I've said it once and i'll say it again on this forum.
Firmino doesn't work well in our system I think he IS the system. Klopp has slightly tweaked his Gegenpressen football which usually requires a pacey striker to get in behind from winning the ball back and changed it to be Firmino winning it high up the pitch and then giving it to Mane and Salah who can quickly back him up.
Not many strikers can press like he can and create so much space for Salah and Mane.
I'd probably say there's only 5 or so strikers in world football that squeeze the life out of defenders. Suarez being one of them.
I've seen some hyperbole on this forum about Roberto such as, at the beginning of last season he was going to become as good as Suarez and if not, he would be our top goalscorer, and if not he'd be our player of the year, and if not we'd have to wait for more inevitable predictions and superlatives about the lad for this season.
Alas...
Now, in a Klopp team Roberto is
the system
. So much for the TEAM being the system, and the sum of it's parts coming together to make it a system. I will grant Roberto is no slouch when it comes to team work and is part of that sum. However, this Gegenpress talk is sporadic and isn't the only strategy our opponents let us ply. We haven't really pressed effectively for a while, even against Hoffenheim who would be prized opponents to press we didn't do this like we did early on last season. Teams like Crystal Palace won't allow us to Gegenpress because they sit deep and hand over possession to us; therefore rendering 'running down defences' rarer in 90 minutes of play. Ball retention/creation and pass and move is the key driver in opening up many defences in the Premier league. And it's during these type of games where Roberto's best work (his running and hassling) renders him invisible like it has done on so many occasions since he's been deployed as "false 9". What we do see in these games more than his pressing is him trying to retain possession and this along with his poor goal return has got to be one of the worst aspects of his game, whether it's due to poor control or a wayward pass he surrenders possession far too easily. Granted, he'll try his hardest to win it back even though any momentum in our possession was seized the moment Bobby got on the ball. But that's not the quality you want in a SYSTEM that has to break an opponent down.
Nobody has doubted Firmino's running is useful against those bigger, more expansive sides and it will probably feature very well in many Champions League games this season. However, when 'running' isn't the order of the day, and making yourself the 'fox in the box' - who can make their own space by pulling off a defender and finding yourself in goal scoring positions, and being clinical to boot then for me Firmino isn't the answer IMHO. Strikers naturally not only make space for themselves by pulling defenders out, they'll make it for other attacking players, so there is a bit of a narrative going on here and it seems that Roberto is the only player who can currently make room for players like Mane and Salah. That's utter tosh. It's just another superlative to notch to his belt along with his pressing to supplement the shortfall in his goal scoring - like many in here are doing for him. Looking for anything to clutch at.
It seems to me, certain players are fair game for critique on here like your Lovren's, Mignolet's, Milner's etc. Yet, when you critique a decent player like Bobby, sharing your opinion that certain games would be better optimised in using his talent, your met with ridiculous hyperbole in his defence. Like, when he doesn't play he still gets MotM (figuratively speaking). He had that many 7's, 8's, 9's out 10's last season on here you'd have thought he would have automatically been our player of the season - instead, it went to the fella who spent two months in Africa.
« Last Edit: Aug 23, 2017 07:40:50 am by Beerbelly »
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