I stayed away from the forums since Saturday because I knew there would be this huge reaction.
It was a really disappointing game, we looked flat, lacklustre, out of ideas and like a team that's still forming. I actually though Balo was one of the few players with the skill and balls to try and create something against a sh*t-house team that's parked the bus, so I was bemused when he got taken off. I'd have agreed with Lambert coming on alongside him, but Borini FFS? Sorry, gaffer got that one wrong.
I know everyone is p*ssed off, but it is way ott imo. This game had the right ingredients to be lost. We had just come out of internationals where we lost one of our best players to injury and two of our other best players played full games with one of them being rested for his sake.
I also thought that if we got the first goal, we would score 3 or 4 comfortably, but we gave away a cheap goal early on, which just set up the game for villa to park the bus.
Add to it there were a number of players in the starting 11 who have barely played together (and it showed) not to mention Villa's dirty tactics of kicking our players all over the pitch.
So, in short, I'm not excusing some of the very poor individual performances, but this isn't a catastrophe that some are making out to be. Man City lost to Stoke because they gave away an early goal and then couldn't break down a stubborn defence, it happens to the best of teams.
On some general analysis of the game, I thought Markovic and Gerrard were anonymous. Hendo always looks less effective against teams who are parking the bus, and Coutinho showed flashes of his skill but it's difficult to take on a player only to be met with a bus with no space for Balo to make a run for him to pass on. Borini is useless, simple as that. Villa gave us no space in the midfield, let alone in their penalty area.
Defence look very disorganised. Villa had such a small percentage of the posession, but when they did, they looked more likely to score than us - not because they're a good team, but there were a few occasions when they had players completely unmarked, which was very worrying.
We are brilliant against teams who want to play football and attack, but we are going to have to work on tactics that will break teams down when they park the buss, which more and more teams will inevitably do against us. That's where we need to get Couts, Sterling and Llalana playing together because they have the skill, speed and short range passing to do that. But I will not be surprised if those kind of tactics is what most teams who come to Anfield employ knowing how effective it is.
I'm as p*ssed off as most here, but let's not turn this into the usual "Blame FSG because they didn't give us enough money spend" charade. We don't have City, Chelsea or United's budget, get used to it, but this loss wasn't about not spending enough money. Can't see how Sanchez could have done anything different.
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