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      Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?

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      maddog
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      Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Aug 18, 2014 12:07:16 pm
      Hello there!

      Leicester fan in peace.

      I have got myself into a rather petty debate with my mate who is a Liverpool fan so I am coming on here to gauge some more opinions and to make sure I haven't actually said something ridiculous.

      Last season you played the most attractive football in The Premier League and scored a ton of goals, but the attacking philosophy of Brendan Rodgers left you exposed at the back.

      This meant you only made ten clean sheets last season (6 home and 4 away). That was a lower number overall than Norwich who were relegated. And in terms of away from home that was a lower clean sheet return than Sunderland, Palace and Villa.

      When you compare those numbers to your main rivals for Champions League place/title. Chelsea made 8 clean sheets away, and 10 at home. Arsenal made 11 at home and they're not renowned for sitting back and defending. Man City made 10 at home and 6 away. Everton made 8 away and 7 at home and even manure made more than yourselves despite their horrendous year.

      For me these figures just don't add up, my point to my mate was considering the loss of 31 goals Suarez and if these clean sheet stats continue for another season... How do you think Liverpool will  maintain themselves in the top four/title contenders?

      It just doesn't add up for me so I'm asking for your opinions if you have time on this one :) all I keep getting from my mate is 'we are the best' and 'you're not worthy of even being in the same league' and 'not a single Leicester player would even make the Liverpool bench' (did you see Liverpool's bench yesterday :p). So yeah no objective opinions out of him which is what I am hoping for here.

      Do you think Rodgers should tweak his philosophy only slightly in terms of taking the foot of the attacking gas and concentrating on not conceding goals? I'm not saying park the bus just a tweak. Clearly if last seasons stats are anything to go by Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and even Everton have a better balance between defence and attack in terms of number of goals they scored and number of clean sheets.

      I am just concerned for Liverpool in terms of is those statistics continue and with the loss of Suarez it could be a very challenging season.

      Anyway, apologies for the essay. Your views/perspective on this very welcome I can't get any sense from my mate. We took a deserved point off Everton Saturday so I hope that helps my cause a little posting on here :p
      FL Red
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #1: Aug 18, 2014 06:51:36 pm
      No objective opinions from your LFC supporting mate so you joined here in hopes of getting an objective opinion? Brilliant! ;D

      I bet Fed will reply to you, he'll give you the lowdown on how bad we really are.
      CoutinhoRed
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #2: Aug 18, 2014 07:23:00 pm
      Unfortunately everyone talks utter crap these days. Alan Hansen, Mark Lawrenson, Michael Owen, Martin Keown, Gareth Crooks, Alan Shearer and Jamie Redknapp to name a few. Pundits get more things wrong than they do right, and football fans are no better.

      An objective view? That means unbiased too, but on a Liverpool forum. Good luck.

      Ask a manc, arse, or Chelsea fan? They'll just slate us because they hate us. You cannot find an unbiased opinion these days.

      Robbie Savage is your best bet..

      Keep calm and wait for Federer ;)
      Scottbot
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #3: Aug 18, 2014 07:51:39 pm
      http://www.lfcreds.com/reds/index.php/topic,46523.0.html

      Plenty of chat about our dodgy defence in here mate
      what-a-hit-son
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #4: Aug 18, 2014 09:17:21 pm
      KopiteLuke
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #5: Aug 18, 2014 09:36:05 pm
      Hello there!

      Leicester fan in peace.

      I have got myself into a rather petty debate with my mate who is a Liverpool fan so I am coming on here to gauge some more opinions and to make sure I haven't actually said something ridiculous.

      Last season you played the most attractive football in The Premier League and scored a ton of goals, but the attacking philosophy of Brendan Rodgers left you exposed at the back.

      This meant you only made ten clean sheets last season (6 home and 4 away). That was a lower number overall than Norwich who were relegated. And in terms of away from home that was a lower clean sheet return than Sunderland, Palace and Villa.

      When you compare those numbers to your main rivals for Champions League place/title. Chelsea made 8 clean sheets away, and 10 at home. Arsenal made 11 at home and they're not renowned for sitting back and defending. Man City made 10 at home and 6 away. Everton made 8 away and 7 at home and even manure made more than yourselves despite their horrendous year.

