Watford 3-0 Liverpool: In game and Post match discussion

The thing is, Rodgers would probably have gotten more out of this current squad of players than Klopp has. Why? Because it was Rodgers who bought them and when he bought them he at least had a plan of what he wanted to do with them. Klopp has just been given these players and told to win games with them.

Worst thing to do was to sack Rodgers 8 (was it 8?) games into the season. That meant Klopp coming in to work with a bunch of players picked by another manager who wasn't around anymore.

Better if they'd have let Rodgers go before a ball was kicked in pre-season, and given the £75m to Klopp.

I mean, sacked after 8 games? That helps nobody apart from our opponents.

He should have been gone after that Stoke humiliation but the owners chosed to dally.

Thank you. I had to re-read my posts to see if I've directly offended anyone or if there's a restriction to expressing one's opinion politely.

I just ignore... Responding to hate and abuse does the hater undeserved honour

I hate the word "hate" being used because I do not see it on this forum.Yes I see different opinions but I never see hate that is a very strong word to use and its out of order as far as I am concerned

who do you think played well

I don't think anyone played well, we are lacking in centre mid for creativity, we shall se who Jürgen buys when the window opens

He should have been gone after that Stoke humiliation but the owners chosed to dally.

No mistake he should have gone as it was clear his squad had given up on him

He should have been gone after that Stoke humiliation but the owners chosed to dally.

You say that ! but Klopp wasn't available then so who were we gonna get by sacking him ! but giving him all that money to burn was ridiculous !

You say that ! but Klopp wasn't available then so who were we gonna get by sacking him ! but giving him all that money to burn was ridiculous !

It does not necessary has to be Klopp. For that matter any manager would out perform BR who was getting worse by the day.

I think it's pretty clear that the squad simply isn't good enough to be challenging for the higher places in the league. We've got too many players who disappear for too many games and we've got a load of just simply sh*t players thrown in their too.

If you look at the squad in a bit of detail it makes for grim reading considering we've spent something ridiculous like 200m+ on it in the last couple of years.

Don't have a competent keeper
Only got one decent centre back
Got a left back who can't defend at all
Got one (maybe two if you're being kind) central midfielder good enough to be starting
Got a couple of decent attacking midfielders but they go missing far too often
Got no wingers apart from a 20 year old kid (who isn't really a natural winger)
Got one world class striker who can't stay fit, got one good striker who isn't fitting in (to be fair we have a good couple of back up strikers)

It's just an average squad that Jürgen is going to need time to turn around into one capable of finishing in the top four. I have absolute faith in Klopp being able to do it as long as he's given the money and time to do it but in the meantime I'm getting a feeling we'll be seeing a few more results like this one.

I'm still optimistic we can have a good season though, we're in three cups and we've seen average teams win cups a lot in recent years.

It does not necessary has to be Klopp. For that matter any manager would out perform BR who was getting worse by the day.

When Klopp starts winning trophies, sacrificing the 2015/16 season will be a very small price. We have a top manager now, and I think its price worth paying.

Certainly better second half, but nowhere near approaching good enough.

Players were a big let down.

Well, merry Xmas everyone, that certainly was no cracker, Klopp needs to give major bollockings to majority of those privileged to wear our colours,

Major overhaul in the summer, akin to six or seven new faces, starting from the back, I'm talking quality eg; Hummels, Rues, level, that means major investment, hope you r reading this John H, this is going to cost FSG many a million,

Klopp knows he has a major battle ahead, he probably knew from the get go, the last few months, and the next few, will cement just exactly what he will need,

He already is aware that the squad he inherited is no where near good enough to sustain a title challenge, so for us fans we need to get real and accept that this season from now on is to try to improve our form especially at home, and,
Get as far up the table as is possible, we still have the cups to have a go at, but for me now the rebuilding for next season starts here and now,

That performance today is as bad as anything we have seen the last two seasons, the table doesn't lie, we're where we deserve to be and 9th/10th mid table mediocrity is simply not good enough for our clubs standing,
Too many mistakes, too many playing for themselves, too many underperforming, NOT GOOD ENOUGH!


The upside is, we have a world class manager that with time and good investment will turn us around, the honeymoon is well and truly over but right now it looks as if we're still suffering the hangover, I'm not expecting much if any additions this coming window, if I'm honest, I'd rather we held onto the Jan money and add it to our summer transfer funds,

I've not given up on this season, we have plenty still to go at in terms of silverware, as for the league, I'd forget any aspirations of 4th for now until we can build up some momentum, it was already a tough ask but after today has become tougher,

We desperately need a win from the next outing before our season capitulates altogether, it's embarrassing enough without it getting any f***in worse,

I bet Jürgen is seething inside, well he f***in should be after that dire display, this was Watford FFS, hardly a bastion of invincibility , but they totally outplayed us and are fully deserving of the three points,

We were simply sh*te !!!



