Kudos to Arsenal for a well played match and for coming to a tricky match with such a positive attitude. They thought us how football should be played.
In a way, I'm glad we lost twice in a row to arsenal at Anfield. I think we're getting so confident at home the players just expected to win at home with minimum fuss. Some prematch comments out of anfield sounded just a bit too overconfident to me. I dunno if any of you agree, but my opinion was that in most of our home wins, we won simply becos the other teams sat back and we just kept plugging at them and got a goal or two out of sheer hard work.
And in many matches when we "whitewashed" the opposition like 3-0 vs bolton, we scored one then the other team just fell apart. Bolton held us off well for very long and were caught out by a bit of crouch magic. then they were surprised right at the restart and it was 2-0. but both chances came from crosses from the wings. that's all we do. cross from wing, long ball out of the middle. it's what i call blindfolded football. you don't look, no vision involved in the pass. you know probably someone is in that general direction so you hoof it there. at anfield, opponents tend to sit back and we have more possession and got more balls in. odds are, we get one or two right. away, we had less possession, less balls in, lower chances of scoring. That's all...
Arsenal knows how to score. and they came to anfield to score. We always had problem with man utd and arsenal simply becos they know more than one way to get a goal. they can vary their play, move the ball around at speed and overwhelm our defence with movement and precise passes. You can easily stop a bullet with a wall becos it's only going straight (ie bolton), you cannot stop water with a wall so easily becos it can flow around you if you're not careful. And once we conceed, we are in trouble. confidence is lost. pushing forward, we expose the backline to counter. This is a risk worth taking if we can construct a goal at the other end. But the way we play, we only create half chances, losing the ball quickly and giving the opposition a chance to counter. and we conceed again.......I am not ranting becos we lost. I also said the same when we won. the result does not mask the flaws and perhaps with these defeats, eyes can be opened and someone would actually start working to fix the flaws. i just hope rafa gets all the support he needs.
This is a nice lesson. Rather than losing confidence about anfield, i hope rafa and the lads learn from this. never expect a win handed to you on a platter just becos you're the favourites. and for goodness sake, when you step on a pitch, you need to have a plan. in fact, several plans in case one go wrong. not just do the same thing over and over again, not making straight substitutions where one player just replaces the other in the exact same position, to do the exact same thing (only hopefully do it better or is more lucky).
it's not just the players that failed the fans, but the coaching staff. liverpool is like an orchestra that not only have a mix of top class musicians but also some sub-standard amateurs. Some are hungry for success, others are just happy to be here. Just as importantly, the conductor and the composer didn't turn up so they had no idea what to play or how to play it. Add it all, we have a one-lunged harmonica player still refusing to go (Diao) and taking up space....
This team needs work. But win or lose, i guess we'll be here to celebrate or suffer with them. all i ask is that the commitment from the players and the staff must be 100%. For goodness sake, learn from this. don't just give excuses or blame bad luck. YNWA
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