Nat Phillips

[Nineteenx]

I was impressed when i saw him in the game against the bitters..Looks fine enough to me. Keeps on playing well maybe it will be gomez who makes way for Matip

Phillips was the player who looked like the senior CB today for sure. As desperately unfortunate as the situation arising has been, our current situation is a great opportunity for Gomez to get the experience he desperately lacks, needs to keep trying and trying and trying those switches to RFWD and LFWD, and attempted balls over the opposition backline that Virgil plays so brilliantly, he's not at all bad at them, a few go astray, that mustn't discourage him, he needs to keep playing them until he has them down to a tee as they're very important to us

[jr81]

Phillips was the player who looked like the senior CB today for sure. As desperately unfortunate as the situation arising has been, our current situation is a great opportunity for Gomez to get the experience he desperately lacks, needs to keep trying and trying and trying those switches to RFWD and LFWD, and attempted balls over the opposition backline that Virgil plays so brilliantly, he's not at all bad at them, a few go astray, that mustn't discourage him, he needs to keep playing them until he has them down to a tee as they're very important to us

Yep - take the positives from the situations. Gomez needs to sort his heading away of crosses though. He puts them. Into dangerous areas.

Saying that, TAA needs to start cutting out the crosses from the wings. He let's so many in I'm starting to think he is being told to allow them to cross.

[stevie harkness]

BBC feature on Phillips

BBC News - Nathaniel Phillips: Liverpool defender swims after being thrown in Premier League deep end
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54764456

[southernboy]

Too soon to be getting carried away obviously, but the lad did all that was asked of him... you can’t ask for more than that. It would be great if he could establish himself as a genuine CB alternative.

[Nineteenx]

I liked how visibly annoyed he was when we conceded after sloppy Joe picked their lad out perfectly

[Balinkay]

I love Joeresi, but he's done that more than once. Has to work on it.

[shminkyred]

Obviously we want to win every competition we enter..

My own instinct after the VVD injury was to wonder why we didnt replace Dejan Lovren..or we have to get another defender in the next window...

But maybe we should lower our expectations ever so slightly....Use this season as an opportunity to bring thru and nurture the development of the likes of Gomez...

Accept the fact it may be harder to win every single game.....but when VVD eventually comes back from injury we will have developed his perfect partner rather than panick buying now and regretting later....

It's all about winnting he War

[miller0863]

Gomez has been getting the opportunity to develop for a couple of years now, problem is, he hasn’t developed one iota. Still making the same errors game after game.

[g-man]

From what I can see Phillips gives us some aerial presence which VVD gave us. Gomez is a decent tackler, but not great in the air. Hope things work out for phillips, young lad with room to develop. Nothing wrong with his no nonsense defending. Lets see how the next 5 games go for him.

[Nineteenx]

Gomez has been getting the opportunity to develop for a couple of years now, problem is, he hasn’t developed one iota. Still making the same errors game after game.

It was my contention that because of his overall much higher levels of performance when fit, especially in the Champions League run and at the back end of 18-19 and outset of 19-20 Matip should have been brought back in for him as soon as he was fit last season and that with our press as virtually impenetrable as it was, Joe wasn't actually getting the experience to develop despite playing and we needed Matip in for the situations there was actual defending rather than a straight forward foot race to do, especially for the knock out stages of the Champions League

Joe is getting the experience of actual real defending to do now and will likely partner Matip or Fabinho (when fit) at least until January

Saying i was livid about the Champions League debacle last season would be an incredible understatement, our midfield was simply better than it had ever been in the 433, the distribution and switches from CM (whether you rate them or not) were as essential as the incredible improvement in the press and counter press to our playing at our very best

In Joe, particularly with the Champions League knock out stages looming we had an obvious weakness at CB

So we change the midfield and keep the defence as it was to compound that

To me that was sheer lunacy and an incredibly ill thought out act of self destruction/sabotage, as that team had been playing the only change i would have made to it would have been to bring Matip back in for the reasons stated

Since that was done we have never yet reached anything approaching the incredible heights of performance and consistency of performance we were churning out game after game