YNWA

Christ. That was awful, from start to finish. I'm shell shocked by how poor we were, and how Watford tore us apart. I'll try give constructive criticism:

Bogdan 4/10-I feel that Watford targeted the GK and crowded him as a game plan thinking Migs was gonna play. He f*cked it straight away, and lost confidence from then on. Should of come for the second goal, Skrtle is sh*t in one-on-ones.

Clyne 5/10- nothing of note he did terrible, but the same going forward. Could be our RB for years if he sorts out a final ball. Got no protection from Midfield today though.

Sakho 2/10- good in the air, dreadful on the ground. Nothing to do with fitness, every team will watch this game, and say to their strikers "swarm him as soon as he touches it"

Skrtle 4/10-I think he is the least vocal member of the team and has been awful for a while. Even if it was for a short time on pitch.

Moreno-4/10 see Clyne, but even more work on final ball, and sort out his positioning!

Lucas 3/10- was better when put back at CB, but F***ing awful pass, no pace, no reading of game and no protection of back four when in his DM role.

Can 1/10-one of those performances. I think he is too slow for PL, would probably light up Serie A.

Hendo 4/10- runs around a lot, no killer pass (except a few cross fields in 1st half)

Lallana-1/10 I literally didn't realise he was on the pitch. Stealing a wage.

Firminho 0/10 nothing, he has offered nothing for a solid 5 games. Awful.

Couthino- 2/10 anonymous.

Subs
 Origi-6.5/10 our best player, and when that is the case you know we have played badly.

Bent eke 2/10 did nothing when he came on.

Ibe-5/10 did nothing again but looked liveliest when on.

Just god awful. I don't know what Klopp can do with these players.

My player ratings:

Bogdan: Was unlucky with the first goal but should have just caught it then there wouldn't have been a problem. I thought he should have done better with the second too and he flapped like a penguin for the first hour or so. That said, he did make one good save and a couple of other decent ones, his clearing was instinctive and reliable, and he was playing behind a non existent defence. Hard to judge really, clearly not a great league debut but I wouldn't totally write him off. 3/10.

Clyne: As usual awful going forward and it's got to the point now where teams don't even bother closing him down. Worryingly his defensive solidity has evaporated along with his confidence, and he's proving those of us who said he was "7/10 every game merchant" totally wrong. Take today for example. 2/10.

Skrtel: Absolutely terrible from minute one, his defending for the second goal where he goes for it with the wrong foot was an embarrassment. 1/10.

Sakho: I can only hope he's nowhere near fit and that's not his true form. Brutal. 1/10.

Moreno: His usual brainless self mixed in with occasional brighter moments. Did actually try and get in on goal a couple of times so perhaps we are starting to work on that pattern, but then on the one occasion he did made a complete and utter nonsense of it. I said a few weeks ago that I'd take 20 million quid for him and copped a bit of flak, I stand wholeheartedly by my assessment. 3/10.

Lucas: WTF has happened to him? Absolutely useless in central defence but probably played better there than he did in midfield. Barely put a foot right. 1/10.

Can: Awful from start to finish. Some good lung busting recovery surges nudged him into 3/10 territory, but seeing him throw himself to the floor after receiving a minor slap and wasting OUR time when we were 2-0 down sickened me to the pit of my stomach. Where is the fight in the lad, where is the devil? It's an image that I'll have to work hard to erase, and he has become in that one moment one of my least favourite of our players. 0/10.

Henderson: Terrible, but by a distance our best player. Actually looked like he gave a sh!t which made him stick out like a sore thumb, had two shots on target and one absolutely woeful cross, and ran around a bit. Comfortably on the basis of that my MOM. 5/10.

Firmino: Absolutely stunk the place out. His haircut is starting to annoy the f*** out of me, as is the silly tattoo on his neck. A player who was today devoid of any backbone or desire, he was a disgrace to the shirt. 0/10.

Lallana: The king of the halfway line step-over. Contributed precisely zero to the cause, and seeing his perfectly coiffured locks in an advert for Head & Shoulders at half time was enough to make me wretch. His attempt to block a near post corner at the end of the first half is a video clip we ought to play to him before he leaves the dressing room should he ever wear our shirt again. As things stand he is a parody of a professional footballer, all the wealth and trappings to go with his bags of ability, but in a red shirt he is stealing a living. 0/10.

Coutinho: Awful but played two decent passes as I remember. One to Henderson, one to Clyne. 4/10.


Subs:.

Origi: Did more than most. 3/10.

