Agree with every word.
His fans will argue that his performances improved somewhat when van Dijk came into the team, which I suppose they did, but what happens when van Dijk gets an injury or needs a rest? We're in deep sh*t then.
Lovren is a liability and he always has a mistake in him. He made a couple tonight and had England capitalised on them then they would have been highlighted.
I wasn't fully listening to what was being said at half time (so if I'm wrong then i apologise) but I kind of got the gist that Gary Neville was criticising lovrens performance too. Ex manc or not, he's a great pundit who knows his stuff and most of the time I find myself agreeing with him.
I'm surprised to see purple say he thought he had a terrific game though (a poster i find myself agreeing with a lot of the time too), so perhaps he did things well that I didnt pick up on.
I think that's the challenge when assessing talent. Lovren, Moreno, and Karius are all capable of doing great things, and so when they go a few moments without blatantly stuffing up, they are made to look better than they are because the team then tends to get results without their more obvious blunders.
Now I'm obviously a Liverpool fan, but I'm very much also a football fan. I've found myself scaling back some of my viewing of other sports in order to watch more football, so I find myself watching a lot of games from other teams. You really get a deeper understanding of team and player styles and temparement, and perhaps most importantly, what really makes up the margins between winning, drawing, and losing, which you don't get from highlights. And it's definitely not as simple as comparing individual class, more often than not.
The thing that stands out to me is how I find myself viewing other defences when I watch them. With Liverpool, despite dominating most games, there is always a particular anxiety that comes when we're facing a corner or free kick. Any situation really which strips away the key advantages of our system, and leaves the players relying on focus and temparement, and their communication with, and confidence in, each other.
As an observer, there is a lack of trust in too many players in our team (2 or 3 in particular) that they'll either switch off, or be too aggressive and blunder.
And it comes down to that focus and temperament. It's not just with Liverpool. I get it (with less care obviously haha) with Arsenal, Stoke, and to a lesser degree, West Brom. Not with too many others though.
For example, I never got it when watching lesser teams like Burnley, or even teams like Bournemouth (although Begovic did have a shaky period) and Newcastle (once they finally moved past Darlow and Elliot). Not a collective of standout players, but one never felt that there was an unnecessary stuff up just waiting to happen from one of these players.
All of them probably made mistakes, sure, but for most, there isn't an inherent expectation that a mistake is on its way, especially one that could have easily been avoided.
And that's all we need defensively! Just do your job. Do the simple things right. Let our attackers win us the games, and just concentrate on not gifting opponents chances. Sounds absurd, yet the same players continue to be liabilities. There are much lesser players though, who would not be liabilities, and we'd have turned many of those draws and losses last year into wins if we'd had them.
No amount of WC final appearances or headed winners for us will take away the constant threat Lovren is of gifting a goal to an opponent. However, it looks like we're sticking by him as first choice beside VVD, so we can only hope another season beside him will at least minimise those key errors. I really wish he would develop into that reliable player we need, but he's highlighted quite clearly throughout the last couple of seasons that he has little interest in eliminating that impulsive irresponsibility from his game. Shame.