TWar

Yes, JWP and Romeu weren't enough to deal with liverpool. They are most likely have the 2nd or 3rd best starting 11 in the world. Yes, we played long ball football against a far superior side, like most teams would. They are a "very strong" pairing for our level. We have probably the 8th or 9th best midfield in the league. Liverpool is still way better. That's just how it is. They won a CL and a PL in the last few years with this team, what do you expect?

You have no evidence for this. Also why a 424 and not the 3412 we actually played? A defensive formation against bigger teams is a tale as old as time.

I don't think Che was a false 9, personally, I'd say he was more like a 10. 3 at the back went badly, but thats because it was up against one of the best attacks in the world. I don't think formation was the issue when you have the likes of Salah and Mane who are up there in the best in the world conversation against the likes of Bednarek. It wasn't a "tactical clusterfuck" in the same way Liverpool getting 4+ goals against teams like United, Arsenal, Porto, etc. wasn't a tactical clusterfuck. It was a world class attack performing at a world class standard.

If he makes a mistake, yeah. But tbh when you have a manager who managers at Champions league level, like Ralph. And a team who spends like 2nd least in the league then a lot of the time (I'd argue most of the time), it will be down to the players.

Yes, a lot of things. I have criticised him in the past for playing Redmond over Adams, for example. I don't often criticise him, as I don't often find his actions worthy of criticism, as he is a good manager.

Probably a similar reason to how we drew to City, in truth. Big teams have off days, small teams get lucky. If these two things coincide then they drop points but with the increasing quality of top teams it happens depressingly less and less often.

He set up defensively, it didn't work as their attack was too good and Bednarek was poor. He then needed to chase the game so changed to a more attacking formation. If he had started with the more attacking formation would we have been better off, probably not. But it was needed to overturn a 3 goal deficit.

Why doesn't Ralph be more tactically flexible? Also why doesn't he just play the same system he always plays? He can't win with you lot, unless he wins, then you go strangely quiet. We gave ourselves the best opportunity, it was a very small one, and it didn't come off.

To respond Agreed Championship level is harsh. They are nowhere near Liverpool level, but so are most prem players. There is a difference between championship level and midtable which is where most of our players are (JWP, Salisu, Livra are higher, Macca and Bednarek are relegations scrap level) I think he does have a decent idea, but no matter how good his ideas are when you are playing with such a disparity in player quality then the best you can do is set up in a way most likely to win, even if that is still quite unlikely and I think he did that today The club needs hundreds and hundreds of millions to be at a point where we can reliably compete with a side of the quality we faced today, but that isn't happening and likely isn't the goal. We are good enough right now to be midtable imo, avoid relegation, and maybe push top half. But we aren't a team that is fit to take on CL winners like we did today.

I think if we have a back three and also Diallo instead of Che then we create absolutely nothing. It would be 8 behind the ball and then a massive gap and then two isolated forwards. We needed atleast one 10 to connect defence and attack, my preference would be Stu but since he wasn't fit I don't mind Che in that role. Also, I don't agree the change at half time is acknowledging it as a mistake. There is no guarantee 4222 would have done better from the start. I think it was more an acknowledgement we needed to chase the game at that point and the more defensive formation wouldn't cut it.

What? No he doesn't... We play every game with JWP and Romeu who are a very strong midfield pairing. In front of them normally we play with two wingers/10s who press hard and take a very active role in controlling the middle of the park. Today we dropped one in order to have an extra CB to mark their false 9 and brought in our strongest hold up player in the role of single 10 to hold the ball up and give us an out ball. It didn't work too badly, we made a few chances. That was not at all why we lost.

I imagine he reverted because he wanted to have a go at coming back and getting a draw and the 3412 is more suited to sitting deep and absorbing pressure and then catching them on the break. Its not a team that can turn round a 3-0 deficit.

I ment Arma, typed this quickly on my phone so didn't have time to proof read. Sorry.

When we had lower quality managers. Our manager is better than the team he manages, therefore most of the time we lose it is either individual mistakes (last week McCarthy shitting the bed) or just our opposition outplaying us in basically every position like today.

Scored what was probably an OG for the third too, although not sure how much blame he had for that, it was coming at him fast.

The team selection made sense to me tbh. Three at the back to try and firm up our defence and so Lyanco could mark the false 9 they play with. Perraud over KWP as Perraud is better at wingback, KWP is better at fullback, not so bemusing. Since we only have room for one "ten" and we desperately needed someone who could hold up the ball and provide an outball as well as winning things in the air we played our player who was best at those attributes there, Adams. This left Broja and Che as the obvious choices up top. It didn't work, but it is a tactically sound attempt. It's not dissimilar defensively to the style that worked so well against Chelsea and in the second halves against United and City. Che playing that lone 10 role behind Broja and Armstrong is new, but I didn't hate that and to be honest our attacking endeavour and chance creation wasn't the issue today, we actually had a good couple of chances at times.

That was down to two pretty poor goalkeeping errors.

Well we have, at times, played three at the back against all of City, Liverpool, United, West Ham and Chelsea this season and have come away with four draws out of five (Chelsea being decided on pens after obviously). So yeah, maybe we should play it against top teams. There is no perfect formation, sometimes you will lose against better teams. I'd say it, and we, have a pretty good hit rate against top sides...

Agree with all of this, Romeu did have a poor game imo as did Bednarek. It was mostly due to their strength that they won, but those two were fairly below par, as was Adam Armstrong.

Do you think if we had a 4222 we would have won? I don't think he did get the formation wrong, a 3412 had the best chance of success, but given Liverpool are an excellent side, that chance was still very low. It doesn't prove he made the wrong decision imo.

To be fair, a lot of people are popping up with similar takes. Sometimes it's very cathartic after watching your team lose to hop on the forum and call the manager a useless know-nothing idiot. In the coming days and cold light of day people will be a bit more pragmatic about the fact sometimes big teams will have comprehensive victories against teams our size. People called it a "shot to nothing" or "free hit" beforehand, they will remember that soon.

This is the problem, a big team was always going to have a comfortable victory against us at one point and a load of people were going to come out and be very unhappy and start talking about how crap it makes the manager/various players. Liverpool have thumped much bigger teams than us, sometimes you just have to recognise a bigger fish. We did well to take points off City and United but lets not go crazy with our expectations.

I disagree, he passes well and has good hold up. I think him in that role is better than anyone else we had fit and available to give an outball.

This is the sensible take. Liverpool are very good. People will cry about the manager and misunderstand how our attack was structured today (while also pretending like the attack was the issue), but Liverpool are a quality side. We have already given United, Chelsea, and City a good game, we can't be always expected to stand up to the big sides, they are still obviously a lot lot better than us.

Che is usually a support striker more than a "Centre Forward". We was used as a 10 sitting deeper to help hold up play, while allowing Broja to be a target man and Armstrong to have the pace to run in behind. We did actually make a chance or two so what was going on up top wasn't really the issue (aside from some poor finishing). The issue is Salah, Jota, Mane is a different class to our defence. They are a different class to a lot of defences though to be honest.