Our midfield is not functioning at all today, and no wing, every chance have to go through center, until Southampton saw our weaknesses, who to blame? Right now blaming is useless, we must stay focus in the next match rather than blaming today game because we can't change it now, learn from lesson and please BR don't ever make such a mistake again!

I don't understand why Gerrard sat deep in the midfield.
I noticed he's been playing deep this season.

Gerard and Lucas....doing the same job!!
2 man, 1 job !! waste!!

Stevie should play AM...for this one.
sigh..too late too bad!!

Yes, I felt the same.

Dietmar Hamann/Gary McAllister/Mascherano could do the job alone.
Roy Keane could do the job just fine.
IMO, we don't need 2 defensive midfielders.

I think it's either Gerrard has no faith in Lucas or he has no faith in playing attacking role again.

must be BR instruction that let stevie playing deep. I couldn't think anything else.

I don't think anyone (LFc fan) would gloat that liverpool lost. Prior to todays lost I was happy we kept a clean record of no losses but like a few others quite concern of the manner we won, kinda rode our luck. The lofty summit hid the fact we are actually a not quite a settled team (at least to me)

While i'm not like most of you who can quote & point positions like those FM, fifa manager games. I see it as is. all the super analytical analysis, made up stats charts count little for me. call it old school if you want.

We need to spend in january to get a good player. a player who can help support & bring out the best in our better players. We have some bright sparks but as it beginning to be obvious, good players seem to become sub standard. It could be tactical/team tactics, it can also be the lack of 'quality' players to bounce off your game.

I do wish we can crave more wins soon (even if means many ugly wins or lucky wins) before the following month. If it doesn't, i fear the worse as the 'tell' of the squad becomes so obvious that we are actually a below average squad relying on 1 or 2 players. I know some are asking to trust in rodgers, & trust FSG. I do but i also hope they would listen to some fans "we need a good player or simple term for others to understand a marquee one (and those who ask BR to have plan B). Sure, we may lie very high up the table still & shown the very best start to the league in years. Some might quip 'league table don't lie, we are still on the top'. Its only our fifth game, it's the manner we lost & hell, it's bloody long way more of the season.

Out of respect to Lfc & to @dillionyong, i wanted to not comment of tonite's loss. This is also not about me being a pessimistic, but i got to get it off my chest.

Morning lovelies. Hope u lot are not dwelling on the defeat. Perhaps it's better to be the chasing pack n draft the wind as the season goes. Guess BR is not used to things at the summit.

Suarez will be back n this is a boost. It will be hard for me to predict the outcome of the matches because with this guy in the team anything can happen.
He can single handedly win matches on his own thats how good he is...

This post has been edited by carloz28: Sep 22 2013, 07:26 AM

Woah Bro, feel free to comment la. Not that I cannot accept negativity but before the match and also in part of slamming others for standing by the team i feel is not right. Criticism is part and parcel of the game. I am in the same view of others that BR got it wrong for this one.

About spending in January, that is why we need to save the money. I understand many were calling for the purchase of Eriksen, etc etc. If they turned out to be a waste, then we cant do anything in January. I am glad we didnt spend every penny and now we can look forward to address any issues we may have in January.

Purchasing players are always a gamble. But at least in January, we know better what we need.

Cant sleep well thinking of what kind of tactic/formation should have been out there.
Maybe BR also cant sleep well right now. LOL.

Suarez should go to the right with Moses on the left. I feel this will create more chances for all 3, Dannyboy, Suarez and Moses. Of course all 3 can interchange at anytime to confuse the defenders.

Agree that Suarez's return is the only good news.

Seems like BR want to use liverpool to test all his tactics. Disappointed and hopefully we can win again.

i heard the commentator said that enrique have slight injury before the game started so he put him on the bench...

When is the match against MU?

i don't understand.... we are good with 1 playmaker, and when he's out.. change the whole system/tactical?

Still, it was a bizarre decision to start with 4 centre backs considering that we had Wisdom, Kelly and Enrique on the bench, and Rodger's tactics require our fullbacks to be adventurous. I'd understand if injuries robbed us of any fullback. In any case, he realised his error albeit a little too late by hauling off Agger and Skrtel.

Mignolet's shot stopping was good but his distribution was appalling having completed only 45% of his passes. Pepe averaged 70% +/-.

Hard to take any positives from last night's match. Nothing to be done but to take this blow to the chin and move on. With Suarez returning, there will be less pressure in Aspas. The bloke needs to spend some time in the ressies and weight room to come to terms with the physicality of the Premiership.

It's one of those days we show too much respect for a Soton team. They choose to be adventurous and we choose to be cautious. They played really well. Hope they can do the damage to our rivals now while we focus on ourselves.

I sense that only an emphatic win against Black Cats will satisfy all of us.

