Topic: Liverpool 1 - 1 Sunderland, (Suarez, Larsson) - Post Match

[Jellies]

Up your standards cos if they were good today we'll be finishing midtable.

Adam was class today.

[McGarnagle]

First half was beautiful stuff, second half was terrible; Sunderland were fitter, simple as! Everyone relax

I haven't read through the 12 pages of this thread coz there'd be too many knobheads i'd want to reply to and i don't have all day, but judging by this page alone it appears Flanno is getting slated... Lay off the lad! It could have been any one of our back 4 that got caught out there, they were all asleep

I say again, very positive first half, all we were lacking was the fitness to see it out! It will come... Chill the fuck out!

Edit: Jesus, it became 15 pages in that short space of time! Seriously people, relax

[Rotation]

Everyone take a deep breath...

Flannagan was pretty poor to be honest. Really can't blame the lad but don't know what Kenny was thinking keeping Kelly on the bench like that.

[Cruiser]

Really disappointed. Lacked that drive going forward in the 2nd half. The Aquilani debate will now rage on.

Look on the brightside, we're 3rd in the league 

[Streetlife]

Sorry but Flanagan looked like a little child out there today.

[Azzandro]

F*cking hell frustrating game!

First half i was jizzing, we looked easily a top 4 team.

Ref was TERRIBLE, every time a blue shirt went down the whistle would be blown, was like we were at the stadium of light.

Second half, dear god, everyone wilted after that goal, this is why Gerrard being injured is a huge loss, miss our captain

Flanno had a mental breakdown, far too green.

Sunderland deserved the draw, their effort got them back into it against what could have been a dominating performance.

Oh and Henderson and Raul went missing big time

[ds2190]

how the fuck did Suarez disappoint you?? The man earned a pen and scored a goal. Yes,he missed a pen but it was him who earned it in the first place.

After he scored he seemed to fall off the cliff in terms of fitness, skill, etc. I guess we shouldn't be surprised - starting him was a big risk.

[belfast-connection]

surprised to see an element of dissent here - not that I don't agree with it - just surprised

too many new starts in midfield

kuyt on the right instead of henderson would've given a bit of continuinity and protected flanno more

adam looked a bit leggy later on - lucas too maybe -

enrique looked fine but he stayed at home more than i imagined - probably sensible though when he's just settling in

[Rattleduser]

Should of been out of site first half but it wasn't the refs fault we were so poor after the break

When it goes wrong we just hit that diagonal ball to carroll, no energy in the 2nd half, couldn't pick out a pass at all.

[Devastatin' Dave]

I thought in the first half we were excellent offensively, as shown by the Downing chance and Carroll's disallowed goal. Although, even in that half we appeared to be a bit suspect defensively, particularly in letting the ball bounce in the box.

Elmohamady put in similar balls in from our left in the first half unchallenged, and clearly this was a sign for things to come.

I think if you are going to call for the youngsters to play (which plenty of people on here do routinely) you will have to accept that they will have the odd mishap. If he is going to be good enough to play for us regularly he will have to learn to bounce back from these sort of things (and try and cut them out, obviously).

I'd say in terms of selection I would have preferred Kuyt and Kelly to Henderson and Flanagan, but hindsight is 20-20.

[Jellies]

how the fuck did Suarez disappoint you?? The man earned a pen and scored a goal. Yes,he missed a pen but it was him who earned it in the first place.

That's just how good he is. I was a bit disappointed as well. You're allowed to have very high thoughts of very good players.

[Ultimate Bromance]

My god, now nobody's allowed to have a pop at Flanagan either.

If only his name was Flansua

[Robbie_9]

ffs stop blaming the ref. We shouldn't have to rely on people getting sent off / penalty's etc.

We should have gone out in the second half and finished off the game but we didn't have stamina to push on and finish it.

[Scribble8]

If Henderson is meant to be playing on the right, he´ll be extremly wasted. And he's just not good out wide.

[RedChanel]

Suarez should have buried the penalty. Many would have expected him to convert the penalty especially after a successful campaign with Uruguay in Copa America. Seeing the ball sail into stands was such sucker punch.

[Discipline]

What the fuck are you on about?

Suarez didn't score the pen. We still conceded with a schoolboy error.

It is a problem. We look like we'll concede in every game.

Think he ment if Suarez scored the game would of been put to bed.

Also, their equaliser wasn't just Flanno's mistake. (This isn't directed to you.)

[JonnyTwoTimes]

Disappointing start to the season:

Need to take our chances. Missed penalty looks so costly now.

First half performance was good. 

Second half we switched off, lacked creativity and urgency when we had possession. Big periods we looked like we were still in preseason mode.

- Marking was shambolic for their goal. 3 players following the ball leaving a man completely unmarked to deliver the goal scoring cross. Flanno's marking was poor as well, lost his man.

- Enrique had a good debut. Downing looked awesome at times. Suarez looked good but needs more time to get up to fitness after his busy summer at copa.

