I also have a lot of sympathy for Lovren today. He did fuck up however, if you don't put pressure on the ball and play a high line your defence will get picked off. We have seen it countless times, in fact the very first game we conceded in Europe this season is much of the same. Midfield doesn't press Nordveidt, he pings one from the half way line over Matip, TAA doesn't tuck in, Ulf brings it down and slots past a helpless Migs. We need to drop off if we cannot maintain that pressure on the ball but it also needs to be as a team rather than Lovren on his own. It's harsh to blame him for the goal because every defender is onto a loser in that situation. He has a list of bad options to pick from. But it's equally harsh to criticise Milner or Mane for not pressing the ball carrier - they must have been running on fumes by then after putting in a mammoth effort to get us into the 5-0 position to begin with.
I would suggest therefore that people celebrate the Liverpool team that has scored at least 5 goals against every side we have faced in europe this season, applaud them spanking Man City and Roma, and leave out the blame game. You will concede goals against top sides. If you blitz teams you will get tired. You cannot happily reap the benefits of our aggression and bemoan the consequences of it. This is Klopp's version of Rafa's short blanket.
We blitz teams and have spells where we struggle for energy. Accept it. Embrace it. FUCKING LOVE IT! Because it could very well be the gameplan that takes this team to it's 6th European Cup. A feat nobody would have predicted of us back in August. So don't be that wanker who criticises only the negatives and tells us what Klopp is doing wrong. Just accept to get this team where he has he must be doing almost everything very very right. Then sing with me ALLEZ! ALLEZ! ALLEZ!
I admire your efforts to defend Lovren, but you're being kind there, I think. It's impossible to always have pressure on the ball. Doubly so considering that we press, which means sometimes our press will be broken and opponents will have opportunities with the ball in space. Sometimes your defenders just need to handle their 1 v 1's.
As you say, Lovren does the right thing by dropping off so it would be wrong to criticize him for playing Dzeko onside. But he did the worst thing he could possibly have done, which is take himself out of the play. As long as he's simply
there with Dzeko then the second ball was the only danger, and TAA had that covered. He does not need to win the ball. He does not even need to jump at all. But by jumping early and completely missing the ball, Dzeko can receive and control as opposed to attempting a difficult, contested header.
You make a great point that our style of play is going to result in goals conceded, and sometimes we have to live with that. But this was not an example of that. This was just one player making a terrible error. And I don't say this merely to apportion blame or bash Lovren (I will save that for later
), but because it's important to know exactly how and why every goal is conceded. If you chalk this one up to our style of play, then you are essentially saying it's not something we can prevent in the future. But this was an entirely preventable goal, in the sense that a defender whose default mode is not PANIC would have almost certainly done better. You could argue that Lovren's overall aggression and periods of dominance are worth his brain farts, but it would be misleading and counter-productive to attribute his brain farts to our system.
