The Liverpool FC Thread XIV

Pls

That's my point, our defence is far more solid than yours (2nd best in the league vs 11th) so there's no basis to that prediction, just salt.

Add in our great (W3D2L1) record vs the top 4 and we'd have probably won, given how poor Dortmund were.

Guess you've been smoking what Wilshere has.

Yeah I'm salty that we knocked you out and matched the tournament favourites away from home...

Your defence isn't solid. You have DDG who is world class and Smalling who is excellent bar a few random errors (similar to Sakho really).

There's no chance you would've done what we did last night, not solely because of your defence, but because you don't have anywhere near the work rate from midfield.

Scenes when you make top 4 but don't get CL because we win EL

Clearly salty about something when you're going on about United despite going through

Stats don't lie brah, it's not even close

Given how good we are against top opposition and how unimpressive they were, there's every chance

Yeah I'm salty that we knocked you out and matched the tournament favourites away from home...

Your defence isn't solid. You have DDG who is world class and Smalling who is excellent bar a few random errors (similar to Sakho really).

There's no chance you would've done what we did last night, not solely because of your defence, but because you don't have anywhere near the work rate from midfield.

Scenes when you make top 4 but don't get CL because we win EL

They changed that rule so that you get an extra entry into the CL.

Awww fair enough, my bad.

Would be great to win the EL since we have nothing else going for us but it's still a massive ask. We may have a "slight" upper hand against Dortmund but we only have 1 away goal so if the match becomes high scoring, we're in trouble.

All we have to do is keep a clean sheet. Easy

Was a funny one.. when we won the CL in 2005 the rules didn't contemplate a winner not qualifying via their domestic league so they gave us an extra position. Then they changed it so that your lowest qualifier loses their spot for a winner (Chelsea did it to Spurs) but when they created the EL winner getting a CL spot, it's an extra spot.

Although I think if Man City were to finish 5th and win the CL, they would get the extra CL qualification spot over us if we were to win the EL..

Was a funny one.. when we won the CL in 2005 the rules didn't contemplate a winner not qualifying via their domestic league so they gave us an extra position. Then they changed it so that your lowest qualifier loses their spot for a winner (Chelsea did it to Spurs) but when they created the EL winner getting a CL spot, it's an extra spot.

Although I think if Man City were to finish 5th and win the CL, they would get the extra CL qualification spot over us if we were to win the EL..

I think Mkhi had a lot of joy because Dortmund played a very 4-2-3-1 with Mkhi going into that central role behind the striker which meant he could go back to the midfield or go forward to attack whereas our midfield were more in a horizontal line across the middle. Usually in Europe teams have tended to drop a DM in that gap to counter the attacking midfielder. Think it was a lot to do with being a spare man in that area than just being a huge gap?

Awww fair enough, my bad.

Would be great to win the EL since we have nothing else going for us but it's still a massive ask. We may have a "slight" upper hand against Dortmund but we only have 1 away goal so if the match becomes high scoring, we're in trouble.

All we have to do is keep a clean sheet. Easy

Pretty sure it's whoever finishes 4th that loses the CL place if both the EL and CL winners finishes outside the top 4 in the PL.

Na what happens there is that whoever comes 4th loses their spot.

I've rewatched the two main situations of threat; Mkhi's shot after the Piszczek pass out of the defence, and Aubameyang's shot after the other Mkhi run. There are a couple of things to note.

There was actually a pretty huge gap. Most teams pressing up the pitch will be a lot closer to the halfway line than Lovren and Sakho were. Obviously this is to counter the pace Aubameyang and Reus (who was also stationed on the last man). There was a solid 30+ yards between our high pressing midfield and the defence. Dortmund should have taken advantage of this more often. On the Aubameyang shot, the second chance they had, the gap was increased by Can being a tiny bit lazy to get back into a central position (and maybe this manufactured the chance), and Henderson drifting forwards to join the attack instead of being aware of what was behind him. For the first chance (moment of the pass out from RB in the pic), Can was high pressing as had been asked of him, but Milner was slow to get back into position following a run into the box, giving Mkhi too much space. Henderson is in his position probably due to instruction, but at very least he could have been aware of the space behind him (would likely not have helped much in this instance but startling how high and wide he is when the other fullback is on the ball). The error is Milner's though. He even turned around and had a look at Mkhitaryan's position but was lazy to get back there, even knowing that Moreno was occupied by Durm (?).

You're right in that teams in Europe usually do drop a man in between midfield and defence, in our cases Can was too busy pressing, and just removed from the ball so not really his fault. If we'd a) not lost the ball suddenly like Coutinho did in the second chance, and b) Milner had kept up his usual work rate, it would have been flawless. The pressing was excellent on the whole. Klopp has largely tended to press the ball in clusters (as opposed to Pep shutting down passing lanes) but we did a bit of both in that first half.

We don't have an upper hand. We have a better chance than we did before but they're still marginal favourites.

Who will play in the midfield tomorrow? Henderson injured and Can banned for 2 league games.. Allen and..?

Probably either Brannagan or Stewart.

Is Stewart back from injury?

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Is it just me or does it seem obvious that Milner will play centre alongside Allen, with Firmino, Lallana, Coutinho and Sturridge ahead of them.

Interest points. I'm not convinced our midfield knew 100% what they wanted to be doing at each point. Being unsure if they should be supporting the front 3 or helping protect the backline. On the whole we did well but we were wayward with our passing at times which meant it was easier for Dortmund to spring against us with such large gaps too.

Milner does seem that yard slow for these types of fast pace games when chasing the ball. However he does shut down passing lanes so well. He had the highest number of interceptions and tackles won on Thursday - way higher than everyone else - which was interesting.

Our players looked a bit tentative for the first 20 minutes. After that I think they had a lightbulb moment when they realised "hang on a second, these guys aren't that much better than us" and then we continued to grow into the game.

I think we'll be a lot better at Anfield in terms of not feeling so obliged to give them so much respect. Klopp will be telling the players they can win the tie.