Manchester City 1-1 Liverpool: In game and Post Match discussion

Anfield HQ‏Verified account @AnfieldHQ  4m4 minutes ago
Pep: "Today is one of the proudest days of my managerial career, you cannot even imagine."

Interesting quote from Pep there.

Yeah he was made up with the performance which was in contrast to what Jürgen said,he wasn't overly complimentary regarding our defending.

His lads have just been in a massive game against the biggest club in Europe after being humbled in Monaco, and they survived.  'Course he's proud!  I bet Klopp's equally proud of our lads.

Yeah, fair enough and I not saying he shouldn't be. Just an interesting quote after a draw, but you frame it well

As for Jürgen, yeah I think on the back of that he'll take enormous satisfaction from the performance if not from the result. He just must remember the drop in form we had from Christmas when we get to the summer window. These lads winning back favour from now until the end of the season can't distract him from a few of the decisions I believe he made on a few players then.

For a player of his height, Origi is pretty sh*t in the air. What a difference it makes having Firmino in the side - it means we contest all of Mig's long balls, as opposed to simply gifting the opposition with possession as Origi hardly ever wins anything and lacks that type of physicality.

Don't know what's going on with Coutinho at the moment. Very disappointing run of form.

We shouldn't be contesting high balls, no idea why Migs is punting so many balls upfield.
It's no great suprise Coutinho is invisible with this tactic and does nothing for Gini and Adams play:

Lot of criticism for some of our lads on here, which I don't understand.  They gave everything and both teams looked like they'd played 120 minutes not 90.  Fantastic game. 

I agree with the Emre comments, and I gave him my MOTM, but I though Milner was sound - totally unfazed by the jeers and stick, ice cool and solid.  Slotted another pen and even put a cross in with his left in the 1st half!  We do need to work on stopping crosses coming in, as a couple of people said already. 
Every time I see a re run of the Lallana miss I'm convinced he's going to bury it, how the hell did he mess that up?  He was everywhere as usual.

I thought the ref had a decent game apart from the penalty shout he missed, (and tbh I'm delighted he did) could have overreacted but played it sensibly. 

In the end it's two points dropped for both teams; we needed the win but not losing is psychologically vital.  Got to smash the bitter boys now and hold our nerve, Arsenal have gone so it's a dogfight between us, the scum, city and the spuds for four places.  My money is on us doing it but I badly need to see Moaninho drop some points, the jammy so and so.

Can was arguably MOTM today, but Milner was a constant weak link, although not through any mistakes on the day, simply because of his limitations as a player. Every attack went down his flank but given the personnel available to us we didn't have much of a choice. His penalty was about as good as you could possibly get though. Our two big problems today, and not for the first time this season, was our defence being out of position when they needed to be on the ball (so to speak), and a lack of genuine goal threat up front. I thought we played as well as we could today, given the players on the field, sadly it wasn't enough given how other results went and game's in hand. Top four is still doable, just out of our hands unfortunately.

Feels disappointing however if it was the other way round and we scored to make it 1-1 I would be feeling so much better.

Draw at city away is a F***ing result.

Onwards and upwards. 9 games to make it count

That was a f***in awful game of football. We were sh*te but still should of won. Midfield and front 3 were sh*te.

Yes, we know Shitty were sh*te. You are on the wrong forum mate.

We shouldn't be contesting high balls

Really? We should just let them have it then?

Migs kicks the ball high way too much, but even the best sides have to resort to that occasionally.

I've seen someone comparing Origi to Heskey here which I find quite baffling. For a tall player he's way too soft in the air.

You must be a defensive purist then?

Stream I was watching both Lee Dixon and Greame Le Saux were agreeing that it was one of, if not, the best match of the season. Now I'm not a Le Saux fan but I actually think Dixon is a very good judge and analyst, I tend to agree with them on this.

That was a piss poor game. Seriously ? We struggled to put 3 pass's together. All stuttering play by us , far too slow and no urgency. I  couldn't give a F**k what the analysts say , i go off what i see.

Still , i'd of took a point before kickoff.

Gutted not to have held on thought Can and Gini outstanding. There was a 10-15 spell in second half when there legs had gone and if Firminho chance gone in would of won . Would have took point before though but now 3pts a must against Bitters

You must be a defensive purist then?

Stream I was watching both Lee Dixon and Greame Le Saux were agreeing that it was one of, if not, the best match of the season. Now I'm not a Le Saux fan but I actually think Dixon is a very good judge and analyst, I tend to agree with them on this.

