I agree on result over everything. We won yesterday but it's not a 'beautiful' play. Maybe RB has instruct team to behave like that, defensive minded. But what I concern right now, is this style of playing will get us to the top? It may work on Real but with more physical team in BPL, I don't think so. While we defend quite good yesterday, all the time I'm afraid when Real get the ball especially with Robben. If not with his 'oscar acting', I will respect him making our defense struggle containing him. Torres on the other hand, frustrated with no pass to him and too little chances, thanks to Benny and Riera helping defending and left him alone up there while Pepe and Cannavaro constantly harassing him. Adding injury to it and.. Kudos to Alonso and Masch dominating the centre area, again thanks to underperformed Lass (name on his back) and another 'oscar winning' acting Gago. Iker was almost doing nothing and that 'cold' hand costs him this game.

There are 3 factors why we win this game. Patience, luck and their lose of concentration. Take the chance and bring the goal back home two weeks from now. Peace.

I smell war coming both in our thread and real madrid thread...Please dont ask me why...

agreed. RM is totally not good in 2nd half.

Lass= diarra la...Anyway, he was one of the better performer on field.I wont say that he is underperforming.In fact, he is better than those days he had in Pompey.

In case you didn't know, Casillas was busy eating donuts and drinking starbucks...

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Added on February 26, 2009, 6:23 pmExample would be, no one man mark benayoun...Poor diarra had to mark two person at once.

This post has been edited by solstice818: Feb 26 2009, 06:23 PM

that is usual...u will be more "pening kepala" if debate with manutd fanz..they r more fanatic and nothing in the world can say that their team is bad...huhuhu

This post has been edited by utp_tyco: Feb 26 2009, 06:24 PM

Which is why Liverpool under Rafa will always be a good but not great team. The team setup and the players are rock solid defensively and when it comes 'all hands on deck' time there is no better. No team soaks pressure and nullifies creativity better than Liverpool. Liverpool as a team is probably (and in a way ironically) more a 'Mascherano' than a 'Gerrard'. Set your team up to beat Liverpool and the odds are you will lose.

However, set yourself the target of 'not losing' (ironically this is also THAT 'power hungry' señor's chosen approach) and Liverpool will struggle. Someone asked why teams played one game against Man Utd and another different game altogether against Liverpool - Duke's answer then was harsh but direct. It has been five years and Rafa, for all his 'genius' is still unable to inject that spark of creativity and thrust into Liverpool's game.

Teams will forever come to Anfield looking for a draw, and being somewhat neutral nowadays you cannot but wonder how on earth will Liverpool be able to win the league with this current approach. I do hope that come May/June I will be proven wrong, but odds are i won't.

I would be hoping that they can qualify for the next round.The only way for them to make mistakes in the title race is when they have more matches than us.The fatigue/injuries will then affect the performance.I might be crazy to hope that they can qualify by beating Inter but it's the one of the few ways to stop them and get us back again in title race.

This post has been edited by solstice818: Feb 26 2009, 06:48 PM

from where i'm standing, i would say the lack of title-challenging players in the squad is one of the main reasons why we are struggling to keep in pace with man utd in the race.

players can have 'cup mentalities' because we have been doing very well in knock-out competitions in recent years, and it contributed to the poor form in the premier league. they are aware that cup competitions will be more likely to bring us any sort of silverwares, and it's usually one-off performances. judging from our runs in the recent UCL competitions, we always got through narrowly and rarely will we win convincingly. it's because the players know they only need one good result to bring them to the next round.

when they bring this mentality to the premier league games, the end result are inconsistency against teams in the lower half of the league. how often do we watch the team play effortlessly for 60 over minutes in a match before they realize they need to put the ball at the back of the net? we almost always only play better when the opposition scores first, which is very frustrating to watch at times. we can score obviously as we see in games, but we lack the desire to kill the game early.

everyone knows the team can play better than what they do week in week out, but they're not playing as though it's the make-or-break match, and that's what pegging us back.

Just visited RM thread and find out tat u guys really shoot tat guy kao kao until he dare not show up already.......
i bet if really RM did knockout us out in anfield(which is MUST NOT HAPPEN), he will certainly come in here n f*** all of u here by claiming tat 'tats the way u play proper football dammit......

imagine, if we Win the 2nd leg and proceed ..
Inter Win Manu,
and we got draw with inter and beat them up! lol
i believe JM will be DAMMM PISS OFF! Lol, how many times we beat them off in CL un JM a?

