We were lucky they weren't able to finish any of the chances they had.

It's not down to just the coaching. If you look at someone like Sakho, born and raised to defend against the ball - he always moves to the ball. Someone like Skrtel, he's been raised and it's ingrained in his head to defend the space. So he'll always, always back off and protect the area closer to the goal rather than move to the ball and risk being beaten. It's such a **** habit and Skrtel basically always retreats when someone is running at him with the ball. It's just silly and cowardly and means he'll never, ever be a good enough centre back.

Lucas is slow and laborious and not physically good enough to be a competent DM. He gets beaten so, so easily. Ings was dribbling rings around him and Ings is hardly of Messi's physique.

The funny thing is it is these two exact people who were annihilated by (I think Bentenke too in December 2012) but most notably Jay ****ing Rodriguez who ran unopposed from the halfway line to score against us. Not a player challenged him until he shot from inside our box and the two who should have done were Lucas and Skrtel. The hilarious thing is that Jay Rodriguez did this against us in March 2013 - we're now two years on and it's the same two ****e players who are the spine of our defence.

Lucas has improved results in the short term but not to the level that we aspire to. Skrtel has always been dismal. It pains me so much to watch both of them.

It's not down to just the coaching. If you look at someone like Sakho, born and raised to defend against the ball - he always moves to the ball. Someone like Skrtel, he's been raised and it's ingrained in his head to defend the space. So he'll always, always back off and protect the area closer to the goal rather than move to the ball and risk being beaten. It's such a **** habit and Skrtel basically always retreats when someone is running at him with the ball. It's just silly and cowardly and means he'll never, ever be a good enough centre back.

Lucas is slow and laborious and not physically good enough to be a competent DM. He gets beaten so, so easily. Ings was dribbling rings around him and Ings is hardly of Messi's physique.

The funny thing is it is these two exact people who were annihilated by (I think Bentenke too in December 2012) but most notably Jay ****ing Rodriguez who ran unopposed from the halfway line to score against us. Not a player challenged him until he shot from inside our box and the two who should have done were Lucas and Skrtel. The hilarious thing is that Jay Rodriguez did this against us in March 2013 - we're now two years on and it's the same two ****e players who are the spine of our defence.

Lucas has improved results in the short term but not to the level that we aspire to. Skrtel has always been dismal. It pains me so much to watch both of them.

Agree with this but Lucas is the only competant DM we have, he can atleast read the situation and provide some protection to our defence, Gerrard cannot do that. The problem is both our CM's are not mobile and energetic enough, which was more the reason we got dominated in midfield than the actual formation itself.

We looked much more effective against Arsenal as they played right into our hands, they played from the back and so we pressed the **** out of them, their CM's weren't exactly physically dominant so they couldn't win the aerial duels and got bullied off the ball. Burnley however had physically dominant CM's, they just played the long ball so we couldn't press and Gerrard and Lucas didn't have the legs to keep up. It didn't help that we were incredibly sloppy and kept giving the ball away.

I agree Lucas is a short term improvement but we haven't been able to attract high caliber players/don't want to pay over the odds for them. I think Gerrard is a big part of the problem also because he can't keep up and press teams in the middle of the park. This just puts extra pressure onto our defence and exposes them unnecessarily. I'd like to see a Can-Lucas partnership in the midfield, I think that'll improve things more since Can is able to press and has far more energy than Gerrard. Wrt to Skrtel the problem is we brought in Lovren but he hasn't played well at all, selling Agger in the summer now seems like a really bad decision. Do you think Lovren can step up and create a successful partnership with Sakho? Sakho has done really well in the past two games, he so assured when he goes into tackling and can play out from the back. I hope he can just stay fit from now on and that he carries on playing well.

Cahill is similar to Skrtel in that respect, if you have decent enough protection for the defence it's not a problem. Don't think Skrtel is to blame but Lucas and Gerrard.

We're crap tbh.

And I don't think there are any easy fixes. Can you name one position that you could say you're happy with in our squad?

Last season we had Sturridge and Suarez pressing the CBs and fullbacks (and DMs at times) and then Henderson supported that to press the DM and higher. This season and going forward, we’re going to be playing with one striker more often so when Sturridge plays, you want another player to help the pressing high up the pitch. Balotelli/Lambert aren’t going to give you that and Borini will be gone in January. Having a sole striker try to press their back 5 is a waste of his energy and if you stop doing that, you’re no longer playing Rodgers’ preferred style of play.

Henderson has the energy and tenacity to win the ball high up the pitch and then he can play the simple pass to Sturridge to score. I think Sterling can do this role too but at the moment you need to make the most out of the players you have and Sterling is our best winger. We’d be trying to play the game 10-20 yards higher than we currently are so Henderson would remain involved with the game.

That’s a ridiculous argument. Players develop over time. Gerrard wasn’t a goal scorer in his younger days and equally in more recent times we’ve seen players like Bale and Ramsey rapidly change from type to goal scorers. Gerrard is a decade older than Henderson. In the 02/03, Gerrard scored 7 in 54 games and in 03/04 he scored 6 in 47. Those figures are actually worse than Henderson’s record in 12/13 and 13/14 (I’ve compared like for like ages/years).

So you’re saying that Henderson isn’t statistically proven and then using your own judgment on his ability? Is that any less contradictory than the parts of my post you’ve taken?

That makes little sense since we’ve seen Henderson play plenty of different roles under Rodgers from CM, RM to RWB to further forward. Yes I agree that Gerrard was always great and shooting from deep but how many long range efforts to we take now? Under Rodgers we’re generally closer to the opposition goal than the counterattacking/direct football we played under Rafa with Torres/Gerrard combo. I’m not asking Henderson to be taking long range shots but his runs from deep are highlighted as a strong point and I think his goal scoring numbers would improve if he was playing closer to goal.

I don't see what is ridiculous about comparing a player to a 23 year old Steven Gerrard.

Just thinking about it Rafa is a don. Brought the best out in Gerrard and made Torres the greatest striker on the planet for a while.


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I would be surprised if there was ever a weaker team than 05 that has ever won the EC/CL.