Yes, very well put, my apologies. Very few sides compress space like United do at present, but we’ve also become much better at breaking down the lower tier, ‘low block’ sides.
Mo Salah
- Thread starter Robbie Boy
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Yes, very well put, my apologies. Very few sides compress space like United do at present, but we’ve also become much better at breaking down the lower tier, ‘low block’ sides.
Amazed at how many comments read as ‘Klopp’s system is making him look better than he is.’
Oh for a United manager capable of designing systems that got unimaginable levels of excellence form our players...
Salah is just as good as he looks and is lucky to have a manager that understands how to get the best out of him. No different to Messi, who shines in Barcelona sides designed around him.
Credit to Klopp for seeing Salah’s potential and getting him for what now looks a steal, and credit to Salah for being a beast of a player.
Oh for a United manager capable of designing systems that got unimaginable levels of excellence form our players...
Salah is just as good as he looks and is lucky to have a manager that understands how to get the best out of him. No different to Messi, who shines in Barcelona sides designed around him.
Credit to Klopp for seeing Salah’s potential and getting him for what now looks a steal, and credit to Salah for being a beast of a player.
I think a better way to phrase the way I see it is that Klopps system suits Salah better than any other system would. It’s not making him look better than he is, it’s enabling him to play at his absolute ceiling. Credit to manager and player.
I just wonder how good Martial would be at liverpool, i honestly think he'd have passed the 20 league goals mark about now.
what a great performance. goals, tricks and messi like dribbling. so lucky to have him. he seems like someone that just loves football and loves life
on a side note , robertson has been one of the best left backs this season. at 8 or 9m we paid is a bargain
on a side note , robertson has been one of the best left backs this season. at 8 or 9m we paid is a bargain
Agreed
But for a team to have a player like him to have scored as many goals as him being a credit to the manager then you also have to criticize the manager for that team being so far from the top,
He has been savage this year and actually could have had a lot more goals IMo but cannot see him sustaining anywhere near this many goals next season
I always worry if Mourinho force out Martial and Pogba this summer, and they will then go on have a season like De Bruyne and Salah elsewhere...
When he let both of them go they both went elsewhere for 5 years before becoming better players
When they were at Chelsea they weren’t better than the players that they had at the time people seem to easily forget that
De Bruyne was up against lampard and ballack ffs even at his current performance levels I would still take lampard all day never mind when De Bruyne was a 20 year old kid
Salah was only there for 6 months and he bought him to stop Liverpool getting him when both were challenging for the lesgue
That’s the whole point isn’t it? The ability to recognize talent and nurture them. How did you know De Bruyne did not have the capacity to do better at the time?
De Bruyne is certainly a much better player than Lampard.
Ballack? You must mean Ramires or someone else.
De Bruyne is a different type of player but a peak lampard was a great player, POTY in the league quality.
Maybe in 2018 he is...I think you are forgetting just how good Lampard was.
De Bruyne is a gun but it would be hard for him not to be in the most dominant side in Premier League history.
Put peak Lampard in this City team and I would back him to out perform even KDB.
He’s a super player, huge potential. It wont happen but I’d love to see him in the all red kit!!
I wouldn't
Lampard's strenght was getting into the ball late which isn't what City's MF is about tbh.
KDb has a much higher football IQ, better defensivley, better passer, better crosser, better at corners, free kicks.
The only area Lampard is better than him skill set wise are penalties and finishing.
Not a slight on the man though. He was a fantastic player.
On course to breaking both the EPL goals record AND English top flight goal record which is 34 irrc.
Insane. Him, Klopp and Firminho are a match made in heaven. I can see them winning the cl tbh which scares me...
Insane. Him, Klopp and Firminho are a match made in heaven. I can see them winning the cl tbh which scares me...
I would love him at anfield. His a special player but under the wrong manager. Can see him going somewhere else and make jose look silly again
The English top flight record is 60 league goals, not 34. Football didn't begin in 1992!
That's definitely not right.
People are calling him a Ballon D'Or contender 
He's great, and he's the second best player in the league this season, but he's at least a tier or two behind Messi (and an in-form Ronaldo).
This will change if he'll have a Ronaldo-esque end of the season in CL (which, hopefully, he wouldn't), or an immense WC.
He's great, and he's the second best player in the league this season, but he's at least a tier or two behind Messi (and an in-form Ronaldo).