No doubt. Radio commentators on the BBC also saying it's one of the best games they've commentated on in a long time. No surprise that littleface disagrees though. He's just a f**king idiot.

No doubt. Radio commentators on the BBC also saying it's one of the best games they've commentated on in a long time. No surprise that littleface disagrees though. He's just a f**king idiot.

Agreed. I thought it was a cracking game with never a dull moment and two teams both giving it everything for a win.

Really? We should just let them have it then?

Migs kicks the ball high way too much, but even the best sides have to resort to that occasionally.

I've seen someone comparing Origi to Heskey here which I find quite baffling. For a tall player he's way too soft in the air.

Why did you pick out the one bit of my post?

We are never going to win a aerial war irrespective of your view on how great Firmino is in the air, btw he he's not that good. Burnley last wed we almost lost the match because of this tactic. The odd hoof I understand but not what's occurred over the last couple of games.

Our team is built to have the ball on the floor, just a shame our keeper is useless distributing the ball.

Disappointing, but I'd have taken that result before the game.

Hard to know whether to be happy with the point or not there.
There was a period after we scored when they looked out on their feet, but we just seemed to drop our intensity a wee bit and then they got a second wind.

I think we got the rub of the refereeing decisions for a change, and they also missed a couple of sitters. On the other hand Lallana missed the biggest sitter of the lot, although he played well overall. Basically a point was probably right, but I think if we'd gone for the jugular when we were 1-0 we would have won it.

Still a pretty good performance overall. Very exciting game. I'm going for Can as MOTM. He's struggled a bit this season and been a bit of a scapegoat, but he put in a hell of a shift today and played really well. Everybody played pretty well I thought. Carra was very harsh on Klavan for their goal imo - it was a superb ball from deBruyne, extremely hard to defend. Firmino was a bit greedy a couple of times when he could have played in a team mate, but he worked hard and caused them problems. Coutinho struggled early on, but was actually playing ok by the time he came off. I was disappointed in Origi when he came on, he seemed sluggish and didn't close down as quickly as his team mates, despite being fresh. Everybody else I thought played pretty well. So - decent performance, decent point, but slightly disappointed we didn't press home the advantage when we were on top.

No doubt. Radio commentators on the BBC also saying it's one of the best games they've commentated on in a long time. No surprise that littleface disagrees though. He's just a f**king idiot.

Oh well if radio commentators are saying that it must be true. Have you ever had an independent thought ?

That was a piss poor game. Seriously ? We struggled to put 3 pass's together. All stuttering play by us , far too slow and no urgency. I  couldn't give a f**k what the analysts say , i go off what i see.

Still , i'd of took a point before kickoff.

Fair enough.

Totally disagree with you on your impression of the game. Thought we created plenty of real chances, many half chances and were right on the brink of splitting them open for much of that second half.

Why did you pick out the one bit of my post?

We are never going to win a aerial war irrespective of your view on how great Firmino is in the air, btw he he's not that good. Burnley last wed we almost lost the match because of this tactic. The odd hoof I understand but not what's occurred over the last couple of games.

Our team is built to have the ball on the floor, just a shame our keeper is useless distributing the ball.

Saying a player is good in the air doesn't mean to say we should play like Tony Pullis' Stoke City so I find your points quite odd.

However we may try to play, it is a simple fact that once in a while we'll need our strikers to contest the ball in the air and it's obviously a good thing if our striker is good at it. Hence saying "we shouldn't be contesting high balls" sounds quite silly to me, which is why I picked on that bit of your post.

And we can talk about the way we "should" be playing as much as we want, but I'm also interested in how we actually play and the fact is right now we need this type of skill in our team. Your point against Burnley only reinforces what I'm saying, Firmino didn't play and Origi was hopeless so punting the ball forward meant automatically gifting possession to the opposition.

By the way my point about Firmino's physicality isn't just in the air, he wins the ball far more often and actually gives defenders something to worry about, while Origi really hasn't developed much of that side of his game yet.

Saying a player is good in the air doesn't mean to say we should play like Tony Pullis' Stoke City so I find your points quite odd.

However we may try to play, it is a simple fact that once in a while we'll need our strikers to contest the ball in the air and it's obviously a good thing if our striker is good at it. Hence saying "we shouldn't be contesting high balls" sounds quite silly to me, which is why I picked on that bit of your post.

And we can talk about the way we "should" be playing as much as we want, but I'm also interested in how we actually play and the fact is right now we need this type of skill in our team. Your point against Burnley only reinforces what I'm saying, Firmino didn't play and Origi was hopeless so punting the ball forward meant automatically gifting possession to the opposition.

