Considering your fixture list, is it not a little early for the smugness?
Liverpool 2014/15 | WARNING: Contains strong amounts of Scouse nonsense
- Thread starter Wumminator
- Start date
Considering your fixture list, is it not a little early for the smugness?
However, Liverpool have improved significantly since November. Not only that, the side is starting to resemble last season's fluency. Sturridge coming back is just what is needed.
Look back at Liverpool's last 6 games and consider how many points United got from the same set of 'easy' fixtures.
- Burnley (a)
- Swansea (h)
- Leicester (h)
- Sunderland (a)
– Villa (a)
- West Ham (h)
United 9 points
Liverpool 16 points
My point isn't to suggest Liverpool are better than United, it's merely to point out that no run of fixtures are particularly easy in this league. Banana skins exist everywhere and it's quite reasonable to be pleased with these results...smug even. The performances, however, are the really encouraging factor.
Liverpools current league position: 7th
United were 10 points clear of Liverpool at one point. Is their form a concern for United fans?
I'm loving all this premature smugness from these lot. If anything, I'm glad Sturridge is back, because they were starting to get boring with all that doom and gloom around them. Now they'll be back to their full delusion. They will be much more of a factor in the league now, no doubt about it, but the cockiness and giddy attitude is just amusing to watch. It's like I'm reading the "Predict the League" thread at the start of the season all over again.
Liverpool have shown they're far too frail for top 4 right now. One injury was enough to send them plummeting down to nearly 10th. Yes, it was to their best player and yes, it was for an extended time, but compared to their injury list, ours, Southampton and Arsenal's have been crippling. Not only have we lost our best striker at times, but we've played full matches without our best striker, playmaker, holding mid and with a defence full of people out of position because our entire back 4 was smashed. Arsenal played a ton of matches with Giroud out and Sanchez out of position as well. City also lacked Aguero and Dzeko for a lot of matches and had to play Silva at centre forward. All of the teams in the top 4 have had far more devastating injuries and yet they've kept on relatively the same throttle. Compared to that, one injury to Liverpool's top player was enough to make them tank cataclysmically.
The reason that's relevant is because as football fans, we tend to have this gamblers fallacy type mentality where we think that if a key player has been injured for a long time, we're not gonna have any more injuries ever again for the rest of the season. And as any United fan will tell you after this season, there's no karma when it comes to injuries. Anyone can get injured at any time. And while we've proven that we can handle it, Liverpool just haven't. One injury to Sturridge or Sterling will be enough to knock them off balance again. Imagine what might happen if both go off injured. I'm not the type of fan to wish injury upon another human being, so I hope they miss as many matches as they can due to traffic or something else non-painful, but as Liverpool fans - you just have to consider that possibility. It could happen to any team. Though while most teams have proven they can deal with one or two key players missing, Liverpool have shown that they're cripplingly reliant on Sterling and Sturridge. One gone for more than 2 weeks would be enough to rattle the team.
Long winded fecking post of me, I just got in a very writing groove.
Liverpool have shown they're far too frail for top 4 right now. One injury was enough to send them plummeting down to nearly 10th. Yes, it was to their best player and yes, it was for an extended time, but compared to their injury list, ours, Southampton and Arsenal's have been crippling. Not only have we lost our best striker at times, but we've played full matches without our best striker, playmaker, holding mid and with a defence full of people out of position because our entire back 4 was smashed. Arsenal played a ton of matches with Giroud out and Sanchez out of position as well. City also lacked Aguero and Dzeko for a lot of matches and had to play Silva at centre forward. All of the teams in the top 4 have had far more devastating injuries and yet they've kept on relatively the same throttle. Compared to that, one injury to Liverpool's top player was enough to make them tank cataclysmically.
The reason that's relevant is because as football fans, we tend to have this gamblers fallacy type mentality where we think that if a key player has been injured for a long time, we're not gonna have any more injuries ever again for the rest of the season. And as any United fan will tell you after this season, there's no karma when it comes to injuries. Anyone can get injured at any time. And while we've proven that we can handle it, Liverpool just haven't. One injury to Sturridge or Sterling will be enough to knock them off balance again. Imagine what might happen if both go off injured. I'm not the type of fan to wish injury upon another human being, so I hope they miss as many matches as they can due to traffic or something else non-painful, but as Liverpool fans - you just have to consider that possibility. It could happen to any team. Though while most teams have proven they can deal with one or two key players missing, Liverpool have shown that they're cripplingly reliant on Sterling and Sturridge. One gone for more than 2 weeks would be enough to rattle the team.