This post has been edited by dillonyong: Sep 22 2013, 08:59 AM

Yes, come January I hope no one will dispute the importance of splashing the cash on a decent or established playmaker. We missed out on two good playmakers in Henrikh and Eriksen, both of them opted to play in rival teams as Liverpool couldnt offer them Champions League football, or so they said.

Had we upped the offers above the market price, who knows what could have happened. Lets be honest here, we have no Champions League offering, the only other alternative to get players in is by financial power. It's not like BR has the charming personality like Rafa to attract top players in without CL.

Plus the way I look at it, FSG always gave up on the targets the moment their first bidding is rejected and they will never renew their attempts with an improved offer. This is football, you seldom get your players in your first bidding. Take it or leave it policy? Get REAL here people, our glorious history alone is not enough to attract the players anymore. Arsenal used to play that game until their players starts to ditch them one by one. And then came the 40mil Suarez bid and that Ozil steal.

Back to formation, 2 holding midfielders will work if you have a player of an attacking prowess like Suarez. He collects the ball from midfield and he will start running at defenders head on, trying to nutmeg them all the way to the 12 yard box. Suarez creates his own chances and seldom rely on AMs to serve him. You can play deep in our own half with Suarez upfront.

Sturridge's style is more towards the conventional striker role, he tends to drift towards the flanks and wait for support or wait for the guy behind him to make runs and create space for him. With Coutinho out, the void is not filled by Aspas or Gerrard. That's why our midfield is barely visible yesterday. Gerrard and Lucas were like rooted at the center of the midfield catching grasshoppers when we have possession while Sturridge was only served from the flanks or fullbacks.

Lots of work to be done. Put Gerrard back to a more offensive role. We all miss his charging forward runs if his legs can still take it.

5 years ago, games against Soto and Swansea are deemed must win games. Now I'm not even sure if we can beat the mid table revellers.

This post has been edited by carloz28: Sep 22 2013, 09:19 AM

true, sakho is not the type that can go high up like enrique. his aerial ability is good no doubt but he cant drible well from the 2 game that he play for us.

regarding mignolet ball distribution, this season very rare to watch the team start the passing game from the keeper. no more pass move pass move eh from rodgers style of play ?

Hope with suarez finish his ban, he can fix the creativity that we lack now.

Methinks its not a choice.

The basic error is the four CBs......Br's system is highly dependant on two running wings backs, which Sakno is not.
Toure tried to a certain extent. So we see Moses isolated.

Soton did a good job of very high pressing because they knew our forwards had NO chance
with their tall CBs when Mig launches high balls.

Therefore, BR's tactics and setup is rather strange. maybe he had Enrique's injury at the back of his mind.

I think a very BIG question mark is: Can stevie still play with Lucas. Both are too slow to press and link
defence to midfield in the abscene of Cout?

Lots of shortfalls every where exposed by the number of injuries

We've been struggling against mid table teams for a long time now. Anfield used to be a fortress back in the days King was player-manager. Since then we've often been undone by sides we were expected to beat. It was no different under Rafa who despite his European success was unable to to consistently take 3 points from teams below us, bar 1 season. Teams like Reading and Norwich outplayed us at Anfield.

Being adventurous at home is to me, not optional. It should be mandatory for the home side to want to pick up all 3 points. In the wins earlier in the season, we only really adopted caution when we were defending a lead.

In my opinion, Rafa's side played with a lot of caution. He micromanaged when I felt players should have been given more freedom. The only exception was when we were chasing the title and we steamrolled teams like Man Utd and Real Madrid. We also managed to score 4 against Chelsea though we were ultimately undone by the away goals rule. The very next season, the team adopted caution again, which baffled me. BR's side played with more rigour last season. We often dominated out opponents which meant we scored a fair number of goals. However, we also conceded a tad too many. This season it seems he's adopting caution more. In a case of two extremes, the answer usually lies somewhere in the middle. Far as I know, only Stoke can play with 4 centre backs and get away with it.

This is very true. As much a I love Mignolet for his amazing saves, I think he is one of the main reasons why we are losing possession so much this season compared to last season. One can only hope his distribution improve over time. He keeps going long and direct. We don't have a target man, that is just surrendering possession back to the opposition. At times when he tried to play out the back, he looks very uncomfortable.

I missed the old BR. I remember when he first came in, he said something like there's no point clearing the ball by kicking it long... the opposition would just keep coming back at you. Lately the team don't look like the team BR said he wanted to create, I thought tiki-taka was supposed to be our blue print? We are playing quite direct football lately, which baffles me, cause I thought Rodgers wanted the team to play 'pass-and-move' and possession based football.

Now most teams have known our weakness, push high up and press our players, give them no time on the ball then our players will misplace a lot of passes. We need to learn how to pass and move through tight spaces. Trickery and skill, like what Suarez and Coutinho have in abundance, helps a lot...