Capital One Cup - Second Round 24/25 September *** Spoilers ***

I'll be honest, I went and cleaned my teeth. I can't stand pens. We... won...?!

Yes we did unlike last time round against Bradford lol.

Was surprised that WBA missed the target 3 times and we only had one saved from Gnabry, who i dont think was thinking when he took his penalty lol.
 
lol, stream flicked to Real conceded an equaliser to Elche in the 92nd minute with 1 min of extra time to go.....

not dodgey at all Ronaldo gets a penalty over 5 mins into extra time now, will he score........... yup :(
 
Time to address the problem that is Gerrard. Can't play further forward because he hasn't got the legs and doesn't do enough to help Lucas or the defence.

Two garbage teams playing garbage football. Neither have got a hope in hell of winning anything this season.

I'm glad someone is being honest about this, I mentioned it last year about Gerrard and got leathered for it but there comes a time when the old legends need to be given some time off (Giggs, Scholes, Gerrard etc)

We love them to bits but it's like having a lame greyhound that used to be good and dtill cheering them round the track when they're obviously struggling :/

Fair play for coming out with that though Pidg :)
 
Fair play for coming out with that though Pidg :)

He comes out with it every time we lose or win when he's not playing for about 3 years now.

Gerrard's not finished, far from it in fact. He still has a lot to offer but our problem is finding a way to get him into the side and generally the balance of our midfield.

If we're going to play a 4-2-3-1 with our fullbacks pushing on then imo the most important 2 players in the side are the midfield 2. We had the perfect pairing under Benitez in Alonso & Mascherano; Masch, despite his size, had the physical presence and pace to break-up attacks and cover the fullbacks, and Alonso was tasked with dictating the tempo of the game and getting the ball into the 3 behind the front man.

Gerrard, maybe not to quite the same level as Alonso, can do the Alonso job. In fact he's being doing that role at the start of this season and 2nd half of last season quite well. Our issue in midfield is a lack of power and mobility, and Gerrard even now is far more mobile than Alonso ever was. Our problem isn't the passing, dictating CM, whether that's Gerrard or not, it's the destroyer alongside him that allows him to play. Even at his peak, pre-injury I'm not sure Lucas had the physical attributes to dominate midfield's and cover fullbacks pushing forward, and certainly not since the injuries.

Get Gerrard on the ball in midfield and he's still a class apart, the problem is the players around him not being able to give him that platform. Put Mascherano alongside Gerrard in our midfield and both he and the team will be 10 times better off.
 
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He comes out with it every time we lose or win when he's not playing for about 3 years now.

Gerrard's not finished, far from it in fact. He still has a lot to offer but our problem is finding a way to get him into the side and generally the balance of our midfield.

If we're going to play a 4-2-3-1 with our fullbacks pushing on then imo the most important 2 players in the side are the midfield 2. We had the perfect pairing under Benitez in Alonso & Mascherano; Masch, despite his size, had the physical presence and pace to break-up attacks and cover the fullbacks, and Alonso was tasked with dictating the tempo of the game and getting the ball into the 3 behind the front man.

Gerrard, maybe not to quite the same level as Alonso, can do the Alonso job. In fact he's being doing that role at the start of this season and 2nd half of last season quite well. Our issue in midfield is a lack of power and mobility, and Gerrard even now is far more mobile than Alonso ever was. Our problem isn't the passing, dictating CM, whether that's Gerrard or not, it's the destroyer alongside him that allows him to play. Even at his peak, pre-injury I'm not sure Lucas had the physical attributes to dominate midfield's and cover fullbacks pushing forward, and certainly not since the injuries.

Get Gerrard on the ball in midfield and he's still a class apart, the problem is the players around him not being able to give him that platform. Put Mascherano alongside Gerrard in our midfield and both he and the team will be 10 times better off.

You see I see it differently, I think he's playing too high up the pitch, yeah he's still a threat blah blah but at this stage of his career he would be more than useful sitting in front of the back 4 pinging the ball about, a la Carrick role.