This will change if he'll have a Ronaldo-esque end of the season in CL (which, hopefully, he wouldn't), or an immense WC.
How?
Yea, meant EPL season. mixed that up in my head. That 60 was by Dixie irrc. Think Andy cole and shearer both got 34 in 40+ games
TBh it's hard to know these things as Lampard worked in a completely different system.
IMO Pep would never pick a prime Lampard over KdB that is playing now. I think KdB's skill set suits Pep if that makes any sense.
People are calling him a Ballon D'Or contender
He's great, and he's the second best player in the league this season, but he's at least a tier or two behind Messi (and an in-form Ronaldo).
This will change if he'll have a Ronaldo-esque end of the season in CL (which, hopefully, he wouldn't), or an immense WC.
How?
Why wouldn't he be? Based on this season he and KdB are the stand outs in the league tbh. If he bbreaks the EPL goal tally and Pool win the CL he has a good shout but he won't win it even with the EPL hype machine behind him.
Because they will be the 'lesser' side in all the games bar if they face Juventus who are more compact. That's what suits Klopps tactics. They will cede possession and break at speed.
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Salah and Messi mentioned in the same sentence? Really? I don't think so. He has to do it year in year out. At the moment a one season wonder.
What's are their comparative football IQs? Just out of interest.
Comfortably the player of the season IMO. De Bruyne is great but he's had plenty of silent moments where he was outshone by David Silva and Leroy Sane. Salah is currently on course to match Luis fecking Suarez' best season in the PL.
Interesting that Lampard's football IQ is less than his actual IQ. Banter aside, you used phrase "football IQ" in lieu of decision making here, right? It's amusing how football fans use the phrase as if it's scientifically well-defined. But regardless, I can't see how KdB is the better decision maker. Lampard hardly ever made the wrong decision! KdB is the better long range passer/crosser, but that's it. Lampard is the better free-kick taker (KdB when they need crossing), better shooter from anywhere and could score more goals than the majority of strikers, let alone midfielders. Lampard in his prime would get his teams out of trouble a plenty of times in the highest level of CL games (Bayern, Barca), and we're yet to see De Bruyne tested at that level.
Yea that's why I changed it up in my next post.
I just think that KdB is a better fit for Pep than Lampard was and his skill set suits Pep's game more than Lamps. it's all just speculation at the end of the day tbb.
Starting to wonder now whether this guy is papering over the issues Liverpool have
You said Lampard is an inferior player from a talent perspective, which is probably true as De Bruyne has a vast array of components to his game which he uses well, but by way of that, the fact Lampard constantly shone at every level of club football is testament to his intelligence and ability to get the absolute best out of himself. If they were a match in terms of intelligence, and De Bruyne could do the same, he'd be a bona fide Ballon D'or contender and not someone who may one day get there.
De Bruyne has a lot of downtime, which is not associative of the highest levels of football IQ, given the smarter a player is, the means by which he will influence a game definitively increases exponentially. Lampard's threat was ever-present; he needed to be considered for every minute of every game, or he'd be in, which is not dissimilar to what the great players have and do throughout their career. De Bruyne's yet to display a continual threat throughout a full season, which at this level is CL inclusive.
Practically anything to do with scoring goals, Lampard is better than De Bruyne at, be it: ghosting, opportunism, shadowing other players (using them as decoys and dummys), run selection, shot selection, build up. It goes on. These are the fortes of a top-class goal-scoring midfielder and De Bruyne's not exhibited anything like the same aptitude as Lampard in any of these areas. Partly because he's not that kind of player, but mainly because he doesn't excel at that kind of stuff, which is why he provides other players with the chance to do so.
I don't think the Pep point matters much given the same can be said in for Lampard with a host of managers over De Bruyne - a case in point there would even be Mourinho, who would 100 times out of a 100 pick a 20something Lampard over any iteration of De Bruyne seen to date.
I don't think you meant to do down on Lampard, but I feel you were reductive in the extreme in the assessment you gave of him. Love his style or loathe it, a lot of what he brought to the table is the stuff of dreams for a number of coaches and evidenced by the fact we see so few midfielders who get anywhere near to his seasonal goal tallies these days. To do so much with so relatively little is one of the cornerstones of Lampard's footballing intelligence. By that measure, De Bruyne should be doing a lot more than he is.