- Lucas and Adam partnership has huge potential. It works quite well, but there are some areas they need to improve on. At times I think they are both dropping back too deep when we dont have the ball, leaving a huge amount of space in front of them for the opposition to play. Will get better with time.

- Henderson was probably our poorest player. Would start Dirk in front of him next game.

- Carroll looked sharper than he did last season, but he needs to be more efficient and take his chances.

We need to work on our passing, tempo, consistency and stamina. If we had kept playing the way we had done in the first half I think we would have won it. Is it a fitness issue that made us drop off second half or maybe desire? Either way this is a kick up the arse and Kenny will let them know second half was far from good enough.

We should have won this game today. Home fixture against average opponents.

[LiamG]

Brilliant first half we shoul of put the game to bed by half time

Second half we just looked tired to be honest and ran out of ideas/steam

Plenty of positives to take from the 1st half though!

[Cribertinokes]

Not happy with the digs at Flanno. He was in the team on merit like it or not. Granted to had a shit second half and was at fault for the goal. Be fair though, name me a player that could come away with any credit in that second half.

Should have burried them in the first half. It's as simple as that.

He had a poor game, but not drastically poorer than other players, don't think you can single hand out Flanagan at all.

First half was brilliant, should've really finished them off with another goal or two. Second half, when it came to attacking we looked like we were completely out of ideas, especially in the last 20 to 30 minutes.

[Surprise me.]

We looked very impressive in the first half, the change over from defence to attack was very quick and the passing was good. The only thing that let us down then was the fact that we had news players, a few passes were going wrong because players didn't understand each other.


Second half was just a different game. Players not linking up in attack well, not getting the ball out of defence fast enough and Sunderland themselves improved and closed us down quicker so i guess it isn't all down to us being poor.

I still stand by the fact that once the players have a few games together we will see a first half performance in every game and for the full game. Looked very exciting in the first half. Very disappointed on the whole to not have come away with 3 points in our first game.

[faisfais]

I know Flanagan is a VERY young player but playing him over a much better and experienced Kelly has been baffling and cost us 2 points today.

I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps Kelly is injured. Also the decision to ignore Aquilani from the bench was bit strange given his performances in pre-season. I would have started with Aquilani and brought on Suarez in the second half. And as long as Dirk Kuyt is fit, Henderson should not be starting. I would like some stats on forward passes made by Henderson during the game.

As far as refereeing decisions go, It should have been a penalty and a red card. And there was no foul on Carroll when he scored.

There were positives from this game (Adam, Downing, and Enrique look like decent signings). It gave me deja-vu of Rafa's last season. We dominate possession and chances, but inability to close games out inevitably means we lose out on points. Need to make sure we earn enough points to stay competitive, because our real season starts when Stevie G comes back!

[FernandoTourettes]

We are going batter some teams this season.... but need to be a little cuter too. Some of the second half balls to Carroll were a little wasteful seeing no one was there to pick up the knock downs. We were'nt doing this in the first half and looked far more likely to score.

Could have been 3-0 up at half time. Downing, Adam, Carroll, Suarez looked powerful going forward but we lost at the momentum and energy second half and the players became very static.

Flanagan, without expectation last season did a very efficient job but was caught out several times today positionally and was beating 1on1 far too many times. I'd rather Kelly as first choice backup after Johnson due to his size and strength. Contrast that with Enrique on the other side who I thought looked very assured on the ball and importantly, very strong too. Not too many players will get the better of him this season. Henderson looked decent but we always seem more likely to nick a goal when Kuyt is on the pitch.

Plus signs for me today were Downing, who looks very good indeed and Adam who still needs to work on his relationship with Lucas, but will keep up ticking over.

[Red_Isle_Chap]

Sorry but Flanagan looked like a little child out there today.

Did you only watch the second half then, because he was perfectly fucking fine in the first half

[iRed]

Hoofball still in full effect.  When will this evil finally be purged from the club?

Downing was impressive today.  Excellent on the ball, fantastic runs at the goal.  Really like his work rate.  Always moving.

Thought Charlie Adam was very poor today.  Defensively, he's an absolute train wreck.  Never seen a professional footballer so utterly incapable of tackling.  And outside of his set pieces, which are phenomenal, I hardly noticed any movement off the ball.  Bit clumsy with the ball as well.

I'll keep harping on this last point: the team needs to figure out how to play the ball through the middle with Carroll on the pitch.  Everything is out wide. They're not going to fool anyone in this league with such predictable tactics.  It's early days yet, but that will be the most important factor if Liverpool plan on meeting their expectations this season.

[Pheeny]

Not really. He fucked up with ball watching and let Larsson free. It was a mistake and he seemed to lose it in the 2nd half. Everyone has them days and it's part of learning your trade. Move on and hope he learns from it.

read the thread he was getting slatting for one bad error.Up until then he'd been doing OK.

