Messiah "Aggerswagger" wrote:
Enrique was immense Jones is new kop hero, dat save on Torres
Flop of the match was Allen by far.

Agreed.
Enrique was Man of the Match, he was doing everything on that left flank. Sure misplaced a few passes but you're bound to if you're as much involved as he was today. Great performance.

Sterling and Suarez took silver and bronze in that competition, imo. Gerrard deserves a mention for his hard work both ways.

And Allen was the flop, gave away possession dangerously time and again while offering very little to our midfield game. I, for one, am hoping that Lucas is the player he was pre-injury and is able to take over that CDM role.

A little frustrating game where Chelsea had the more dangerous chances while we had barely any chances, but it's a fine result at the end of the day. Rodgers needs more ideas in attack, at the moment it's too much "let's do well in midfield and hope that somehow turns into goals."

6 games unbeaten run

very boring game,always looking confused in the final third.enrique,most frustarting player in the first half but made up in the 2nd half....johnson?leave him at RB or LB with the freedom to bomb forward,that way he's efficient.......the formation? nothing to write home about,made us look clueless in the midfield....

suarez the saviour again! if he continues this way then he's up for the golden boot come end of season.....hw about getting a good striker that complements suarez,say suarez scores and the striker scores too in every match;fourth spo tin mind...


PS: heard howard webb has been accused by chelsea for using "inappropriate language" againt one of their player.He probably called torres a striker.......hheheheheeh...just kidding..

BBC Sport ‏@BBCSport

Liverpool's 57% possession today was the most by a visiting team at Chelsea in the PL since Arsenal in Feb 2010 (via @OptaJoe) #LFC #CFC

Surprising given the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game our main possession winning & recycling midfielder had.

Possession doesn't mean jack squat. Look at how shite were Red. The main problem today was that players were static. Every time one of our midfielders or attackers had the ball no one made an effort to get themselves open which was evident in the poor first half display. In the second half players were much better off the ball with their movement which saw us look more dangerous in that half. Also it doesn't help when half of our lineup is playing out of position.

I second what Messiah said, we were rather comfy in midfield but attack-wise there just wasn't anything developing. When you look at our line-up I wouldn't exactly fancy us scoring from a set-piece but that's what we had to rely upon today. Conclusion: We weren't overrun, but we gave away more chances than we created and that's what usually counts in the long run.

Why does everyone actively avoid passing to Sahin when he obviously makes the most economical and positive use of any player on the pitch?

Anyway the usual compliments for Agger,Suarez,Sterling. They are pretty consistent with their efforts, no real point in going into extended praise.

Enrique was good though I felt he got himself into uncomfortable positions only to get himself out of them. He dallies on the ball a bit too long. Gerrard was also good bar a couple WTF moments , I would however prefer if he limited himself to forwards areas as he's dropping back and that's encouraging the team not to pass to Sahin.

What I'm saying probably sounds biased. I don't know what it is. He isn't as mobile as Allen and he has a tendency to stand and wait for the ball rather than get himself open so that might be it.

Allen clearly did not have a good game, he was completely unable to cope with their attacking midfielders and his distribution was uncharacteristically poor.

I'd say in this context possession DOES mean something. The descriptions so far have made it sound as though we spent much of the game hanging on by the skin of our teeth while being dominated by Chelsea. People have described Allen's performance as though he gave the ball away more often than not an did so in very dangerous positions. That just wasn't the case, as the possession stat shows. Had the players (and particularly Allen) really been so poor with their passing and possession there's no way in hell we'd have the majority of possession away to Chelsea as we did.

Our performance may not have been the same as it was in other games this season but sometimes in different situations different types of performances are necessary. I'm not suggesting it was a good performance, just that it wasn't anywhere near as horrendous as some of you are attempting to suggest. I simply dislike knee-jerk hyperbole.

