Well in the prematch thread I said that we will have another difficult game and also wrote that teams learned to hurt us with long balls behind the defence, relying on pace and that's how they scored a goal after a comedy of mistakes. The first mistake came from Alisson /and our brazilian goalkeeper had a poor game, yesterday his distribution of the ball reminded me of Mignolet/, then came Adrian and he needed maybe 2 minutes to give instructions to the wall. He needed to act faster, I won't blame the referee. Against Barcelona the referee was fantastic with our 4th goal and I can't see many differences.
Adrian and the players around the ball just switched off. At least one of the postitve was our dispaly after we conceded that goal, the team came back and did not leave much spaces for their players, Our defensive game became much more tight and balanced and they had one shot from distance from Mooy and a weak header /which Adrian almost put in his own net, yeah I know/.
I am still not pleased with our defending, we let Dunk have two 100% situations /in the 1st half when he had the empty net, but he missed we had absolutely the same situation like Zaha's 91st miss last week. Set piece, we clear the ball, but the players lose the second ball, Palace/Briughton pass it in our penalty area and an opponent is 100% free against the goalkeeper. And Dunk's second chance was a free header after a corner and he missed a sitter/.
Our front three had a second successive poor game. Mane missed two sitters, Firmino looked tired and Salah was poor and not ready for a battle.
Hendo did a good job, playing as the defensive midfielder, while Gini was average. Wijnaldum needs to raise his game, we played with two number 8 and AOC created more offensively from the right side, while I struggle to remember a single moment in the match when Gini was involved in a dangerous moment for Liverpool.
The defence was solid - TAA looked good defensively and added two fantastic assits. VvD - man of the match, but in my opinion Lovren is doing his job pretty well without much fuss till now.
Now comes the derby and we know that for two shit teams these matches are like World cup finals - Manure and Everton. They will always bend knee to our rival and will play their best against us. Season after season. Last season Everton stopped us at their place and had their best match of the season at Anfield and we needed luck at the final minute of the game to win it. At the same time Man City won 6 points from them with ease. Now they will go to Leicester, will lose, but will conserve enery for one of their two finals of 2019/2020 campaign.
It will be the same with Manure, sadly. That is why our players must be ready for a real fight, be smart and careful /I have no doubth that they will try to hurt or injure our players. Two examples - Funes Mori tackle on Origi and that prick Holgate who tried to injure Firmino and then lied calling Bobby racist, trying to suspend him for a prolonged period/.