Incidentally, when it comes to intelligence in that City side, it's Silva whose mind is miles ahead of everyone else, imo. The guy sees and knits play before others even know what's going on and then he wait for them to cotton on before progressing the play further.
Comparing KdB's threat now to Lampard's threat is like comparing Cesc when he played an AM to Xavi hernandez. They have different roles. Again this is all speculation. How would Pep fit Lampard into the team? Perhaps both he and KdB could all play together? Perhaps Lampard could bench KdB and the team would play differently to how they do now.
Yes it does because you just said that Mou would pick Lampard over KdB. So my point was that KdB seems a better fit for Pep than Lampard as the follow a very distinct pattern. Again this is all speculation and Lampard played more under instinct than KdB, who atm is a very good cog but the system is the main player. Would Lampard be allowed to express himself under Pep and get into the box whilst we know that Pep only wants 3 players at most in the box (probably as you pinted out he has the awareness for these things and the aptitude) but these are things to think about.
Yes I agree but that is also to do with the different number of systems and how football has changed. Lampard was essentially the SS. Again it would be like comparing the roles of Cesc in Arsneal where he played and Xavi in Barcelona (not quite that extreme but using it tp make a point). We saw how Cesc was doing as a gs AM/Cm then he went to Barcelona and didn't really fit in Pep's idea of a Cm and actually got in the way etc Was Cesc a bad player? Nope, his strengths lied somwhere else as you pointed out earlier.
KDB knowd when to overload areas and also now he has learnt when to pull that final pass etc whereas before he did it and lost the ball far more.
TBH it's a bit too early to compare them as Lamps has retired and is a legend in the EPl and Kdb's is just beginning.
no doubt. Pep said that Silva was the only player (or one of the few) who understand all his instructions immediately after he gave them.
Wonder if he will still be there next season.
Robertson is a huge upgrade on Moreno, who was barely a footballer
Does anyone know his buyout value?
It's hard to see Liverpool letting him go after just one season. I'm also not sure that Madrid (the only club who can buy him — PSG have Mbappe and Barca can't even fit all their 100+ million worth players on the pitch at the same time) would offer enough money — for Pool to be interested it has to be something around Neymar's fee (fecking inflation), and it's too big of a risk to pay for him while it's possible that it's just a purple patch of form combined with complimentary system.
Plus he doesn't seem like someone who'll be demanding the exit like Ronaldo/Suarez — not at the moment, at least.
I'm acutely aware we're in a Salah thread talking about two other players
, so I'll drop it.'Better than he is'? Faint praise indeed.
Would you say Messi and Ronaldo looked better than they actually were because they played for the top two teams in the world instead of Everton? The answer is no you wouldn't say that.
Edit: misread. So would Salah not be able to reach a higher ceiling if he joined Barca/Real?
I think he's he's obviously very good, but he's also insanely lucky.
I don't know if he's got that aura that scares defenders, but I mean watford gave him 0 respect. They left him insolated 1v1 with a slow CB, then he proceeded to defend him absolutely awfully. Salah is good enough that he will score no problem against idiots like that.
He also has that luck though of the ball falling to him in just the right place, perhaps it's just his natural movement that gets him there.
If you mark him tightly and don't give him space though you can shut him down fairly well (see young)
People saying he's on Messi's level are jokers though. The 3 of Mane/Firmino/Salah has great balance and all work really well together.
I don't know if he's got that aura that scares defenders, but I mean watford gave him 0 respect. They left him insolated 1v1 with a slow CB, then he proceeded to defend him absolutely awfully. Salah is good enough that he will score no problem against idiots like that.
He also has that luck though of the ball falling to him in just the right place, perhaps it's just his natural movement that gets him there.
If you mark him tightly and don't give him space though you can shut him down fairly well (see young)
People saying he's on Messi's level are jokers though. The 3 of Mane/Firmino/Salah has great balance and all work really well together.
I don’t think so, but we’ll hopefully find out next season
It's a joke that KDB is going to win POTY over him.
Ah 'luck', the Caf's favorite word sometimes it seems when the rivals are doing well.
He's insanely good this season, makes thing happen and his overall game is excellent. The pass he gave yesterday for a goal was astounding. If it was that easy or that lucky someone else would have replicated stats like his before. The only other person who did that was Ronaldo, an ATG of the game. Or Henry, fourteen years ago. Kane is excellent as well but I'd have Salah all day long.