RedOranje wrote:I'd say in this context possession DOES mean something. The descriptions so far have made it sound as though we spent much of the game hanging on by the skin of our teeth while being dominated by Chelsea. People have described Allen's performance as though he gave the ball away more often than not an did so in very dangerous positions. That just wasn't the case, as the possession stat shows. Had the players (and particularly Allen) really been so poor with their passing and possession there's no way in hell we'd have the majority of possession away to Chelsea as we did.

Our performance may not have been the same as it was in other games this season but sometimes in different situations different types of performances are necessary. I'm not suggesting it was a good performance, just that it wasn't anywhere near as horrendous as some of you are attempting to suggest. I simply dislike knee-jerk hyperbole.

I read through the post-match comments and couldn't really find one that made it sound like "we spent much of the game hanging on by the skin of our teeth while being dominated by Chelsea."

Want to point that comment out for me?

Messiah "Aggerswagger" wrote:Man we're horrible attacking wise. Didn't create anything up front to get the game going. Even defensively the lack of communication was evident in almost every Chelsea attack. They've been ripping us open time and again on the counter.

Sure sounds as though we were backs against the wall if we're horrible in attack and the opposition is "ripping us open time and again".

The metric for measuring possession is so screwed up (it's basically passes completed), I tend not to trust the statistics if they don't corroborate what I see with my eyes.

Funny enough I thought it was clear we dominated the early stage and though Chelsea only had brief interludes of dominance , theirs was simply more threatening.

There was a clear weakness through Allen's zone, though it may have been exaggerated ( I didn't listen to commentary).

That being said I didn't really see it as a bad performance by the team as a whole.

RedOranje wrote:

Messiah "Aggerswagger" wrote:Man we're horrible attacking wise. Didn't create anything up front to get the game going. Even defensively the lack of communication was evident in almost every Chelsea attack. They've been ripping us open time and again on the counter.

Sure sounds as though we were backs against the wall if we're horrible in attack and the opposition is "ripping us open time and again".

On the counter. Which you usually don't have that many in a game and don't equal "domination".

Anyway, it wasn't a bad performance, but I think we should all agree that the most frustrating thing about it was that the same problem persisted that has been there all season long: we're terribly short of ideas when it comes to scoring goals.

RedOranje wrote:

Messiah "Aggerswagger" wrote:Man we're horrible attacking wise. Didn't create anything up front to get the game going. Even defensively the lack of communication was evident in almost every Chelsea attack. They've been ripping us open time and again on the counter.

Sure sounds as though we were backs against the wall if we're horrible in attack and the opposition is "ripping us open time and again".

That was my first half analysis, which we can all agree we were shite in. Plus it's no exaggeration, we looked vulnerable in every counter, and it was clear that defensive communication was almost nonexistent.

I missed this match...but just saw highlights, in the 3 minutes highlights, 2 and half minutes they showed only chelsea attacks
JT scored a goal, a full back, had acres of space. As I had written before the match, chelsea has scored most of the goals from corners and set pieces in last 5-6 games and same thing happened today also. I guess we certainly missed Skrtel. But as I read discussion here, it seems we played really bad. But I am hopeful BR will get that thing (toothless attack and tactics) solved.

We had most of the ball and far less of the chances. It was incredibly frustrating to watch as time and time again we would take the ball off them in their half, nobody would push forward, Suarez would lay it back to a midfielder and we'd have to break down a 10 man defense again. There were no ideas in the front, and it shows in that our only goal was from a set piece. We didn't even have our usual missed chances; there just weren't any.

So Red, I think our reaction in this case isn't that we were dominated - because the defense was very good - but that we didn't deserve anything out of the game. They had far more chances, clear cut and not, than we did; some of those were directly caused by poor passes in our midfield. The possession stat is accurate, based on what I saw, but is also not representative of the game I watched. We were not the better team today - not in passing, not in defending, not in attacking; our possession numbers are just a result of Chelsea's active decision to play on the break.