Benteke: As above, should have started lets be brutally honest. 3/10.

Ibe: If he doesn't offer more than either Lallana or Firmino, I'm Steve McClaren and you can Schpank me and call me Betty. 3/10.





Jürgen. Not a good day. Given the pitch, the weather and the opponent our whole approach was miles off what we needed. We definitely should have started with either Benteke, Origi or both.

I think it's pretty clear that the squad simply isn't good enough to be challenging for the higher places in the league. We've got too many players who disappear for too many games and we've got a load of just simply sh*t players thrown in their too.

If you look at the squad in a bit of detail it makes for grim reading considering we've spent something ridiculous like 200m+ on it in the last couple of years.

Don't have a competent keeper

Only got one decent centre back

Got a left back who can't defend at all

Got one (maybe two if you're being kind) central midfielder good enough to be starting

Got a couple of decent attacking midfielders but they go missing far too often

Got no wingers apart from a 20 year old kid (who isn't really a natural winger)

Got one world class striker who can't stay fit, got one good striker who isn't fitting in (to be fair we have a good couple of back up strikers



It's just an average squad that Jürgen is going to need time to turn around into one capable of finishing in the top four.

I have absolute faith in Klopp being able to do it as long as he's given the money and time to do it but in the meantime I'm getting a feeling we'll be seeing a few more results like this one.

I'm still optimistic we can have a good season though, we're in three cups and we've seen average teams win cups a lot in recent years.

Great Post + 1 £300 m gross.

Transfer committee and goalkeeping coach John Achterberg.

Contributed to our failings today. Get rid - it's F***ing worrying that they are still at the club and weren't given the heave with Rodgers.

Malign influences are still around at Liverpool.

The squad isn't good enough to win leagues and stuff, no argument. This is the same group of players though that smashed Southampton, City and Chelsea. These aren't players who are totally devoid of ability by any stretch of the imagination, what they are devoid of ironically is character.

I thought Newcastle game was a one-off, coming so soon after the magnificent display at Southampton.  Then we had the WBA game in which we were mugged in our own back yard.  Now this.

It strikes me that blaming Jürgen (as some are, already) and his team selection (which most people were delighted with prior to kick off) is bloody stupid.  This was a game in which one team played as a team, one team was determined to better the other, one team believed in what they were doing and one team were playing totally committed football for their club and their fans.  And it wasn't MY team.  That makes me sick.  When I think about Mark lawrenson's words about Chelsea players yesterday, and how they got JM the sack by sheer lack of professionalism and rank bad attitude, while being paid millions - yes it F***ing does matter - I wonder whether we might be facing a similar situation.  When Jürgen took the team over to the Kop after WBA last week, I saw some faces among them who clearly would rather have disappeared down the tunnel, stuck their headphones on and gone home.  I loved what Jürgen did, but I was saddened to see the players' embarrassment. 

These men play football for Liverpool.  They don't risk their lives or get threatened with the sack for making mistakes or not being committed to the cause.  They don't wonder where their next meal for their kids is coming from or how they'll afford the rent this month.  And when they get touched by an opponent they fall over and squeal.  Something has to change or I'm done with this.  That's how I feel right now. 

Transfer committee and goalkeeping coach John Achterberg.

Contributed to our failings today. Get rid - it's f**king worrying that they are still at the club and weren't given the heave with Rodgers.

Malign influences are still around at Liverpool.

need an entire clear out and start again and sadly that includes many of these players

How bad were we today folks?

How bad were we today folks?

gutless performance

The squad isn't good enough to win leagues and stuff, no argument. This is the same group of players though that smashed Southampton, City and Chelsea. These aren't players who are totally devoid of ability by any stretch of the imagination, what they are devoid of ironically is character.

Exactly why we need leaders on the pitch Mick. Too many let their heads drop and there's no picking them back up, Jürgen is trying his best even clearly signalling get your chins up! Still it continues, as the phrase goes it's men against boys far too often and unfortunately we're the boys more often than not.

It's like they become punch drunk, just failing after failing until they're finally counted out. The resilience has been better under Jürgen, we've come back from losing situations better but the backbone of some of them has to be under severe scrutiny right now. This isn't school footy, you don't feel sorry for them when they're getting bullied, they're at the pinnacle of professional football they should be dishing out the bullying.

We never earned the right to play today, we were constantly dancing to Watford's tune (or playing to their cards as Jürgen put it) and nobody, not one single player knew how to change that. It's not about diving in aggressively, it's about imposing quality and making their aggression and one dimensional pressing work against them but we're simply not good enough when our heads drop to do that. When the confidence is flowing we're fine and it's why there's a stark difference between our performance levels. We need a catalyst player, someone who can bring about change in mentality and performance when things aren't going well and it's in the vital positions throughout the spine that we lack that.