      For me these figures just don't add up, my point to my mate was considering the loss of 31 goals Suarez and if these clean sheet stats continue for another season... How do you think Liverpool will  maintain themselves in the top four/title contenders?

      It just doesn't add up for me so I'm asking for your opinions if you have time on this one :) all I keep getting from my mate is 'we are the best' and 'you're not worthy of even being in the same league' and 'not a single Leicester player would even make the Liverpool bench' (did you see Liverpool's bench yesterday :p). So yeah no objective opinions out of him which is what I am hoping for here.

      Do you think Rodgers should tweak his philosophy only slightly in terms of taking the foot of the attacking gas and concentrating on not conceding goals? I'm not saying park the bus just a tweak. Clearly if last seasons stats are anything to go by Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and even Everton have a better balance between defence and attack in terms of number of goals they scored and number of clean sheets.

      I am just concerned for Liverpool in terms of is those statistics continue and with the loss of Suarez it could be a very challenging season.

      Anyway, apologies for the essay. Your views/perspective on this very welcome I can't get any sense from my mate. We took a deserved point off Everton Saturday so I hope that helps my cause a little posting on here :p

      Hey there Maddog.

      Our defensive system has been a problem ever since Brendan came in. He's taken plenty of flak for it and calls for a defensive coach to be signed on many an occasion. To me though it's encouraging that he is basically replacing 3 of the back 4 this summer. It shows that he believes it's a personnel problem much more than a coaching one. Of course should that not work then we really will have to consider it's something to do with the coaching but for now I'm happy to trust Brendan knows what he's doing.

      With that in mind I already believe we will concede far less this year. Not only those 3 but with Can (defensive midfielder) Lallana (expert presser of the ball) it appears like the onus to replace Suarez's influence will be asked of by a great number of players rather than a like-for-like.

      Not saying I wouldn't mind a Reus type to come in who could go a hell of a long way to filling the hole but if it is to be a collective effort I think Brendan has done well with his signings so far. Unfortunately 3 of them have started off injured so we had to field a midfield trio we already knew didn't work too well from last year. When Brendan has his full first team available though I still think we'll challenge for the title as long as a striker comes in. Number of goals wont fall as far as is being predicted either.

      In conclusion it's all about the balance, last year we weren't just awesome in attack because of our attacking tactics we should have also been much better in defense. Our ability to defend any type of dead ball situation was embarrassing and that will surely change this season. I feel we'll probably end up with 10 or so less goals in the league but we'll also concede 15 less, that's the plan anyway.
      TheRedMosquito
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #6: Aug 18, 2014 09:57:28 pm


      Oh wait. Wrong kind of clean sheets.
      srslfc
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #7: Aug 18, 2014 10:41:46 pm
      If we can attack  like we did last season I'm not as bothered about the defense as some of you lot will be as playing like that will beat almost every side in this league as we proved last season.

      Having said that I think Brendan will have thought about this over the summer and Lovren in particular seems to be that signing to tighten things up and lead from the back.
      bigears
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #8: Aug 18, 2014 10:47:10 pm
      I wonder can we ever keep a clean sheet , Last season was a mad crazy ride with 101 goals scored  and we conceded 51 if memory serves me correctly . Now if we can stop 15 - 20% of those goals going in this season with a far better defence  and a top goal scorer coming in alongside Studge then i can't see why we shouldn't be serious title contenders . The last thing i would want is for us to park the bus to win but if that's what has to be done to get the job done then so be it .
      JD
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #9: Aug 19, 2014 01:09:51 am
      If I was being facetious I'd say one of the reasons behind our inability to keep a clean sheet stems from the fact that our goalkeeper likes palming the ball around for a corner/back into the penalty box/out to a hapless wing back thus inviting more totally needless pressure on us when it would have been far simpler, if less spectacular, just to catch it.

      But I'm not the facetious type so ignore all that.
      Hollywood Balls
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #10: Aug 19, 2014 08:36:13 am
      Hi mate - welcome to the forum and well done on getting back to the top flight.

