Liverpool FC Team Talk, Gossip, Rumours 2024/25

The problem is who do you bench him for? Gakpo's been even worse. As has Diaz. It's a collective issue in attack, rather than any one player. Mo and Nunez you can at least usually see are actually involved in the game, albeit doing the wrongs things, while the other lads are just increasingly anonymous.

Really need Jota back, but unfortunately we could really do with 2 or 3 Jota's returning. Since the break, the whole team has been really really poor from the midfield forward (and I include Trent in that).

Yeah, I wouldn't mind starting Gakpo next weekend - I just won't be feeling hugely confident about our forward lines contribution either way. Nunez coming off the bench will at least electrify the crowd.

I'm kind of wondering how much of all of this is from Szobo's drop off. When we were at our best, he was running the show and pulling the opposition midfield and defensive line apart and creating spaced for Mo and the CF. I feel like more recently his position is dictated a bit by what Trent does... you see him having to drop back at RB a lot, or taking the right touchline spot when Trents wandered into the middle to stand on the DMs toes.

It feels like instead of playing his own natural game, Szobo is having to look up and see what Trent's at, and then shift his position accordingly. Trent's a lovely passer of course, but Szobo is so much more dynamic and front-foot-forward when he's the one calling the shots. I'd have liked to see what today might have been like if Gomez had come on, and Szobo had stayed on - poor as he'd been, our midfield lost control entirely once he was gone.

One of the worst games of football I've seen recently.

Utd were as shite as expected but we were worse.

Still, beat Arsenal next weekend and all will be forgiven.

United played like you expect a bottom half team that flirts with relegation every few seasons. At one point they had a line of 7 players just outside/inside the box and all 11 players were inside the half. Van Dijk and Konate was passing the ball 10 metres inside their half to each other as Hojlund was so deep he posed no threat. But this also mean when, on the couple of occasions that they actually tried, did break they had us outnumbered and quite easily.

This is why we give away so many chances against poor teams when they sit back, you are trying to overload an area but they would always have more players back than you have forward. And if they do break forward with pace they will make it uncomfortable for you. City finds this tough as well, although they have gone with the cynical foul and then also getting players so technically gifted they just don't give the ball away to negate that. You can do that if you can waste £50m for a midfielder on the bench and not have to play your £100m player regularly as well. Some gets the fits that we paid £19m for Endo and he is not setting the world on fire. Can you imagine if we had Kalvin Philips doing even less and costing more than double more? But then standards players needed to achieve here was always impossible for most players if you ask fans.

Back to the match, the expected goals seemed to be about 2.3 to 0.6. We were comfortably better than them and on another day we get the goal that force them to open up which causes more problems for them and makes it more likely we score 3-4. Benitez got slammed when he called the tactics that Everton used as like a "small club", but I don't see any difference that happened yesterday with United. The praise will be on them for this one result, but it shows how poor they are at the moment.

In any case, we move on and focus on the next match. Was frustrating but while we were not great we were not at any point in danger of being beat in that match. It really was the most comfortable I have felt before and during a United match that I can remember. I had no nervous energy at all. That was weird and I think why the atmosphere was flat. After the first 10 minutes most at the match probably saw that these lot are here for the draw and its going to be a drag the whole match.

Just comes across as salty. What did he expect United to do - come at us in waves and let us pick them off like last season? I don't blame them remotely for how they set up yesterday. It does show how far they've fallen, though, when they play like a plucky Championship side. We just have to be better at dealing with teams that set up like that.

Nunez’s booking was idiotic on his behalf, but other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do from the no.9 position. As was predictable with United’s defensive set up, he had no space and no service.

He should be on the left wing, where he was for the 7-0 last year and where I believe his best performances come from and he has more variation to his game than Diaz. Let Gakpo play 9 as a hold up player and creator. We should only have one of Diaz and Nunez on the pitch at any one time, but we should always have one of them on. The only time the game opened up was the last few minutes when their pace could have been used, and they were both off at that stage.

Somebody hacked my account it appears ..........

As I’ve said already, yesterday was an incredibly bad performance, and the draw said far more about us than it did Utd.

But I’ve seen a lot of plaudits for Endo, and I simply can’t agree.  He is a microcosm of what was wrong yesterday the further up the field you went.

Don’t get me wrong, he was fine at a lot of the dog work.  He was nice and secure - very safe in terms of the protection he offered.  But when he picked up the ball off the back 4, his complete inability to spot a pass between the lines, or to do anything other than pass it backwards when he came under even a semblance of pressure, actually harmed us quite a bit.  For all of MacAllister's deficiencies as a 6, and his struggles to cover the areas needed, or to spot danger quickly (because he’s not a natural 6), his ability to at least pass the ball forward between the lines, was sorely missed.  A DM’s work is not just the dog work - you have to be brave in how you pass, and his inability to do that crippled us and allowed Utd to get into shape time and time again.