Long winded fecking post of me, I just got in a very writing groove.
Rodgers has done well in shoring up the defence while managing to get some fluidity back to their game. They should be fine with Sturridge back. Last season was an anomaly. Defensively they were okay up to Christmas. Things changed after with individual feck ups and towards the end of the season they just had to go for the wins. It's very easy to pin point their defence being the problem but lets be honest the slip cost them it. At 0-1 down they had to go for a goal and Chelsea were outstanding defensively. I think people overstate that Rodgers' naivety was the reason. He can't account for a slip. He can't account for bad decisions in the final third. Mourinho had luck to go with his plan and he executed his plan. His job was made easier and he did them over. Fact is they went 11 games in a row winning. They scored a lot of goals, conceded plenty too but in the run in you have to keep winning games. That's all that matters. Wins on the board.
This season they lost their star player and their main striker was injured. Rodgers tried to play the same way because that is his style but he continued to neglect defence. Last season they had almost everything work for them, players all firing at the same time. It was incredible but the run of games caught up with them this season. Rodgers has had to reign in the level of attacking freedom he gives. Perhaps the ego problem can link with this because he maybe felt that he shouldn't reducing what he believes in. But in the end he had to for his job more than anything. And they've shown you can still be defensively resilient to a degree without losing fluidity and creating chances. If you have forwards on the same wavelength you'll create enough as we did with Fergie's best teams. We were relentless while still defensively sound. Liverpool are no way near that but it's a lesson that you don't have to be either an all guns blazing attacking team or a defensively organized, percentage football team. Modern football seems to follow this trend either or. 4-2-3-1 4-2-3-1 4-2-3-1 everywhere. "Technicians!". It does my head in that any semblance of being a hard team to beat is perceived as negative and backwards. Brendan Rodgers is irritating as he's usually the face of this trend but fair play to the guy, at least for the last 6 weeks he's worked on it. The question is with Sturridge back will he stick with it?
This season they lost their star player and their main striker was injured. Rodgers tried to play the same way because that is his style but he continued to neglect defence. Last season they had almost everything work for them, players all firing at the same time. It was incredible but the run of games caught up with them this season. Rodgers has had to reign in the level of attacking freedom he gives. Perhaps the ego problem can link with this because he maybe felt that he shouldn't reducing what he believes in. But in the end he had to for his job more than anything. And they've shown you can still be defensively resilient to a degree without losing fluidity and creating chances. If you have forwards on the same wavelength you'll create enough as we did with Fergie's best teams. We were relentless while still defensively sound. Liverpool are no way near that but it's a lesson that you don't have to be either an all guns blazing attacking team or a defensively organized, percentage football team. Modern football seems to follow this trend either or. 4-2-3-1 4-2-3-1 4-2-3-1 everywhere. "Technicians!". It does my head in that any semblance of being a hard team to beat is perceived as negative and backwards. Brendan Rodgers is irritating as he's usually the face of this trend but fair play to the guy, at least for the last 6 weeks he's worked on it. The question is with Sturridge back will he stick with it?
Their rise from the ashes has been quite disgusting. It won't last much longer with looking at that upcoming fixture list though.
I wasn't talking so much about the fixtures that have been, I'm talking about the ones to come. It's far to early to be smug about picking up points after that run of fixtures when this is to come:
Bolton - A
Everton - A (3 days later)
Tottenham - H (3 days later)
Besitkas - H
Southampton - A (3 days later)
Besiktas A (4 days later)
Man City - H (3 days later)
Burnley - H (3 days later)
Swansea - A (Potential Europa game 2/3 days before)
United - H (Potential Europa game 2/3 days before)
Arsenal - A (After international break I think - Sturridge injured)
Newcastle - H
With that sort of congestion and difficulty of a lot of those fixtures, I would be a lot less cocky right now as it could easily all collapse in again like it did the last time Brendan had to start "managing" his squad a bit more carefully.
Got bad news for you, it's 2015, you're currently 7th in the table, Suarez did leave you and you were fecked for most of the season so far in and even though you're visibly playing better and gaining speed in recent games there's still a pretty long way to go. Not to mention that you're not in the title race at all, not even close to it, and you indeed were with Suarez last season.