Blah, i don't really care about the "beautiful play thing" anymore. We play well, pass well, and all during home games (BPL), but the end result isn't always satisfying. I felt that the way we played against Real Madrid was great. I'm just SOOOOO happy we won.

YNWA

just because no one in this world can get through Carra and Skrtel..we jump into a conclusion that Liverpool played boring defensive football ???

carra+skrtel are too strong that they made people think we're too defensive..coz we played an open game until 70++th minute...from that onwards are defensive football!

This post has been edited by x13u5t3r: Feb 26 2009, 07:40 PM

united should beat inter at home . inter need to score and united need to win , and win they will at old trafford

man united bench quality should overcome whatever fatigues there are . if both liverpool and united are even on points maybe there's better chance but 7 points is very difficult . knowing SAF and how much he wants to even out with liverpool on overall league titles , he may sacrifice even the champions league for BPL

anyway the beautiful thing about football is unpredictability

with another CLASS Centreback sitting on d bench, damn our defense really are deadly. ans with aurelio and arbeloa playing on top of their game, now lets talk bout defense line!

Agreed. A good example would be Raul. He could do nearly nothing today. Our defense was very well organized, even though it was a little patchy in the first few minutes. Also, i'm glad that Rafa did not take his usual risks by handing Babel a start lol.

I knew la about that 'Lass', just referring to the name on his back only. I rarely watch Real game (4 in the morning and it's not Liverpool, why should I bother..) but I certainly sure his performance is supposedly better than last night. But I'm agree on the two person marking thing..The other one busy 'acting'..

All other top EPL club's managers has the power Rafa seeks, so why on earth should he be denied the same rights and controls as a manager ? He is not asking to own LFC but merely given control that grants the ability to sell and buy his players, and authority in other football aspects of the club.

You reckon in his 5 years reign, Rafa hasnt brought any progress to the team ? I know its been done to death, but you need to remember that he had to re-build the entire team from the ground up; replacing aging and not worthy players whists adding competitive depth to the team. He did this under constrained financial backing. Then you take in consideration that he had to worked in a hostile working environment. Ironically, its because of his stubborn nature that he was able to endured this long. Its a monumental task that i guarantee most managers would have failed spectacularly.

Im not a Rafa fan because of his personality or some unknown fetish, its because im grateful that he has healed and brought progress to this club. Its still in work in progress and i still believe he will bring further improvements to the team. Any fans who witnessed the declining of the club the past 2 decades and remember the Houllier era will understand how much Rafa has done to this club. He has once more made us a European elite and by so has brought us substantial financial income. People quickly and conveniently dismiss the CL achievements but forget that its due to this consistency that we have now been bestowed the pulling power to attract the players and youth talents that we have now. We have beaten every European elites (bar the mancs) in CL under his tenure. If beating the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Ac Milan, Inter Milan, Chelsea, Juventus and Arsenal in the CL not deem as a great feat then im not sure what is.

If yesterday's team winning at the Berneubeu cant be labeled as a great team then im not sure what else you would be expecting. I watched the match again this afternoon and it wasn't an overly defensive display as most medias put it. Even if we were, is that necesserily a bad thing ? Truth is, we controlled Real from the start to the very end and we did it seemingly without a great struggle. It was like watching a matador masterfully containing and subduing a raging bull. We were very balanced tactically and superbly organized. Ironically, it was the kind of display that saw Souness's team won against Real back in '81. We contained them in the first half, then came at them during the 2nd half. We defended and attacked in numbers. We didnt just rely on Torres on teh break, but had Yossi and Riera running at them. Yes we didnt risk it all and gone all gunho, but as it turned out we didnt have to. It was a perfectly executed game plan. Sometimes a defensive game can be as beautifully executed and pleasing to the eye as free flowing attacking football.

This post has been edited by hfi: Feb 26 2009, 08:19 PM

Cassilas eating donuts and drinking starbucks??? Im still with this....

yea? wth is this?

It means that Iker hardly face any threat from us in the first 10-20 minutes, no? Solstice?