Tonto

Seeing Wirtz so far has looked like watching Rodgers not having a clue what to do with Firmino.

Guehi and Leoni are both suited to that approach and could see us using Bradley/Frimpong on the right when Guehi plays and Kerkez on the left when Leoni plays. So you have width from full back on one side with an extra central defender on the other. This arguably helps us get the best out of Wirtz and maybe even gets him and Isak and Ekitike in the same team. The thing that makes me wonder if this was really the idea is that we have Gomez, who is also well-suited to that right-sided, tucked-in-full-back/back 3 role, on the bench all the time.

He was a little vague but it was along the lines that their set pieces were creating too many second ball situations near our goal so the idea was to try and defend further from goal. Assume we fancied our chances of defending the space behind the high line better than the lottery of the ball pinging around the goalmouth.

He's a natural selection through the middle.

Wasn't it "a hobbit running up a volcano"?

Bizarre how often the clearing header was mentioned. Especially given that it went central, straight to one of our players and allowed us to set up the winning chance.

Our offside side trap was phenomenal. It's a whole new capability to our defending now. The speed we were able to step out was amazing, especially from their short corners.

Why does no one contest drop balls anymore? Every time it happens there's a conference in the middle of the pitch to decide how to proceed. Strangely the ref usually seems to facilitate these discussions when surely it's none of his concern.

Agree, and I was stunned when the ref gave the pen. If Mignolet had put his foot through the ball and sent it to Row Z then no one cares about the follow-through catching Vardy. The fact that the first bit didn't happen reflects badly on Mignolet and the fact that the ref allowed the second bit to influence his decision reflects badly on him. Of course the ref's mistake is the most important and worse of the two.

He's a Firmino-like forward rather than a striker though isn't he?

Don't disagree with those points, but for me the criminal thing on that goal was Arfield being left in splendid isolation in the single most dangerous spot on the pitch.

Except that Kerr was talking through his a***. Dear Sir, I saw this article: http://www.balls.ie/football/ragnar-klavan-liverpool-brian-kerr/343511 Mr Kerr is quoted here: "He actually played against the Faroes when I was with the Faroes, and I remember studying him before the matches and thinking he was a bit of a weak link. I never thought he was a fellow that would be playing for Liverpool in the Premier League. We got three goals against him with the Faroes, and we'd a load of part-time lads. A load of lads working in the fishing industry and so on. They were good enough to expose him." There are three big mistakes in these quotes: 1) Faroe Island have never scored three goals against Estonia as claimed. They scored two; 2) In that game when Mr Kerr was coaching Faroe Islands and they scored two goals (07.06.2011), Klavan did not play. Match sheet can be found on Estonian FA website: http://jalgpall.ee/protocol.php?st=style_fp.css&nteam_id=1&proto=509&game=423; 3) Mistake number two means that the last sentence "A load of lads working in the fishing industry and so on. They were good enough to expose him." is not true as Klavan did not play in that match. Thank you in advance for correcting these mistakes! Best regards, Mihkel Uiboleht Estonian Football Association Media Officer

This. There was a moment in the 2nd half, at 2-1 and with the game on a knife edge, when Can went for a 50/50 on the halfway line and Gini and Salah, either side of him, broke forward in anticipation of Can winning possession. He didn't and we suddenly had 3 men wrong side of the ball in that part of the pitch with Gomez totally exposed behind them. Defenders make mistakes when they're pulled out of position, isolated, constantly scrambling. It often looks like our defenders can't do the basics that well-trained kids can but then, as was pointed out in the City game thread, our defenders don't even play in the sort of standard defensive line that is drummed into kids. We can surely do better than some of our defenders but this team will continue to make decent players look ropey when we play the way we do. Klopp has shown in certain games that we can be a bit more conservative and solid, so it's not that it's beyond him. This is a choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7pxjK6gyX8 Go to 18:00. Ouch.

Am I right in remembering that that was at 2-1 to us and Everton scored their equaliser pretty much straight afterwards?