Goalkeeper - whichever side of the argument you sit there's little debate in the fact that they're both sh*te and we must upgrade to someone with a F***ing presence.

Centre Back - A dominant leader, someone with that Carragher style fear he can put in those around him. Don't be afraid of the opposition be afraid of what'll happen if you don't perform!

Midfield - Lightweights the lot of them, Can included. An Alonso, Hamann, Mascherano type.

Striker - sh*te here too, none of them look a real threat or any bloody presence at all about them. Of course there's Sturridge but I'm not including him as we need it consistent.

All 4 positions need addressing before we will make any significant progress.

Lots of talk on the radio about clubs going back to 4-4-2.  Good old fashioned English football.
Can we scrape two half-decent forwards together?  4 half-decent midfielders?  4 lads who can defend ok?  A keeper?

Hmm.  Back to tikki takka.

Today was nothing new. And not just nothing new from this set of players but nothing new from Liverpool Football Club for the past two and a half decades. For years now we've gone up against these physical teams and come up second best because we simply don't have any fight in the side. Give me 11 Jimmy Case's or Joey Jones' rather than 11 Phil Coutinho's. Somebody with a bit of F***ing heart and fight over somebody who can do a F***ing step-over.

Watford didn't even bully us in an over the top manner, they just wanted every ball more than us. And it worked, all F***ing credit in the world to them. They've found a system that suits them. We haven't. And whether people want to absorb Klopp of any blame, simply because he's called Jürgen Klopp and not Brendan Rodgers, or not, you have to criticise a manager who can't find the right system for the players. Having sh*t players at his disposal doesn't help, but these sh*t players were the ones who twatted Chelsea, City and Southampton and less than a month ago had people genuinely talking about us going for the League.

The honeymood period is over now though and Jürgen has got to change things quickly. We haven't won in four, in those games we've failed to score in three of them. Constantly F***ing about with systems doesn't help either. Pick one and stick to it.

Bogdan - people saying he did nothing wrong, well he did. He dropped the ball for the first goal. Claim that and nothing else happens. We don't go one down within five minutes, we aren't on the back foot from there on in and we haven't got a keeper low on confidence for the rest of the half. Also that punch he made where he sort of smacked into Lucas' mush was hardly inspiring. He got better but he cost us the first goal.

Clyne - was a major disappointment today. I'm not arsed about his attacking play that much, I think if a full back's major criticism is how he does going forward then he must be doing his job right because he's in the side to defend. Today though he seemed all over the shop at the back. Even when he read the play, he still cocked it up. He's a solid player though and will undoubtedly get out of this little slump he's in.

Skrtel - has traditionally in his time here struggled against big burly centre forwards, Carlton Cole, Benteke, Lukaku, Drogba, Lambert, they've all had their share of success against him. Today was no different and really no shock. The second goal, he'll get flak for but he won the ball. If he'd got a slightly better contact with it, we'd of been praising him all round for it. Was still poor but he did win the ball.

Sakho - was sh*t, end of.

Moreno - had one of those games where whatever he did, was wrong. He either overhit crosses, played the wrong pass, mistimed his tackle, was out of position, was lazy getting back onside, just everything went wrong. But because he was involved a lot and offered us the outlet, probably looks like he played a lot better than he did.

Lucas - was sh*t, end of.

Henderson - played a couple of nice passes across the width of the pitch but didn't actually hurt Watford in any way. They were unchallenged passes that I would expect him to make. I've always bigged Jordy up and advocated him for captain but today was a day where we needed him to show some leadership and for me, he didn't. No grabbing people by the scruff of the necks, no just flying into somebody to give the rest a lift, no carrying the ball 40 yards to at least get the fans up, just nothing.

Can't - was sh*t, end of.

Lallana - was sh*t, end of...his Liverpool career hopefully.

Coutinho - again went missing on a day where we desperately needed him to produce something. Sulked like a brat for the majority of the second half.

Firmino - the saviour to all our problems in the summer has become arguably the biggest problem of the lot. Really is starting to look like one of the biggest wastes of money in our history.

Origi - he ran around a bit and chased the odd lost cause but his awareness of what's around him is shocking. His link up play isn't good enough and that's why he'll never be good enough to play up top on his own in my opinion.

Benteke - did F**k all and looked like he'd taken effort lessons of Mario Balotelli.

Ibe - again did F**k all.

Overall, a F***ing sh*t day.

Terrible performance and all the desire, passion and pressing from Klopp's first few games in charge has gone. These are worrying times because if the players are turning against the manager or ignoring him then we are in for a very very rough season.