Listen, Diaz, Salah and Nunez were frustrating as hell.  Their combinations weren’t working, their touches were atrocious and in the case of Nunez, he still hasn’t learned the offside rule.  But they didn’t get enough chances in decent areas to actually run and the back 4 because we couldn’t progress the ball efficiently enough.

I don’t want to single him out, because he has an important role to play, but i honestly think a lot of the slowness was down to that area of the pitch.

Idk I thought Oliver was awful throughout.

Endo never should've been booked for his foul on Amrabat

Dalot shouldn't have been sent off

The incident that got Dalot sent off was wrongfully given as a Liverpool throw-in

At one point Dalot fouled Nunez and kicked it out of play and it was given as a United goal kick

Both Endo and Varane had pretty blatant hand balls in midfield that weren't called

I think it's nonsense to try turn this into a "referee agenda" thing, there was no bias on display it was just a bad performance from a referee who's only still "the best referee in the country" due to the fact that the rest are even worse than him.

I've never seen him wave for a card before either, not a player into the the dark arts.

Anyone who thinks Salah is waving for a card is blind. He's clearly waving for teammates.

Nunez was lucky....

Salah didn't wave an imaginary card, he was clearly calling for a team mate to show for the ball. I can't believe that's even been debated!

Ken Early damning on Nunez today.

Now scoring at a lower rate than he did last season, how long can Liverpool wait for the real Darwin Nunez to show up etc.

there comes a point where we have to stop treating Nunez like a child.

he's been given an incredible amount of grace for a massive signing, purely because of 'vibes'. the brass tacks of it is that he has cost us points this season. yes, he won us points against Newcastle, but if he is approaching adequate yesterday, or doesn't miss ludicrous chances against Luton, we'd be sitting on more points than we are now.

you know you get chaos with him, but you can't go week to week wondering if it's going to be good or bad chaos. there has to, ultimately, be some consistency and some regular goals.

United supporter here - I've no idea where the criticism of Salah comes from. In no way does it look like he's calling for Dalot to be carded.

And still not sure what his hissy fit was about. They were happy to play for a draw, when we were crap and of no consequence to United we did that a few times. Not sure why he was upset about that. Basically he was saying United now is nothing more than we were when we were terrible but Van Dijk is wrong to point this out?

The whole narrative to the game was how bad United are and it was going to be a matter of how many for Liverpool.

Liverpool were the only team actively looking to win.

Liverpool dominated.

Utd are terrible.

Utd had every right to do what they did, and after the match their fans have every right to be a bit smug after some of the predictions by Liverpool fans over the course of the last week.

All of these things are true, but as usual, people online are either 1) looking for a reason to be offended because they love being a victim, or 2) they're acting offended for clicks.

Anyone remember the time Frank Lebouf was on some sort of English comedy quiz show? And when they started slagging him about getting an easy football question wrong he just sat back calmly and said "I don't care, I won the World Cup". And the English comedians just shut up.

Well this is my attitude and response to any query about any decision that goes for us this season. "We had an actual goal that all the officials knew was a goal not given to us for no good reason against Spurs, never mind all the other horrendous decisions in that game that went against us, which may easily have cost us 3 points in that game, so until you have a perfectly good goal that everyone knows is a goal not given to ye for no good reason jog on cos I just don't care.

If you are looking for some positivity when Nunez isn't scoring or creating directly then sometimes you can point to a more unquantifiable impact.

It's not where we wanted to be with a 75m pound striker 18 months into his Liverpool career. 1 goal in the last 11 league games.

I think the Mo scoring when he is on the pitch thing is a bit weak personally but we'll see over the season.

I never for a second thought Diaz would ever be prolific but I just don't know how we beat utilize him going forward now.

Yeah, I get all of what bringing chaos should mean but over the course of his time at Anfield to date, all of what you alluded to should genuinely result in a better return, for himself in terms of goal return (he's no better a finisher now that he was last season imo) and for others (other than Mo who's smart enough to feed off the scraps of others). He had a very strong start to the season and went into a run of games after the last international break where he should have built on that but he's regressed in that time.

I'm looking for far more nuance from him both in terms of his finishing (which may never happen) but especially his movement (he's just as Iberian Djibril Cisse at the moment as far as that goes). I absolutely wanted gim to start yesterday because I though the game would suit him perfectly as would United's set up. Funny thing is that though Arsenal's defenders are superior to United's, he could be the man to lead the line on Saturday as others will have more space around him since Arsenal won't be sitting back and it should suit him. I saw little or no value in his time on the pitch yesterday, nor for a few games before that as we've created so little for all alleged his chaos-causing. Really is time to step it up a couple of levels.

Andre playing for Fluminense now in the CWC if anyone's watching.

I don't think City will be too worried about the final watching this!

I do once again like the look of John Kennedy though.

<edit> Kennedy scores again too - why is this lad not starting for them? I've watched two Fluminense games, and both times he's come off the bench and looked head and shoulders better technically than the starters.