February 3, 20214 yr Author Brighton were excellent, fair play, they exectuted their plan. Very annoying performance from us- I know it's a squad game but when you have 7 first team players out it really shows when we're relying on Origi and Shaqiri to change the game. It was a pretty puzzling performance from us full stop, we're very easy to defend against. And unfortunately we will experience more results like this between now and May, especially with trying to intergrate two new CBs.
February 3, 20214 yr Brighton will be able to say that they were undefeated against Liverpool this season. It's good to hear that Jesse Lingard had a good debut for West Ham also.
February 4, 20214 yr Brighton were excellent, fair play, they exectuted their plan. Very annoying performance from us- I know it's a squad game but when you have 7 first team players out it really shows when we're relying on Origi and Shaqiri to change the game. It was a pretty puzzling performance from us full stop, we're very easy to defend against. And unfortunately we will experience more results like this between now and May, especially with trying to intergrate two new CBs. At what point do we say there is a huge problem here! Hope we don’t paper over the cracks against city and they give us a hiding and hopefully go on to win the league ahead of the other side of Manchester.
February 4, 20214 yr Author At what point do we say there is a huge problem here! Hope we don’t paper over the cracks against city and they give us a hiding and hopefully go on to win the league ahead of the other side of Manchester. I don't think there is a huge problem, I think it is a fairly simple one - injuries. Allison, Gomez, Virgil, Fabinho, Keita, Mane, Jota - if you took Ederson, Dias, Laporte, Stones, Gundogan, KDB, Sterling and Aguero out they would struggle at times too. Klopp pretty much said it in the post match that the players were mentally fatigued. And it makes sense watching us play today, it's almost like watching the Gerard Houllier days towards the end. It's a bit odd that Klopp barked on so much about rotation, but then he doesn't really rotate, but I'm not really sure you can rotate the defensive options too much when we've got Kelleher, Phillips and Henderson there. We just weren't making the right runs and some of the passing today was so slow and absolutely dreadful. It just allowed Brighton to get in to their shape every single time. Plus another thing that goes really unnoticed is we're a team of midgets currently. We're no threat from set pieces at all. Loads of our attacking play from the past 2 years has been built on set pieces and it accounts for something like 15% of all our goals. City will steamroller to the title now, I think we will probably give them a good game at the weekend. They're on 9+ wins, no one is going to match that level of consistency. It's just a shame everything has caught up with us.
February 4, 20214 yr Injuries are part and parcel of the game, you can't say you didn't have a good enough team out there to smash Brighton! You won 2 much harder matches against Spurs and West Ham too, I did think you were getting your groove back. Sunday's game will be very interesting! Fair play to Brighton I thought they were gonna sleepwalk into relegation this season but they've pulled off 2 great results. There's an absolute chasm between 17th & 18th in the table now so the relegation discussion could very much be over already! I know it's happened time and time before where a team has somehow pulled off 7 wins in a row or something (Sunderland 13/14 and Leicester 14/15) but can you really see any of that bottom 3 doing that? Not in a trillion years.
February 4, 20214 yr Newcastle are probably the ones to watch of the teams currently above the bottom three. Moans about Liverpool's injury problems are getting rather tiresome. There were times last season when every one of Bournemouth's most li9kely starting XI were injured. Southampton's bench on Tuesday had two goalkeepers and several academy players. That's an injury crisis.
February 4, 20214 yr Author Injuries are part and parcel of the game, you can't say you didn't have a good enough team out there to smash Brighton! You won 2 much harder matches against Spurs and West Ham too, I did think you were getting your groove back. Sunday's game will be very interesting! Fair play to Brighton I thought they were gonna sleepwalk into relegation this season but they've pulled off 2 great results. There's an absolute chasm between 17th & 18th in the table now so the relegation discussion could very much be over already! I know it's happened time and time before where a team has somehow pulled off 7 wins in a row or something (Sunderland 13/14 and Leicester 14/15) but can you really see any of that bottom 3 doing that? Not in a trillion years. They are part and parcel of the game but we've been without our first choice centr backs since about gameweek 6. We've played 3 games in 6 days with pretty much the same starting XI. Now some of that is on Klopp I will totally agree, but we don't have the luxury to rotate right now in defence and have relied on a 35 year old Milner to play 3 games in 6 days. The players are not robots and the squad options should be just that - squad options. When we're relying on Origi, Shaqiri, Milner, Phillips to play every game over a significant period of time I don't know what people expect. They can do a job, but when you're asking them to play week in week out they're going to have games where they're absolutely awful. It's unfortunate and extremely unlucky, I've never known anything like it. But it shows in games like this. Fair play to Brighton they played really well but are you telling me if Man Utd were playing with Tuanzebe and McTominary in centre back over a quarter of the season they would be in title winning form? Not a chance. Newcastle are probably the ones to watch of the teams currently above the bottom three. Moans about Liverpool's injury problems are getting rather tiresome. There were times last season when every one of Bournemouth's most li9kely starting XI were injured. Southampton's bench on Tuesday had two goalkeepers and several academy players. That's an injury crisis. But that is exactly like Liverpool, we had 2 keepers on the bench (and not the first time this season) against West Ham and 3 Academy players. The only reason we didn't have 2 keepers on the bench against Brighton is one was injured! We've had injury troubles since our midfield and defence got capitulated in October/November. None of our first choice CBs going in to the season are going to play again this season. The only positive is after the City game the schedule becomes a bit more manageable and Jota/Mane/Fabinho don't sound like they're too far away.