Liverpool were on the verge of falling away for the whole of last season according to this place so such prophecies of doom can be treated with a degree of contempt.
However, the 'smugness' from Liverpool fans is more to do with performance levels and fluency that resemble last year - plus the defence is starting to click at last. The new signings and new system are now looking a lot healthier. Smug? No. Optimistic? Yes.
Fair enough, let's see how you're feeling on April 12th and have this chat again.
Who was the poster adamant Liverpool were going to be in a relegation battle this season? 
If United are in a title race then Liverpool are in a race to catch United. In fact, I'd say the latter appears more likely based on the strength of the top 2.
Who was the poster adamant Liverpool were going to be in a relegation battle this season?
Dans or something like that I think.
United have never been in a title race this season.
It's been obvious for a little while now that Liverpool are past their shit period (unfortunately). They surely won't revert back to the same ineptness of earlier in the season.
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Just look at their fixture list above, I really wouldn't count on that.
Their period of shitness was mainly down to Brendans awful squad management when things got busy. Players were fatigued and he didn't have a clue how to manage it.
No it wasn't. That's massive revisionism.
It's not at all. you were whinging about it yourself.
It had absolutely nothing to do with fatigue. It had to do with playing players who were clearly out of form and not playing players who looked like they had the promise to kick our season on. The likes of Johnson and Lovren had no right to be playing every week.
Fatigue was not an issue at all. Bedding knew players and losing the two key players caused a poor start.
If Sturridge stays fit they will definitely be challenging for 3rd and 4th. Thought that may be countered by their congested fixture list, hopefully, for our sake. Would like to know how Balotelli feels after seeing Sturridge score after ten minutes on the pitch
Agreed. Lallana is improving, Sterling is back on song too. Coutinho is a good player. Can't figure out Markovic though- if it clicks for him am sure he could be good, but looks like he might a Berba style flatter to deceive player. They seem to have spirit and a togetherness as a squad though, despite the Gerrard distractions.If Sturridge stays fit they will definitely be challenging for 3rd and 4th. Thought that may be countered by their congested fixture list, hopefully, for our sake. Would like to know how Balotelli feels after seeing Sturridge score after ten minutes on the pitch
Bloody hell, they're a happy bunch today.
Thats gold.
You've been sold some duds then. Don't tell the wife.
These are the fans who have no clue about Liverpool yet confidently stated without Suarez Liverpool would NOT finish top 4. Now they can't quite remember why Rodgers was doing badly earlier in the season, so blah, blah, fatigue, blah, blah, bad management, blah, David Brent.
In the meantime 10 point gap becomes 5 with Utd to play West Ham next.
Edit: in case you want the real reason, I'll state it again for the 15th time. It was his love affair with Steven Gerrard which has now ended. In fact it ended many games ago but no one noticed. No doubt I will be stating this for a 16th+ time very, very, very soon.
Very talented and his technique is fantastic. Needs to develop a ruthlessness in the final third though.
His technique and vision seems good just not sure he is always on the same wave-length as Sterling and Coutinho. Jury's still out a bit but I forget he is only 20 tbf and still pretty raw.
Did he play the RWB role again? And do you think that is where his long term future is?
Liverpool are in great form right now, as are Spurs and Arsenal. This is going to get tight.
Yep. West Ham falling away as expected but fecking Southampton hanging in there and expect them to win tom. On one hand we are only five points off City but on the other, our grasp on fourth place is shaky as hell. Beyond squeaky ass time.
Yes. And no, I definitely see him eventually playing further forward. The 3-4-3 won't be a long term solution, I reckon.
Hopefully their form will let up when the European games kick in again. February could be important - we have 2 tricky but winnable away matches against West Ham and Swansea. Win those and we should take 12 out of 12 for the month which should give us a little bit more breathing space with Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs and Southampton facing eachother in the next few weeks.
It would but it's a brave man making a 12 from 12 prediction for us at the mo'. Can see Carroll causing us mayhem and Swansea are fast becoming a bogey team.
Agreed. I would be surprised if we win all four as these 'easy' runs on paper always have a few bumps in the road.
what do you think is?
You're very unlikely to win either of those aways.
That's my concern. Realistically it will be four points at best, one at worst. Would be impressed if we could do the professional number Arsenal did on West Ham.