Originally Posted by
Steveo
The form went before the lockdown. The team gave 110% to make the league un winnable for any rival.. after being pipped so cruelly the season prior. Remember we didn’t add to the squad that summer - big mistake IMO. No wonder Virgil and Hendo and others are struggling this season.
It has taken an obvious toll on the team and on Klopp who seems increasingly agitated.
Also I don’t think people are talking about a so and so - they are specifically talking about Bobby - who has run himself into the ground. The goals have dried up and even interplay has been severely lacking compared to his usual high standard.
We can keep running him into the ground until he does himself a serious tear - pull or worse -OR give him a rest and let Jota try his hand.
It is just an opinion of course - and if he scores a hat trick tomorrow some will point and say - see rotating Bobby would have been wrong. That is how daft this place can be at times but the fact is - he and we could have benefitted from that rotation long ago.
We all love Bobby - I have never seen a player work as hard as he does. He will be back to his best soon - just personally feel he looks fatigued.
As for the team losing form, I love the bones of Jurgen, he is simply a brilliant manager and we're so lucky to have him, but for me the thing that destroyed our form was his decision to make changes to a team, midfield specifically, that he didn't need to make and didn't show any appreciation of the evolution the team he changed had undergone in the 20 odd game winning run or how one of our midfielders had become the teams playmaker connecting all the runs from a specific position in that evolution.
I know it's deeply unpopular, but I will never view it any other way, what we've been seeing since Jurgen made those changes isn't complacency, it isn't burnout, it is a group of players trying to deliver the same incredible levels they reached but being asked to do so in line ups that don't facilitate all the things that worked so brilliantly in that incredible spell continuing to do so.
We may have seen the peak of this team in that incredible run of games, as Jurgen and his analysis team don't seem to understand why it worked, how it worked and what were the most crucial elements to it working as well as it did, it's the best I've seen a Liverpool side play for a very long time and in making the changes they did severely stopped the incredible evolution this team has continually made over the past 2 years, I'd even go as far to say they enforced a devolution from what had become our new best. It's difficult to get back to that and back on that evolutionary track, especially when it's the people at the top making the decisions, not the loss of key players that caused it and they are unable to see they caused it.
I think there is hope perhaps, as I'll be the first to admit I didn't like the midfield selection v the bitters ahead of the game, yet, although only one game, it really resonated with me and looked like it could potentially be new and better best practice moving forward with some work, but again, like with the side of the 20 odd game run, it's reliant of certain players and if they aren't available for some games, or it's tinkered with, that will set us back and we won't be able to play to the same levels.
The only thing with the players we had at that time that could have possibly made what became our new best ever under Jurgen and in our continual upward trajectory evolution was bringing Matip back in for Gomez as soon as he was fit, that was a change that wasn't made when the opportunity to make it was there and should have been made as Gomez wasn't at all key to that side playing at it's very highest levels, he was a weak point.
We have Thiago now, he is absolutely exceptional, a world class player and if Jurgen and his analysis team can work on/with that midfield that started against the bitters and accept some players limitations and make sure if/when Thiago and Hendo aren't both available to play, then one of them plays CM with Gini and one other at LCM or RCM and Fabinho dropping out or playing that game in defence, we could get back on the continual evolution track, IF they can do that.
What made that side so incredible through that period is very simple, it was have a player in the centre of midfield who could orchestrate and organise the press and counter press to be better than it had ever been before and has ever been since, but crucially had the distribution to release and connect our full backs and forwards runs with ease, making sure if either are absent the other of Hendo or Thiago starts at CM to make sure that is happening. That's essentially playing with all the aspects that made us so unstoppable and incredible in that period
The evolution for me, particularly in Virgil's absence is that with Thiago and Hendo either side of Fabinho we had 2 players in the midfield who can play those passes and new types of passes also, the switches in particular kept the opposition always moving and simply unable to get set at any point to try and launch a counter or through a transition and Fabinho wasn't wandering at all, he was then playing as a more traditional DM, sitting, giving it simple to either better pass mostly and not getting ahead of his man at any point and it looks to have incredible potential
"If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, i'd close the curtains”
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