Fair play, that's one hell of a silver lining you've found there.
Jurgen Klopp Sack Watch
- Thread starter Samid
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Fair play, that's one hell of a silver lining you've found there.
If VVD gets injured again, they definitely could do worse. Squad is aging and before/during next season all starters except for TAA/Jota will be between 28-31:
31: Henderson, Thiago, Wijnaldum
30: Van Dijk, Matip, Firmino, Mane
29: Salah, Alisson
28: Robertson, Fabinho
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Keita's situation reminds me quite a bit of Anderson's at United. I think there's a talented player there, as there was with Anderson, but the stars just never aligned.
What especially stood out for me were the excuses being made ahead of time by Liverpool-friendly pundits should they fail at Anfield. I mean, Real Madrid just beat them, and not even in their home stadium, despite ordinarily having similar average home attendance. In a way, it's like saying Liverpool aren't much cop (pun intended) without that "twelfth man."
Klopp will probably pack it in at that point, no chance he’s rebuilding that. Liverpool can permanently rejoin the annual top 4 rat race again.
Mr Cringe as usual.
So all at a good age is what you're saying.
All past their peak after years of performing at extremely high intensity.
Add the possibility of Thursday nights next season and their physical + mental fatigue can get worse, resulting in even more frequent injuries.
Also add a year or two to those ages for when they could be back in the CL again.
32/33: Henderson, Thiago, Wijnaldum
31/32: Van Dijk, Matip, Firmino, Mane
30/31: Salah, Alisson
29/30: Robertson, Fabinho
Klopp is an experienced manager. He should be past the point of needing learning experiences of that nature in my opinion. That's why people say he's one of the best coaches in the world?
He’s only now having to learn how to deal with injuries it seems
Once a coach (or anyone in life really) thinks there's no more to be learnt then they are finished. I present Jose Mourinho.
I think that's much deeper though than your point that Klopp has had to learn about dealing with injuries! Something which every manager deals with at varying levels during their career.
Real were missing a number of key players the other night, including their two first choice CBs. I don't think much was made of it tbh.
It's not just the injuries, but yes it's probably the first time he's dealing with this many in one go. It's mainly the non injured players all going through their dip at the same time (Mane, TAA, Firmino, Salah, Robertson and even Alisson). He has to deal with that. Either start them on a new caffeine diet, or give them cocaine, or whatever.
Sorry it's just nonsense
If you look throughout the Premier League era, you'll rarely if ever see the eventual league winners lose a couple of key players for the season and still come out on top. It's not a dig at those teams but an observation that typically, the best sides have their best players available for most of the season. We wouldn't have won the league last year or the Champions League the year before if Van Dijk had missed half or most of the season as well as Gomez/Matip. I understand that teams have to deal with injuries but you won't see many league winners who've lost key players for most of the season.
Hypothetical for you. My opinion is that United's best ever side under Ferguson was the 07/08 side. Excellent from back to front. Ferdinand and Vidic that season were the best CB pairing the Premier League has seen imo and United should've won the treble. If they'd both missed at least half of your league games through injury, do you think that side would've won the double?
You can use the same hypothetical for anyone who has had success in the Premier League and my guess is that long term injuries would've impacted all of them negatively to some degree. Pep's coped ok at City but they have a ridiculous amount of depth in their squad.
I think we could've coped better than we have (losing to Fulham, Brighton, Burnley at home was pathetic) but I understand why we're not going to win the league this season considering the injuries we've had.
Madrid's 3rd and 4th choice CB's are Militao & Nacho. Bit more quality there than our 4th/5th choice of Kabak & Phillips.
I'm not going to labour the point but you only have yourselves to blame. You didn't act to strengthen much in the summer (Gomez has always been a sicknote) and essentially everything fell apart when VVD got injured. That shouldn't be happening. You've had the front three fit all season, your full backs, GK..
I'm sure it's been the worst ever performance from a defending champion. You didn't even take the initiative in January either.
Also add a year or two to those ages for when they could be back in the CL again.
32/33: Henderson, Thiago, Wijnaldum
31/32: Van Dijk, Matip, Firmino, Mane
30/31: Salah, Alisson
29/30: Robertson, Fabinho
You know they're about 2 points off 4th and have the best run in of all teams.
If as hoped they go out of Europe next week, it's very hard to see them missing out, as they've started to look vaguely decent in the league again.
Hope they miss out obviously, but Chelsea suddenly look vulnerable again, and Leicester usually drop late doors.
I don't buy that.
A top side does not lose 6 home games in succession due to the loss of 2 central defenders, key players or otherwise. It just doesn't happen. And no amount of gymnastics of the mental variety will ever change that.
Could it be that Liverpool were not the world-beaters as first anticipated by fans and media pundits alike (the same thing in most cases), but rather just another run of the mill football team that happened to win the league last year, similar to Leicester, Blackburn and other one-season wonders in previous seasons?
In other words, are Liverpool perhaps shitter than you thought?
Oh don't get me wrong. Mistakes have been made of course. I'm just saying that every successful side since I've been watching football has managed to keep their best players fit and available. That's been one of the foundations of success and is for any side.
It is but partly because our points total from the previous season was ridiculously high. If we'd won the league on 85 points and ending up on the mid 60's it wouldn't look as catastrophic.
Again I do agree that the losing 6 home games in a row is terrible (might be 7 tomorrow. The performances were as poor as the results. We should be on more points than we are currently. The lack of goals is concerning as well. Never seen anything like it.
