It's just that feeling of 'so close, yet so far' that really bugs me. Not too different from the super cup where I believe we were marginally the better team, today we bossed them in the second half but just couldn't find that equaliser. It's annoying to say the least, but like everyone says lamps needs time with this young team and the results / consistency will follow.
Turning point was probably when tammy missed his one v one, but that unmarked header from firminho for their second was inexcusable. Of course we could argue that second foul should never have been given, but we had more than enough chances to make it right.
Overall you could see liverpool has that winners' mentality ingrained within them, where they're able to grind out results, no matter how difficult it gets. We battered them and should have equalised, but no shame in being beaten by a solitary goal. Take note though, they were coming off an extremely difficult away game to napoli, so that ship to get one over them this season has probably sailed, and we'll be facing a different monster at anfield.
The season has actually panned out completely against my expectations, as I expected us to struggle with finding the back of the net, not with defending! When lamps gets our set piece marking in order we'll definitely go on a nice run, collecting points. Or maybe it's just rudiger missing?
Still not a fan of our ridiculously bad zonal marking though. We need to ditch that, or have a mix of zonal and man to man imo. If this continues I hope jody has a word with him, or at the very least get someone in to work with them. The worst that could happen though is if lamps insists on beating a dead horse with this system clearly failing,halfway into the season. My bet is we'll remain zonal and concede more silly goals, but eventually look 'somewhat' solid, towards the end of the year.
KTBFFH!
I agree with most of your points. But for me Toni missing is not the excuse as we will be facing more injury crisis in coming weeks (christensen looks bad, but i hope he is OK, and Emerson is now injured). Lamps need to adapt/tweak the back four or back three with his available players as soon as possible. But on the positive notes, Tomori is calm presence in the heart of defence as he kept Salah on check during one on one on couple of occasions. He has the speed and the physicality as a strong and imposing center back.