By the way my point about Firmino's physicality isn't just in the air, he wins the ball far more often and actually gives defenders something to worry about, while Origi really hasn't developed much of that side of his game yet.

Do agree with you on this to be fair. Bobby either competes for the first header or the first touch of every pass that is played up there. He's probably involved in more duels on a pitch than any other striker in the league and that is obviously to his huge credit.

Have noticed in the past few games that we've been much more willing to go long and in some ways is becoming our plan B. Definitely seen this side to our game developing and while this may sound odd we're almost going long with the intent of putting the defender under pressure.

For instance Matip receives it and hits a long diagonal to their RCB, now some may think he has lost possession here but what I've been seeing is we're all taking our queue off that pass to cut out the passing lanes of that RCB. Of course the pass is intended to meet one of our players but it's two fold, we're pressing off our own passes, so to nullify their attempts of simply cutting out our press. It's a nice tweak to our game and is certainly producing chances if it isn't quite getting the goal rewards yet. Now with Firmino this play is much stronger than it is with Origi right now and indeed Coutinho is letting the press down of late, there's something not quite right with the little magician to my eyes. Can't put my finger on that one though.

A fair result with both sides not the best at defending, all seemed a bit of a mad game where both sides had no control.
Could have ended 3-1 to either team!

Our CB partnership was poor and the common link again was Klavan, not good enough to be playing regularly.
Better game from Clyne not easy up against Sane and apart from his slip against Aguero he did reasonably well.
So did Jimmy but more so in bailing out his CB's with the number of clearances he made.
Milners side was targeted by relentlessly and it's something opposition managers have clicked into as his positional play is as a winger not a LB, unsurprisingly.

Best game from Can all season and marginally my MOTM from Gini, who is so cool under pressure.

Lallana I still can't believe he missed, he must have been thinking about his goal celebration!

Cant agree with others that Firmino had a great game he was just his normal self, gave the ball away a few times, some great skill and as always put in a great shift but when it came down to playing as a striker he fluffed his lines.
Injury excuse doesn't carry any weight he has done the same all season and if anything the break should have done him some good.

But at least Bobby was visible unlike his partner Coutinho, people talk about Origi regressing - what's happened to Phil post injury.

Mane on another day with a bit more composure could have been the difference but the pressure can't help when he is the only goal threat out of the front 3.

Saying a player is good in the air doesn't mean to say we should play like Tony Pullis' Stoke City so I find your points quite odd.

However we may try to play, it is a simple fact that once in a while we'll need our strikers to contest the ball in the air and it's obviously a good thing if our striker is good at it. Hence saying "we shouldn't be contesting high balls" sounds quite silly to me, which is why I picked on that bit of your post.

And we can talk about the way we "should" be playing as much as we want, but I'm also interested in how we actually play and the fact is right now we need this type of skill in our team. Your point against Burnley only reinforces what I'm saying, Firmino didn't play and Origi was hopeless so punting the ball forward meant automatically gifting possession to the opposition.

By the way my point about Firmino's physicality isn't just in the air, he wins the ball far more often and actually gives defenders something to worry about, while Origi really hasn't developed much of that side of his game yet.

Well you misunderstood I didn't literally mean don't contest high balls.
Firmino contesting for balls would have made our midfielders pick up the second balls - behave.

As for Firmino's physicality it means nothing as his first priority he is to put the ball in the back of the net.

"Between 50 and 65 minutes we could have decided the game and we didn't." - JK

Sums it up really. Shame we didn't score another when we had the chances but a point away at City isn't so bad.

Can was arguably MOTM today, but Milner was a constant weak link, although not through any mistakes on the day, simply because of his limitations as a player. Every attack went down his flank but given the personnel available to us we didn't have much of a choice. His penalty was about as good as you could possibly get though. Our two big problems today, and not for the first time this season, was our defence being out of position when they needed to be on the ball (so to speak), and a lack of genuine goal threat up front. I thought we played as well as we could today, given the players on the field, sadly it wasn't enough given how other results went and game's in hand. Top four is still doable, just out of our hands unfortunately.

Yep I used the sound word 'sound' as in 'no real mistakes', and I thought he showed a lot of character and strength.  Totally agree that our full backs are less capable than we'd like, and I hope its addressed in the summer.  We need other teams to slip up, you're right, like Arsenal are doing.  Just hope its the boys in red from Mancfester who make a mess of their run in!

Whats happening on this forum? Suzi Qautro rumping the MOM award this week!