February 4, 20214 yr So Bednarek has his red card and subsequent ban overturned yet David Luiz hasn't, despite their tackles being literally the same. I'd even say Bednarek's was more of a foul than Luiz's so even discounting questionable referees decisions/VAR in the moment, the officials still can't come to any logical conclusions days later.
February 4, 20214 yr Author So Bednarek has his red card and subsequent ban overturned yet David Luiz hasn't, despite their tackles being literally the same. I'd even say Bednarek's was more of a foul than Luiz's so even discounting questionable referees decisions/VAR in the moment, the officials still can't come to any logical conclusions days later. I thought they both should have been overturned. I can only imagine that Martial admitted he dived and it was picked up and taken in to consideration otherwise it's baffling. The general standard of referring in our country is absolutely horrendous though. It does make sense why we seem to be out of favour with FIFA.
February 4, 20214 yr For me Bednarek's was far less certain a foul, Martial certainly looked like he was anticipating a challenge that was pulled out of, and and when I was watching Mike Dean go to the monitor I assumed it was because he'd been told to look to overturn it! I don't see how - with the way the laws are written - that Luiz can be anything other than a red card. It was less of a foul in that it was a complete accident, but it ultimately ticked every box that makes DOGSO a red card. I'm also not entirely sure that refs are A) worse here than elsewhere (in the same way that VAR isn't but the way some pundits go on you'd think it's a Premier League only issue) or B.) worse than they used to be, referees decisions have become far more magnified all the time which has only accelerated with the introduction of VAR Edited February 4, 20214 yr by RabbitFurCoat
February 6, 20214 yr Author I suspect most Man Utd fans will be praying for a draw or Liverpool win tomorrow- I honestly think a City win would be a lot better for you lot. Good effort over the last couple of months but I thought today's game really showed up some of the cracks in Utd that have been there for a few games, but got totally plastered over with the 9-0. On a different note- what on earth are they coaching the Everton goalkeepers! Now I know why Pickford has been pretty much undroppable!
February 6, 20214 yr Newcastle United. To play 18 minutes with 9 men under pressure against a Southampton side who were a hell of a lot stronger than they were at Old Trafford, they deserve a lot of credit for getting 3 points. I think they'll be safe but long way to go.
February 7, 20214 yr Author Soucek's sending off was a joke. Genuinely baffling. That’s not VAR though that’s the referees. The sheer fact it took ages to make a decision should show it’s not clear cut. Absolutely awful.
February 7, 20214 yr Disappointing result yesterday against Everton after playing better than them for most of the match and leading twice. So close to victory then we screwed it up in the last seconds of the match, it reminded me of when we drew 4-4 against them in 2012 when we were leading under similar circumstances. It feels like Axel Tuanzebe is cursed at the moment. He literally came on, got a yellow card and gave away the free kick which led to Everton's equalizing goal and this is at least the 3rd match where he's cost us points. Despite that he definitely doesn't deserve the racist abuse he's been getting though and more needs to be done to stop it from happening in the future.
February 7, 20214 yr Author Disappointing result yesterday against Everton after playing better than them for most of the match and leading twice. So close to victory then we screwed it up in the last seconds of the match, it reminded me of when we drew 4-4 against them in 2012 when we were leading under similar circumstances. It feels like Axel Tuanzebe is cursed at the moment. He literally came on, got a yellow card and gave away the free kick which led to Everton's equalizing goal and this is at least the 3rd match where he's cost us points. Despite that he definitely doesn't deserve the racist abuse he's been getting though and more needs to be done to stop it from happening in the future. The problem was Maguire, not Tuanzebe. He fell asleep for the first goal and then played everyone onside for the 3rd goal! It's crazy how little criticism he gets when he is at fault. The result probably feels like a defeat too which makes it even worse. At least there is a game midweek for you to try and play yourselves back in to some good form.
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