Liverpool v Arsenal

Goddamit, set piece *bleep*

Seriously we absolutely should win this. They are so lucky. Skrtel How do you get beat by Debuchy in heading duel. There's like 3 inches between them.

General play is really good but we are really no creating anything special. The goal and the Markovic 1v1 were the only two REAL chances.

Total crap. Against the run of play and Debuchy clearly holding Skrtel down with his hands!!

I dunno we've been creating quite a few chances that are just missing the final ball for me. Sterling close twice too but just out of his reach.

Sterling has actually been quite poor IMO. He needs to be more sharp or subbed off maybe for Can and move Markovic up.

That goal we gave up was just unlucky. Debuchy holds Skrtel down, the ball deflects off Skrtel's head and in, and the foul was soft at best to get the FK in the first place.

Can't blame Skrtel for it, it's pinball in the box and you've got no time to react. If it just falls better for the attacker in those situations the attacker is going to win it.

We're looking good, though. I just wish we would take Gerrard or Allen off and put Henderson in midfield and someone at RWB. We've been favoring the left-hand side heavily anyway, both Henderson and Lallana going to waste when nothing's happening over there. Although Hendo did provide the assist for Coutinho's goal.

I hope we can keep the general play from the first-half up since we've clearly been better. Just lacking the final goal-scoring threat again, but I guess that's inevitable when you've come down to a situation where Sterling is our center-forward.

Not sure to be happy and upbeat or to be absolutely pissed. Yes, we played better and took the lead. But WTF was that??? Coutinho should check his options before shooting.

OK fine, I'll be happy 'n upbeat.

We deserve better today. Arsenal so lucky it actually hurts my soul. Skrtel shouldn't have continued honestly.

Skrtel redeems himself. <3

Still upset we only got a draw when we thoroughly dominated them but it is at least a result.

El Cujo wrote:We deserve better today. Arsenal so lucky it actually hurts my soul. Skrtel shouldn't have continued honestly.

Shouldn't have continued so we would have lost 1 - 2, eh?


I'm not sure how to feel. Salvaged a draw in the dying minutes, good. Were the better team overall, yet couldn't win, bad.

I don't know, at least Arsenal didn't gain any ground on us, but many teams above us did. I was left wanting more.

Again

Not sure to be happy and upbeat or to be absolutely pissed.

Coutinho should really work on his decision making ability

Well a draw was the least we deserved. Should have won ffs. Arsenal were woeful.

Borini

Alexis and Welbeck were the worst players on the pitch. Invisible both of them.

I guess the positive is that Marko-Coutinho-Lallana-Sterling quartet is really good together.

With a good defense we would probably be a very tough team to beat. But that's never going to happen under Rodgers.

Art Morte wrote:Shouldn't have continued so we would have lost 1 - 2, eh?

I'm not sure how to feel. Salvaged a draw in the dying minutes, good. Were the better team overall, yet couldn't win, bad.

I don't know, at least Arsenal didn't gain any ground on us, but many teams above us did. I was left wanting more.

We deserved more. Just no finish. 63.5% possession, outshot them 27 to 5 including a bunch of quality chances that were scuffed. They wouldn't have scored maybe if someone other than Skrtel was on the field on the 2nd goal he was just covering no one and completely lost the plot there, but like I said he redeemed himself with that goal.

Sakho was great. Borini will never play for us again.

Man how are any of you guys seeing any lights of positivity out of that is beyond me. The whole thing was a shamble again.

Rodgers *bleep* his squad selection and line up.

His Bench in no way could help the formation he played, FFS if skrtel went off, he would of had to make 2 subs to fix it up.

Again *bleep* Hendo wasted at RWB gets caught out for the second goal after another hoof by gerrard.

Sterling has no idea what to do with the ball at his feet besides flick and chase, Cou can't *bleep* shoot for shit, we still *bleep* suck at set pieces, these flaws have been in our team for over a year, how the *bleep* have they not been addressed by our coaching staff.

Borini is a *bleep* spastic, you can say that's his last game for us, what a *bleep* wanker.

FTW did anyone else notice how much of a zombie Rodgers looked tonight.

Skrtel in no way redeemed himself, they want into the break with the confidence after we outplayed them FFS, *bleep* silly goal to concede.

About finishing, well, we have a 20-year-old non-striker playing up top, what do we expect? Sterling has 14 PL goals in three seasons, Giroud has 32.

We were looking pretty great in the attacking third, just not in the goal-scoring areas. Giroud needed one chance and he scored. Strikers at this level aren't strikers just by chance, they know where the goals will come from.

The way I see it that their first goal was due to Gerrard first giving away a needless free-kick, then we failed to clear it and that pinball ball fell kindly for Debuchy. Their second goal, Giroud knew where to be. We were clearly better - like Cujo said, shots something like 27 - 5 - yet we still needed our goals from somewhat unlikely sources.

Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in this game and we just are lacking in that area, no matter how much we dominate.

Gerrard was at fault for all the goals today i don't give a *bleep* what anyone says, his needless free kick, his hoof to hendo that gave them the break and him running in the box next to grioud and then letting him get into space by not tracking him.

Look if you know the player you play as the only forward can't convert, don't blame the player, blame the guy putting him there.

Sterling didn't shoot to fame on his finishing, so you shouldn't expect that from him unless you teach him how to shoot, which evidently no one besides Sturridge can do in our team.

Wow...that post above is a bit much don't you think? We just played one of our better games of the season if not the best. We were totally dominant just lacking finish. Henderson was actually really good on the side and Gerrard played pretty well too. Would have preferred Can maybe, but still that game is in no way on Gerrard or the squad selection. It was just down to not finishing the multitude of chances we created while they were absolutely clinical. They had literally only 1 chance that was a good one from open play and they scored on it.

Sterling was pretty poor today compared to his previous few games. Tired maybe? I dunno, I would have kept Markovic on. Again though that was a really confident showing from us. Just not our year right now. Looking forward to 2015 because there's a lot of promise here.

Arsenal were not lucky, They gave a very good away performance. We are lucky to get a draw with 10 men.

We played one of our better halfs, so that makes 1.5 games all season for us were we've looked good.
Just look at the players Arsenal are missing and the fact that Sanchez and Welbeck were not even on the pitch today by the looks of it and we barley got 1 point.

Top four for us is long gone, it's all about allowing Rodgers to learn how to become a better coach this season.

What this comes down to is that even when we dominate, we have no player to put away the chances. Sterling has never been a great finisher. Neither has Coutinho, who is an AM anyway. Lallana can actually finish, but again, an AM. Lambert and Borini not good enough to start. Balotelli, not really a good finisher and hasn't fitted our system. Sturridge was always known to be injury prone.

We come back to that one very basic area of manager's duties. Transfers.

Nishy wrote:Arsenal were not lucky, They gave a very good away performance. We are lucky to get a draw with 10 men.

Please. A very good away performance? They were completely dominated. If we had any finish at all it would have been a rout.

Art Morte wrote:We come back to that one very basic area of manager's duties. Transfers.

Except it's not just the manager's duty and I'd hardly call it basic. We have a whole committee for it and on top of that it falls to scouts which bear the brunt of the challenge of getting the information right. That doesn't fall on Rodgers IMO, at least not solely here at Liverpool.

I dont know what to say when there is one minute to go and you concede, we need better aggresiveness, preparedness and concentration. I ave no idea, tbh, to blame Skrtel, Lucas or Rodgers for that. Also, Coutinho is awful in having composure to finish chances falling to him. If he is not able to even make a strong on target effort, I dont know whom to blame.

Also, the second goal we conceded, the way Gerrard played that ball to Hendo, I think it was naive to play that ball, when you know there is every chance to get counter attacked. I am sure there were better passes to play, imo .

Nishy wrote:Arsenal were not lucky, They gave a very good away performance. We are lucky to get a draw with 10 men.

Like effe they were.

They were the worst side to come to Anfield this season, yet. They were absolutely garbage.

We should persists with this 3-4-3 with some twists here and there.

I'd like to try Moreno as RWP with either Henderson/Can occupying Gerrard's spot in the middle.

Markovic-Lallana-Cou-Stelring are looking really bright with this formation and should be main stay.

Goalkeeper still the main priority in January....but at least we're finding some attacking fluency which was completely invisible for 3 months.

3 big games coming up. Let's see where we are in 9 days time. Arsenal play both WHU and Saints in that period.

Anything less than 9 points in the next 3 games and the league season is a write-off. Positive signs today, but we should be able to build on it. Another setback and i'm afraid it's game over in term of the league.

I wish I was banned I think.

Remember when every single one of you thought we'd have NO chance of the title when we drew WBA away before playing Arsenal last Feb, we were 8 points behind ?
Yet we came within a slip of the title, which if hadn't happened, everyone would have uploaded our season review film on red tube and wanked furiously to its glory and Rodgers. He is a novice, but some of the names he's being called is so sad and disgraceful. He is still making mistakes, but at least in the last 10 days we can see he has seen some of his mistakes and is trying to fix them. Let's see how he develops this new system. let's see if he lets Lovren walk back in, or bench Gerrard in the new system. He's making very brave and ballsy decisions unlike the cowardly conservative ones he was making from September-Dec. It's a positive sign and shouldn't be dismissed.

Honestly, If you wanna be negative spastics, don't take it to the extreme. If BR persisted with that dreadful 4-2-3-1 I'd wanted him gone too, but he identified it's not working, completely changed the system and now we look a lot better for it with 2 of our main attacking signings of summer displaying their best form as of yet in it. Let this new system develop in the next few games and we might have something to smile about going into 2015.