      The question you ask is a good one and, biases aside, has been partly answered in your post. The key thing you have nailed is that any team has a balance of defence vs attack. For this reason you can discount calls for us to get a "defensive coach" - no top flight team has one, and, as far as they exist their role would be to
      fit their coaching within BR's overarching tactics anyway.

      You can't simply bolt an attacking unit on top of a defensive unit that is coached to play a different way. The team will lack cohesion and stutter. This, to an extent is what happened when Kenny had a brand new attack glued onto Rafa's defensive unit. On a broader note this is a well known weakness of the 14231 system which creates a horizontal fracture through the team on which one side effectively defends and the other side attacks. You need players that are able to link the two effectively for the system to work. Under Kenny, that player was Lucas - when he was injured, our season fell apart and Kenny eventually lost his job.


      Brendan is a manager who believes in a cohesive approach to the game but, like Kenny, he has had to decide on which parts of the team to change when he arrived.

      The problem he was faced with was installing a philosophy of possession-based pressing football which played with sterile domination (as Wenger said "they have possession but don't do much with it") in a team where the most reliable defender, captain and heartbeat of the side and the star player were unsuited to the task - the underlying problem being that they all gave the ball away too easily.

      Brendan is nothing if not a pragmatist. In many ways he is similar to Alex Ferguson. as we have seen in the past (and something that Nigel Pearson has clearly taken notice of) - changing too much too soon  can lead to disaster for a team trying to assimilate too much information. For that reason the "philosophy" was tweaked on a systems (as opposed to a player) level so that we were set up to play fast counter attacking football that would maximise Stevie's passing range and Suarez's attacking ability.

      That essentially took two seasons to develop whilst putting things into place which would eventually allow us to move back to the 1433 possession-based system once those players could be moved on. And to that extent it almost worked perfectly as proved with upcoming second last year - and thereby proving we had the second best balance of defence and attack, the number of clean sheets aside.

      This season, our priorities have been to manage the transition of Suarez out of the team and to concentrate on our defensive game.

      If you analyse why we conceeded so many goals last season, the two basic problems were that we didn't compress space in the middle of the park which left Stevie stranded as 22yr olds motored past him and we didn't stop crosses coming in to the box.

      Both of these issues are to do with personnel rather than systems. Skrtel, for example, has a natural inclination to buy himself time by dropping off play. Johnson, for example, Is often caught out of position and fails to either pin back the opposing team or stop crosses getting in.

      This season those weaknesses will both be addressed. Both Sakho and Lovren are naturally front-footed defenders whose inclination is to compress play in the centre. We have signed Emre Can whose mobility will help track runners now that Stevie's and Lucas's legs have gone. Our new fullbacks have got good statistics for stopping incoming crosses and stretching play into the opposition corners to keep teams back.

      The upshot is we should be seeing fewer goals scored and fewer conceded this season. I would estimate our target would be to score 80-85 and concede 30-35 with the requisite clean sheets - any improvement on that being a bonus. I'd be surprised if we didn't contend for top 4 - whether we will go one step further remains to be seen.
      Madscouser
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #11: Aug 19, 2014 11:53:06 am


      Oh wait. Wrong kind of clean sheets.

      Have now get very bad innuendo jokes about Arsenal, David Seaman and clean sheets going through my head  :f_whistle: :f_whistle:
      maddog
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #12: Aug 19, 2014 12:48:50 pm
      Many thanks for your replies and for the personnel message I also received.

      Best of luck for the rest of the season, will be cheering you on (except against Leicester of course :p).

      Looking forward to seeing you in The Champions League again, I've always had a fondness of Liverpool and the club as a whole. Along with Arsenal you're my fave Top 4 club as a neutral.

      Its all very exciting now the season is back again and as a Leicester fan I'm practically dancing around the house all day. Off to Chelsea Saturday so we will try our best to get a draw there for us and to help you out ;)

      When Heskey left us you were the perfect club for him to go to. Our record at Anfield is pretty awesome, but sadly for us MON and the 1990s era is long gone haha.

      Get a win at Man City... Nobody likes them except Man City fans :p
      HUYTON RED
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      Re: Lack of Clean Sheets whats your views?
      Reply #13: Aug 19, 2014 05:36:56 pm
      Get your whites really white maddog!!



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