Liverpool had a great partnership with Masch and Gerrard (you need to get over him by the way, I'm getting jealous) but that was becasue he was prepared to sit and mop up when Gerrard went forward, if he was sat deeper it would give the likes of Coutinho more freedom to do what he seems to do best in the AM role, I know you will disagree but I do think he's lost his mobility, something which was highlighted in the England games where he seemed to get bypassed everytime we came up against midfielders that could pass. Gerrard of old would have been like Rooney is, rampaging into the box one end and then clearing a header the other 40 seconds later.

He can't do that any more so he needs to drop deeper imo of course.

Urgh, wall of text, sorry :/
 
He had his shorts around his ankles almost, it wasn't a "clean" shot. A real advantage would be if he got fouled but then went on and took a shoot clean without being either off balance, or with his shorts down and effecting his shot.

Well we agree there

Likewise an advantage doesn't(or I should say, shouldn't but refs are crap) effect the punishment for the foul at all. If someone runs across does a two footed stamp but misses the player who then goes on and scores, the ref can play advantage then come back and send the player off.

An attempted two footed stamp to pulling a player back when going on to possibly score is comparing apples to oranges
The player going on to score in your example is irrelevant as you are comparing serious foul play/deliberately endangering an opponent to simply denying a goal scoring opportunity. So of course they should still be sent off at the first available break in play.

IE the advantage is supposed to replace a freekick, because the advantage might lead to a better chance to score than the freekick, the foul is separate. Sagna should have been red carded for fouling and being the last man back

Depends, if the referee had played the advantage and the goal had stood than Sanga foul did not deny that clear goal scoring opportunity and the yellow card would have been appropriate. But he didn't play advantage and so Sanga should have gone.

Woeful referee, I would have given the penalty and red card because though he had the advantage and shot... try shooting with shorts around your knees, no way in hell it wouldn't effect it.
I don't actually think the referee made any decision at all and just took the easy way out of ignoring it. But in the hypothetical scenario where the ref had decided that the advantage was there to be played rather than just being crap than the shot was that advantage, where it ends up is immaterial. The defender didn't deny the opportunity and so a red card cant be given.
 
You see I see it differently, I think he's playing too high up the pitch, yeah he's still a threat blah blah but at this stage of his career he would be more than useful sitting in front of the back 4 pinging the ball about, a la Carrick role.

Liverpool had a great partnership with Masch and Gerrard (you need to get over him by the way, I'm getting jealous) but that was becasue he was prepared to sit and mop up when Gerrard went forward, if he was sat deeper it would give the likes of Coutinho more freedom to do what he seems to do best in the AM role, I know you will disagree but I do think he's lost his mobility, something which was highlighted in the England games where he seemed to get bypassed everytime we came up against midfielders that could pass. Gerrard of old would have been like Rooney is, rampaging into the box one end and then clearing a header the other 40 seconds later.

He can't do that any more so he needs to drop deeper imo of course.

Urgh, wall of text, sorry :/

I'm not sure what to say other than Gerrard has been playing as a deep lying playmaker for most of the last year. When he plays alongside Lucas he will still on occasion venture forward or, like today, when we're chasing a game but on the whole he's sitting deep.

There are still people that call for him to play further forward more often but I agree with what you're saying, he doesn't have the explosiveness to do that anymore.

If you look back to a lot to the times we beat your lot under Benitez. Our success was usually centred around Gerrard, Alonso & Masch over running the likes of Carrick, Scholes and Giggs in your midfield. It would be harsh to blame Carrick (for example) in those instances because it's not his game and he needs a more physical presence alongside him.

We're going to continue to get exposed in midfield, when we're not retaining the ball well in attack, until we sign a powerful defensive midfielder and it's worrying that we've not been linked with one since Masch left.
Not often I disagree with you but that's utter ***** tbh.
Lucas had/has the pace and power to cover us when we're being countered on?

Pre-injury, under Dalglish when we were more structured in defense, he was starting to really excel but it was based on his positional play rather than his ability to recover. He was more mobile than he is now but did he ever reach the heights defensively as Masch? He was more of a Alonso/Masch hybrid - Hamann with a bit more ability on the ball.

If we're pushing our fullbacks on and going to play with 4 out and out attackers, we're going to be left wide open in midfield and we're going to need somebody with the pace and power to cover big areas. We regularly see teams running through our midfield for over a year now and it's a concern.
 
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