Perception is not based on stats, that's correct, there might be also some United bias present of course, but I believe most of what we think of him is based on his actual play. We do watch a lot of Liverpool games. Might call us obsessed even!
Dejan Lovren
- Thread starter Ekeke
- Start date
As Mrs Smoker said some of us base our opinion on actually watching him in action. I watched him a lot for Croatia so him being a United player or not doesnt have anything to do with it.
As I said previously he is a good playe but he has too much brain farts per game.
Watched all his games this season and he's made mistakes in every one of them. Some have cost goals, some have gone unpunished. Saw the same thing in a few Southampton games I watched last season and some of the French posters said the same of his time at Lyon
Stats for centre halves are pretty pointless for the most part. They always make someone who clearly isn't the best defender come out on top. David Luiz was rated the best centre half at the World Cup until he played Germany.
All CBs make mistakes, virtually every single game. Whether or not they result in a goal or not, because they are helped out by the GK, a team-mate or whether the attackers fail to take advantage, is all part and parcel. Some goals conceded are the result of a failure of the defence/team as a unit, some from individual mistakes and some from moments of attacking brilliance that you just have to hold your hands up and say - magnificent e.g. Jagielka's, Lallana's and Di Maria's recent goals and the one Fabregas set up for Costa.
However if you want to see where an individual's strengths and deficiencies lie then a full season's stats are your best bet because a personal bias due to disliking a player (or a team), or maybe just the way that player looks in possession (Sakho), will not have any influence on them (obviously).
Bollocks. Lovren has been shite, irrespective of the statistics posted above. The notion that he is superior to Koscielny is simply laughable.
Lovren is a different proposition at Liverpool than he was at Southampton, which basically renders the above stats absolutely meaningless.
Injured apparently.
Yep, missing Bulgaria game.
He's not been shite, he's been very inconsistent so far this season. Sometimes crap and sometimes excellent. It's not surprising with virtually a new back line that it will take some time to form a cohesive unit. As far as last season goes there is no debate, he was clearly superior to Koscielny as his stats show.
The jury is still out, and should be until the season finishes, what is risible is writing him off after a few matches at a new club.
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I don't think he's been shite. He's doing a lot of good stuff we didn't have before. He's been as error prone as the rest of them though. File under systemic error.
He was very error prone at Southampton as well. And Lyon and in Croatia. His headless chicken moments are nothing new.
The problem here is I am not at all sure he is better than Agger, and I'm not sure he's better than either Skrtel or Sakho either, which makes him quite an expensive buy for what he is.
Fe.king hell, that's not good news, our (Croatian) defense isnt in a good shape anyway...
Problem not necessarily with Lovren, you have to remember most games this season we have played 3 new defenders. Manquillo, Moreno and Lovren have all made errors.
Hopefully just need time to settle down, doesn't always happen straight away.
I would overall agree though defensively we look vulnerable, especially at set pieces.
Hopefully just need time to settle down, doesn't always happen straight away.
I would overall agree though defensively we look vulnerable, especially at set pieces.
Those stats you posted are almost useless, I have no idea how you can look at those and say "Yep, Lovren was superior to Koscielny".
It's even more stupid when you know Koscielny is one of the best defenders in the league but is being made to look worse than Dejan Lovren
Easy there, people. We laugh at Koscielny quite often as well.
Stats account for next to nothing when it comes to defending. Koscielny is a better defender, period. He's quicker, smarter, has better innate positioning and his team concedes less goals. I'd wager few neutral supporters would disagree.
Honestly, just watch the game. Statistics do have a place, but you're discussing this as if they are the major driving force behind player assessment.
Of course the jury is out, but by most accounts Lovren has been playing the way he is currently for the best part of the calendar year, as well as previously playing like this when in France. Everything indicates to me that he just isn't all that good, had a solid first half of a season at Southampton and has, really, got a bit lucky to be where he's at right now. I suspect you've bought a bit of a dud, because whether you disagree with people calling him shite or not, he sure doesn't look like a £20 million defender to me.
Granted there's the bedding in period to consider but the biggest problem is easily your midfield imo. That's what wrong with Lovren more than he's "shite".
Lovren has picked up an injury training with Croatia and has had to withdraw from the squad. I wonder if Brenda will now send the Croatian FA a dossier on how they're to train him?
This page was making no sense to me...then I realised Rafateria must have posted some pointless statistics.
Seems to me like a lot of negative opinion based not on facts/stats but because he is not a United player. Same can be said of Sakho. It's really interesting to see how they match up against Jones/Evans/Koscielny (stats from 2013/14). Note how good Evans' stats are, even though he seems to get a very bad rap on here at times. Notice also (Sakho) how often he plays forward passes (with a very high pass completion %) and the number of errors that have lead to a goal.
It's also interesting to see the Lovren vs Koscielny match-up. I always rated Koscielny however he is not only inferior to Lovren overall but very much so to Sakh0 .. maybe helping to explain why Sakho keeps him out of the French national team.
