Hey people, this should be one of the columns I'll be posting on this site hopefully on a semi regular basis, depending on time and other works I might be doing. We'll see how this goes, and how you respond to it, if you do. Any feedback is appreciated.
Bad result, but it's the start of the season!
Well what a disaster yesterday was in some respects. Then again in other respects it's not that bad. I mean, thankfully we were away from home, and thankfully, the display wasn't awful, it's not like we played so bad we made them look good, it was that they were that damn good. Manchester City were pretty much flawless last night, they had their tactics spot on, they stopped us from playing, nullified our better players and worked their socks off to disrupt our play. It fricking worked.
Yesterday for me was the first time I've properly seen Mancini in the Sky Blue actually be a tactical genius. He played THREE defensive midfielders yesterday, and that just broke us. Yaya Toure was playing as an attacking midfielder, but tracked back when needed, which, in honesty, wasn't as often as we would have liked. He then played Barry and Kompany as the two settled defensive midfielders and it was perfect. Tevez, being the machine he is, just run our defence ragged and got himself two good goals.
Enough about City, I'm a Liverpool supporter. Where did we go wrong? Well, it's no excuse, but Mascherano was required yesterday. One thing that does annoy me about football is that players "aren't in the right frame of mind" to play. I have to work if I like it or not, footballers should be the same. Mascherano, unlike some players, play well despite being unhappy. He was well enough to play last week, but the Barcelona bid took his attention. Why? It's not like it's going to get sorted out in match time. Put it aside and talk about it the next day. It's frustrating.
The leaders on the Liverpool side were very disappointing as well, particularly Gerrard. He was trying his hardest to annoy Milner, instead of motivating our team to try and stay composed and work harder. We just lacked ideas, everything we tried failed. In those situations it's up to Gerrard to stay cool, stay relaxed and use his world class ability to try and come up with something magical. Not go and hound the opposition. Carragher lacked his usual leadership skills also.
Torres was a mixed bag, and I don't hold it against him, he will get sharper and sharper in the next few games. If this was 5 more matches down the line we then have an excuse to have a go. N'Gog was relatively quiet, apart from the only spell in the game where we put them under immense pressure. The words "if only" come to mind when I think about hitting that post...
I don't know if I need to talk about anymore individual players, but we did desperately lack energy yesterday, we lacked quality and creativity. I know some people have said Aquilani would have been good yesterday, but I'm still not convinced that he would have. He wasn't at all consistent last year; a year at Juventus will do him the world of good. We did lack Joe Cole in my opinion, the man just unlocks defences.
The main concern about yesterday is, how are we expected to get in the top 4 if Manchester City play so much better than us? It's a concern, but I'm not going to lose faith, it's only 2 out of 38 games into the season. Let's hope we can finish off Trabzonspor comfortably. West Bromwich Albion on the weekend, it's a good match to recover from this setback, let's hope we can do just that.
Date: 24/8/10
i liked that john, it was very well written, as always, and i like the fact that despite the liverpool thrashing you didnt do the normal football fan thing and find an excuse for all of it. well done :)
ReplyDeleteThank you =)
ReplyDelete