[Borninbethlehem]

We carried on the 2nd half in the same way we ended the first, which was very disappointing. No width at all 2nd half and the full backs didn't overlap at all. Very static movement from the team 2nd half and Sunderland deserved to come out of that match with a draw. We had the personnel to win, but they were poor on the day. As soon as Suarez went off, you could sense it was going to end in a stalemate. I feel sorry for Flanagan as he was chucked in at the deep end and had a horrid match. Kelly will probably take his position next match if Johnson isn't fit. Also didn't like that we started hoofing to Carroll when we ran out of ideas.

The positives for me were Enrique and Adam. You can see the quality in Henderson, but he seems to play better in the centre than the right.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. The players will be fitter next week and hopefully put in a better performance against Arsenal. Going to be gutted for a few days though.

[long.]

Not sure whether it was fitness but in the 2nd half we all just looked so flat. at 1-1 we should be bloody going for the win, instead we looked content with a draw at home to Sunderland!

Was very suprised that Kenny decided to throw on all of our new signings.

What happen to Kelly??? Thought he would start instead of Flanno

[zERo]

First thing is that the team has not quiet gelled yet, you could see that with the short passes not quiet getting through, and players not been aware of the movement of others.

Other thing is that after we conceded we were a bit to rash with our possession, and were too eager to put it put front that meant possession got lost and the play of the first half disintegrated.

So, we need time to gel as a team, we had six new players since Jan plus Flanno, so that nearly seven new players and yes its a team game. In addition, we need to have more composure on the ball, keep possession and try to provide a quality final ball, rather than just pump uplong and hope something turns out.

Bring on Arsenal.

[Dr Manhattan]

It's the first game of the season and in theory we are 'supporters'

And believe it or not, and I know it's pretty tough to grasp, people aren't actually too happy with a 1-1 draw with Sunderland having played really really badly for 45 minutes, and then (and this is again something outlandish) people might just be allowed to say they're not too pleased at the performance, and they might also highlight players who were poor, ie. Flanagan.

Incredibly that's not actual anything terrible, it's just normal.

[garumn]

I don't get people saying Adam was fantastic today.

He had a decent debut, some good set pieces and decent movement but I thought he dallied on the ball quite a bit, got caught in possesion and misplaced too many passes in open play as well as making a few fouls when it wasnt needed.

Not an awful debut by any stretch of the imagination but I didnt think it was great either.

[Red Eyed]

i am so fucking depressed right now.

Fuck sake its the first game of the season, we played well first half and seen some impressive new signings, obviously our fitness is lacking and the team needs time to gel. Look where we were a year ago, were going in the right direction.

[Ambrosia]

You are utterly clueless at the best of times, but you've taken it to an Olympic level with that nonsense.

Hopefully i'm so clueless i imagined this performance and what really happened is that we won 3-0 

[Crackerjack Sam]

That's just how good he is. I was a bit disappointed as well. You're allowed to have very high thoughts of very good players.

 

[Zelnaga]

If roles were revered in both halves, then I could have seen an upside, but to completely collapse like that .... same old liverpool. bottled it again.

[kcbworth]

Flanagan is the new Insua circa 2009.

Realistically Flano shouldn't have started the first game of the season. Seems very strange to me. Not sure about Henderson really. Would rather find a way of getting Aqua or Meireles into the side first. A lot to be positive about though. Shame about that second half.

Think it will be a few weeks before everyone's gelled and before Kenny really knows who works together. Hopefully we're not too far behind at that point

[IndianaRed]

just getting our bearings...  i'm sure we'll see a response from kenny and the boys next time out.

do want to mention Aquilani probably could've picked that lock

[Snoopy29]

What's with all these saying

MELTDOWN..OHHHHH

GOODLUCK MODS OHH..


well ofcourse there is going to be a meltdown since people are defending the team tooo much.  No one is being harsh except for that henderson comment (lol). It's just the whole consistency and composure of the team. I mean, first half (have to repeat this again) was so awesome, everthing we knew about lfc the king kenny way, everything was so well. But did you not notice how the team didn't close down, and there was hardly any possession in the 2nd half, it's so obvious, even a blind person can see.


Why would there not be a meltdown? Those blaming it on the ref and being to polite about how the team played are just going to make the meltdown worse. Don't hate the team, but don't accept the way the team has played too much either.


The second half wasn't good enough PERIOD

[RyanBabel19]

Frustrated i missed the game today. But first game of the season and RAWK has gone into meltdown already...really ?

[theMilkman]

was really enjoying the first half. but the second half just seemed to get worse as the game wore on. hate to bash flanno but i thought he was terrible today. also found adam particularly frustrating through most of the second half. still not very impressed with him. on the bright side, i thought caroll looked really menacing in the first half, and took his goal really well. to me we may as well have won it 2-1. also thought suarez looked a wee bit rusty and lucas looked tired towards the end of the game. also i still do not quite know what henderson offers as for some reason it still feels like i am yet to see him play.

on the bright side, i thought enrique looked class 

[CorKopite]

Kenny got it wrong. Simple as.

1) Flanno over Kelly. For me, Flanno is if we have no other option. Hes still too young and not good enough. Carragher wasn't playing either which could not have helped with a lack of guidance at the back.

Who did you think was partnering Agger?