So it's fine that Lovren has been poor for Liverpool this season as he had a good season with Southampton last season.
It's true, for Liverpool it's history that always counts for more than the present
Lovren has picked up an injury training with Croatia and has had to withdraw from the squad. I wonder if Brenda will now send the Croatian FA a dossier on how they're to train him?
Just to be a buzz kill...We aren't the only club who send training instructions to national teams. Almost everyone does it.
Seems to me like a lot of negative opinion based not on facts/stats but because he is not a United player. Same can be said of Sakho. It's really interesting to see how they match up against Jones/Evans/Koscielny (stats from 2013/14). Note how good Evans' stats are, even though he seems to get a very bad rap on here at times. Notice also (Sakho) how often he plays forward passes (with a very high pass completion %) and the number of errors that have lead to a goal.
It's also interesting to see the Lovren vs Koscielny match-up. I always rated Koscielny however he is not only inferior to Lovren overall but very much so to Sakh0 .. maybe helping to explain why Sakho keeps him out of the French national team.
Those stats are pretty much meaningless. Even comparing a single stat between players requires specific context. Choosing a dozen stats for 5 players for 4 teams is daft.
For one thing its not always clear whether a high or low stat is even a good thing. For example is it good to have a high or a low 'tackles won' stat? A high stat might mean you're constantly getting into poor positions that require tackles. (remember the memorable line about Maldini's one tackle every other game) Same with blocks. Defenders that are consistently blocking shots might be doing so because everything is last ditch, rarely a sign of a composed defence.
On the other hand the figures might simply be a reflection of how the team plays. Some teams prefer to defend the penalty area, others play a high line. High line formations will need to make more interceptions than a team that plays deep. Teams that sit deep will be blocking more shots. Both are fine, but if you're a team that plays a high line but you're blocking lots of shots, that's a problem because your line apparently isn't working.
The passing is dependent on what's in front of them. Sakho had Gerrard constantly dropping deep to collect the ball, which would give him a simple short forward pass to make every time he got the ball. That alone wouldn't make him a good passer, or inherently a more progressive defender. Compare that with the rolling tumbleweed of our midfield last season and its hardly a surprise that he has better stats than Jones or Evans.
Plus centre backs play in pairs. You really have to compare stats of pairs to make a judgement. Sakho made more passes than Koscielny for instance, but did Sakho and his partner make more than Koscielny and his partner? Maybe the forward passes were distributed more evenly with Arsenal than Liverpool. Or maybe Arsenal's entire back four distribute the ball, while with Liverpool it goes through the one player.
And so on. Stats are only ever illustrative anyway and rely wholly on the context. But at least with attacking players goals and assists are a decent starting point. With defenders its much more complex.
Just to add to what @bishblaize just said: Defenders who take up the wrong positions, step out of the line at weird times etc. etc. really hinders the defensive performance of the team. That won't show up in the stats at all. It might even reflect badly on his partners if they have to scramble in all the time trying to clean up the mess he's left them. I'm not saying anyone's culpable of that this season (watching PL games from Australia's a bit difficult) I'm just putting it out there.
Well, clearly nobody's taking much notice of Brenda then!
Hence his frustration, as we've lost Sturridge to an international break injury numerous times already.
Noone can take his pretentious Brentisms seriously.
I would suggest that says more about Liverpool's inability to get his fitness to a level where he can withstand the rigours of the game than about anything England's coaches do.
I doubt that. He's pretty injury prone but he gets injured far more often playing for England than for us. Which isn't surprising when they ignore our instructions and their own manager has admitted playing Sturridge through an injury to "test his resolve". Does that sound like Liverpool's fault or England's?
Great post.
Carragher: "Lovren's cost a lot of money to fix that defence... he's actually making it worse"
He had a shit period at Lyon too. Media were on his back. Maybe the Southampton performances made him look better than he really is.
Clownish defending for our third goal.
he really is awful, Kolo Toure looks world class compared to him. Every game he makes at least one terrible mistake. But nothing new here, at Lyon it happened too. One season wonder.
He has been a disaster so far but could obviously come good. He was good at Southampton last season but he did have some shocking games and hit a fairly rocky period at one point.
Lyon fans still cannot believe his one season wonder allowed him to be sold for so much money. He conned the PL viewers.
A lot of people are praising Neville's bit on De Gea this week but Carragher follows it up with some analysis of Lovren's defensive problems and he does a really good job. Lovren plays centre half liked a scared child. He hardly ever leaves Sktrel's side and exposes Moreno/Enrique to a lot of attacks. On Sunday we attacked down our right more than any other area and that isn't because we targeted Moreno's poor defensive ability, We were targeting Lovren's inability to fill space in behind the left back. Carragher showed that this isn't a new thing, Lovren did this at Southampton as well. Rogers must not watch video of goals scored against his team, because its an obvious and easy thing to fix, if Lovren has half a brain.