In summary, I wasn't disappointed with the result, but I definitely was disappointed with this performance

Just a pathetic performance today in which I won't even bother to analyse. Why would Rodger's play a tactical formation which this team hasn't gotten over a week to adjust in one of the weeks biggest games? The 3-5-2 not only failed hard but lacked any shape whatsoever. Rodger's continue to spell his possession philosophy yet we barely get any possession at all unless its in our own half. Chelsea outplayed us well into the first half. Quite obviously the lack of anchoring midfielder is costing us as especially Allen and Gerrard who sacrificed their attacking prowess for working there ass of in defence. Sahin pulled of another ghost performance in attack and defence as Suso should replace him as the foremost AM since its his actual position.

3-5-2 also didn't work since the midfield couldn't co-relate with the wingbacks on who should attack and who should stay back is it didn't even compress into a 5-3-2 in attack. We had NO shape or formation.

2nd have was improved but barely although Suso's wide attack gave presence in what looked like a quasi-3-4-3 yet our possession and discipline was as bad as the first half. Lacked any guile, movement and understanding of positioning to receive the pass. The team can't decide whether they want to counter on the fast break or keep muddled possession as the discipline is severely lacking due to the poor gameplan and preparation. It didn't help that Suarez for the 3rd straight PL game has been our only scorer and was the only one who looked like creating something. Rodger's for now needs to stick with a 4-3-3 or at least try a formation taking advantage of the midfield rather then pairing them up in a confused mess, Sahin and Wisdom need to be benched for Shelvey (or Hendo) and Flano.

I couldn't bother with the rest of the analysis. We need to improve.

The 3-5-2 wasn't the main issue, imo, and at times it helped Johnson and Enrique to get well involved. If Enrique can re-produce that performance on a constant basis then I'm all for giving that 3-5-2 more chances in the future.

But regardless of the formation, something has to happen in our attack. Suarez gets no support in the middle, there are no desicive runs, we dwell on the ball for too long and all in all it looks like our players have no chemistry in attack.

Can't help thinking that pairing certain Andy Carroll with Suarez up front would open up a number of new possibilities in our game.....

Dissagree arq.

We have set up a 342 tactic against Chelsea for the last couple of seasons and I feel that's why Rodgers played. The problem is, or well was, that our squad lacked pace. If you remember breaking Chelsea apart in the past, it was either Bellamy breaking the Chelsea line of defence and Maxi exploiting the space behind. Or when 'Nando with his great movement beat the last man and a supporting player playing a through ball. No one in our squad has that pace, bar maybe Sterling. And it would of been ridiculous to put the expectations on the shoulders of a 17 year old.

That said, I do feel we could still of done better. Chelsea to their credit, came out and tried to break the game open early. They had just played 4 games I believe in 2 weeks (with two massive games against United and another massive game against Shaktar mid-week) so they would of never had the legs to play the full 90. I do feel that's what Rodgers was planning on doing but a couple of defensive errors did nearly put the game to bed. Poor finishing from Oscar and Mata kept us in the game. We then pushed on and got an equaliser and maybe could of had a winner at the end. Out of all the games this season, I am happy with the result from this game. We didn't dominate and Chelsea were perhaps the better side, but we came out and showed some fight to get us back into the game.

And of course we need to improve. We're a work in progress. Rodgers will be backed. The owners have said that finishing in the top four is not a priority this season. We're building for the future and we possess a young squad. The experience the likes of Sterling and Suso will bold in well for us in the future. We only have one fit striker at the club so it will be difficult to have any real expectations to get back into the squad. We're also still trying to adapt to Rodgers style.

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Art, Carroll is never going to come back. It's time to move on. He had his chance to prove that he could of been our number 9 for years to come but it took him atleast 18 months to realise who he was playing for. Then a new manager came in and he didn't fit the style. It's not only because he didn't have the ability once on the ball but his positioning sense was awful and he has no tactical awareness. Sitting on the bench shouldn't be an option after his loan is over, he is one of the larger earners at the club and we can find somebody else who is better than him for lower wages. It would also help the club if we bought somebody who fit the system.