The difference between us and those other sides is that we won the Champions League the year before whilst also coming within two points of winning the league as well. We're somewhere in the middle I think but definitely not top five. I can think of several better sides than us. I don't think that we're worse than I thought though, because I didn't think that we were one of the best sides ever in the first place. We were better in 18-19 than we were in 19-20 imo.
I'm not buying it.. sorry!
Did you see the state of our injuries under Sir Alex?! Every season there was a crisis of sorts which saw Carrick playing at the back and the Da Silva twins in midfield.
How long did that actually last though? How many games were you playing those players out of position? How did United perform in terms of trophies? I know you had that hilarious Arsenal game in the FA Cup but how much of a season are we talking here?
You can't say that injuries don't impact teams who're trying to win trophies. The teams that win league titles usually get 30+ games/appearances from their key players. Van Dijk hadn't missed a game for us before this season. Arsenal would've struggled without the likes of Henry for long periods, as would Chelsea if Terry or Lampard had missed long spells.
I think our drop off is especially bad considering the supposed quality we have in the squad but injuries are a factor imo. Next season is big for Klopp. We'll see if these problems continue once Van Dijk and Gomez are back. If so then it'd be a worry as far as Klopp's tenure is concerned.
I'd have to do some digging but to suggest we never had top players out whilst dominating isn't true. We bought Hargreaves for instance who was a sicknote and missed long parts of seasons.
You've been very fortunate under Klopp until this term with injuries whilst other teams around you have struggled. It's all relative in the end and certainly not excuse worthy.
Quite likely we wouldn’t have won anything if that had happened. But we would not have dropped off nearly to the extent you guys have. We would probably have finished second to Chelsea in the league, playing some combination of Pique, Brown, Carrick and a re-called from loan Jonny Evans in those games.
We lost our captain and most important player for the full season in 97/98 and finished second to Wenger’s first great Arsenal side.
Pique had a stormer of a loan in Spain and went on to have an outstanding season for Barca a year later, he would have got his chance in 08. A injury might have helped us keep him long term. Evans was there about somewhere as well.
I don't doubt you had injuries and I remember Hargreaves being a sicknote as well, but it's the extent of injuries I'm talking about. It's not just United but all successful teams. The sides that succeed generally keep their key players fit and playing for most of a season. Like you say we've had our own luck before this season. Not excuse-worthy but part of the wider picture of why we've regressed, as well as some other issues as well to do with style of play, energy etc.
I agree. I think Ferguson always maintained a high standard and would never have allowed United to fall to where we have this season. That's why he's the greatest of them all.
That's an example of my point then. You lost your most important player for the whole season and didn't win the league. Roy Keane was quoted in his book as saying that United were in pole position to win the league in 2003/04 but were derailed by Rio's ban. Losing key players hurts any side when it comes to winning trophies.
Would've been interesting to see what path Pique's career took if that had happened. Seems like he would've been a big step down from Ferdinand and Vidic at that time though.
I don't think we had any single season that was quite as bad as what you've had this season, but what was notable with us is it was something we had to regularly deal with. We had an injury crisis in our defence every single season from at least 06/07 (it probably cost us the CL that season) all the way until 15/16. Every season we'd end up having a period where we'd have our entire defence made up of squad players or midfielders.
I’m not sure anyone on here has been suggesting that your injuries should have had no impact on your title defence though. It was clear enough when van Dijk got injured that you’d have a really hard time maintaining the previous two seasons’ standards. It’s the dramatic drop-off that we’re trying to explain here, not the lack of trophies this season. And the reason we’re feeling a bit smug (not to say relieved) on here is because it’s become apparent that Klopp is human after all (i.e. not Fergie) and that he bears the bulk of the responsibility for the collapse through his inability to adapt and dig in. After watching two years of relentless winning from Liverpool, you’ll have to forgive us for taking delight in the fact that your manager has been a problem for you this season.
Have Liverpool had that many injuries? Van Dijk, Gomez and Matip - going into a season with 3 centre backs, one of which is injury prone, would be like Fergie going into a season with Rio, Vidic and Jones and hoping for the best! Shouldn't happen, especially when your playing style is high intensity, to not see that coming is clearly on the manager.
Besides, they have Fabinho who came in with a reputation for being cm/cb and has turned into their second best cb at the club!
Besides, they have Fabinho who came in with a reputation for being cm/cb and has turned into their second best cb at the club!
Both Matip and Gomez have been injury prone at Liverpool. Incredibly optimistic to start the season with just those three centre backs.
Could it be that a 6 game sample is a better reflection of the quality of a team than a 76 game sample? Let me see what my statistics book says. Oh yeah it's right here. It says "less data = better."
Awaiting the ‘redemption’ headlines this evening when they make short work of a depleted Villa side later today...
Very good by Klopp. That's how it should be, players, managers, club officials calling out these "fans"
Unless your name is Karius, then by all means abuse away, la.
Digging Dalglish out in public isn’t going to endear him to the Pool fans...
In all seriousness, fair play to him. Good that more managers are coming out to say this now.
How did home advantage work out for him?
This never fixes the issue does it? As long as there's complete anonymity and zero repercussions for online abuse, it's going to continue.
Thought he got the team massively wrong in both legs. His team selections have been off this season but I think that comes with the territory when you're struggling.
According to Lineker last night, Liverpool has had 139 shots on goal and only 3 goals scored at Anfield this season!! That's got to be some Guinness book of records?