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Dave McCoy:
I'm sorry but it's just delusional to think that teams aren't even trying when they play ManC. There's too much money at stake for both the clubs, managers and players involved these days where any matches can be taken for granted and just thrown away. They may know that the odds are against them and at a certain point in the match there may be no further point but that's not the same thing as just not even trying to begin with. We, LFC, are fine margins away from being just as good and at times are yet I don't see anywhere else people lamenting that games involving us are a joke as the other team doesn't turn up, why is that? As the odds of getting points off of LFC are just as bad as it is against ManC so why wouldn't the same premise apply?
The answer is that it's just not true. What is true is the PL is not an even playing field and the resources available to one club can completely dwarf another so that it's not even a contest to begin with. For ManC that has manifesting itself by using that advantage to build a club and squad with a style of play, in conjunction with Covid, that makes it very, very hard to get the ball off them and then do anything with it while they carefully create chance after chance. It's so successful you wonder why other teams don't copy this style and use it against other teams? Because it's completely impossible to do so without a maniac of a manager and £1bn spent on a squad and facilities to implement it. So you're asking these teams without similar resources to combat a style of play that they will only ever see twice in a season and be effective at doing so? What to one person may seem to be not even trying can be to another the best that's possible with the resources at their disposal.
The more pertinent question as it relates to this thread is how does LFC and Klopp combat this? Unless it's just hoping for Pep to retire or Abu Dhabi to decide this sportswashing gig isn't for them anymore then there isn't any reason to expect this to change in the near future. We talk about game state and the variance there but just in looking at the general stats again we've given up 5 more goals and 7 more expected goals so far. Has our greater attacking output been worth the defensive fragility that we are seeing? Is there possibly a more happier medium to be found? Or is this all a personal issue again which will be rectified once everybody is available?
I didn't want to respond further in the Crystal Palace thread as it gets tedious discussing this but for me at least I think our high line is probably the biggest culprit here or maybe it would be better to say the "staticness" of our high line in certain situations. When you look at the stats between ManC and LFC as far as what our opponents are able to do with the ball we're generally 2nd to their 1st or vice-versa in most categories. Where there seems to be a decent sized gap is we allow more passes to be completed into our penalty area and we also allow more dribbles into our penalty area. Why is this? Could it be that when the opponent has one of those rare times entering our final 3rd it's because they have successfully beaten our off-side trap and have an unsettled defense to play against? I would hazard it is as the only other explanation would be that our players are worse (not for me) or that we're tactically worse (again I don't think that's the case). Klopp keeps alluding to this as well when we run into issues in that the spacing isn't correct and then the line is easily broken. That's not the say the high line should be disposed of, just that the way we're using it seemingly needs to be adjusted.
keyop:
--- Quote from: Dave McCoy on January 25, 2022, 09:16:31 pm ---I'm sorry but it's just delusional to think that teams aren't even trying when they play ManC. There's too much money at stake for both the clubs, managers and players involved these days where any matches can be taken for granted and just thrown away.
--- End quote ---
I don't think anyone is saying teams are not trying against them or that they are throwing matches away.
But there's a big difference between trying to win and trying not to lose. The statistics show that City rarely have a 0-0. They also show you're pretty much doomed when they go a goal up. So the best approach is to try and get the first goal (difficult, but possible), which isn't going to be achieved by camping in your own half for 90 minutes whilst City just search for an opening.
I've watched games this season where teams look like they've given up all hope after 10 minutes, even with the score at 0-0. If Torquay Utd were playing them in the FA cup, they'd put up more of a fight than many of the premier league teams.
redk84:
--- Quote from: PoetryInMotion on January 25, 2022, 07:11:12 pm ---
So if I count the number of times different teams have taken points off them since 2017-18 season till now, we have
Liverpool - 5 (exactly once every season - is our quota over for this season? :( )
Crystal Palace - 4
Man United - 4
Spurs - 4
Southampton - 3
Wolves - 3
Chelsea - 3
Leicester - 2
Newcastle - 2
Leeds - 2
Other teams only did it once, so they probably only managed a fluke their draw or win.
--- End quote ---
Good post...this list is interesting as City have to play most of those teams again.
spider-neil:
There is still half a season to play but for 22/23 it will be interesting to see if we continue the path of a more progressive midfield or we revert back to the more rigid midfield that effectively won us the league in 20/21.
Dave McCoy:
--- Quote from: keyop on January 26, 2022, 07:11:25 am ---I don't think anyone is saying teams are not trying against them or that they are throwing matches away.
But there's a big difference between trying to win and trying not to lose. The statistics show that City rarely have a 0-0. They also show you're pretty much doomed when they go a goal up. So the best approach is to try and get the first goal (difficult, but possible), which isn't going to be achieved by camping in your own half for 90 minutes whilst City just search for an opening.
I've watched games this season where teams look like they've given up all hope after 10 minutes, even with the score at 0-0. If Torquay Utd were playing them in the FA cup, they'd put up more of a fight than many of the premier league teams.
--- End quote ---
I've watched LFC games this season where it looked like we were gone and out of sight by halftime and somehow in the end didn't get 3 points. Was the other team trying to win or trying not to lose? I'd say this has more to do with the performance of the superior team and not the opponent. There have been games this season where we make the opponent look just as helpless as ManC do but we just haven't matched the consistency in which they do it. Is that down to us or the opponent? I don't watch every ManC game so I honestly can't say in regards to ManC but for LFC in which I do watch basically every minute I'd say any variance has been due to our performance more than the opponent.
I think we keep forgetting with each passing year just how much further the gap grows between the haves and have nots. Even for LFC if we take the most recent game for example, we probably had a team on the field with at least £150m more in wages than what Crystal Palace was putting out there. An amount that might exceed their entire revenue for the year. We played them off the park for 40 minutes and then did we lose our way or did Crystal Palace start trying to win? On top of that a lot of the outrage over the referee calls is because we are the Behemoth in this example, they are the Minnow and if the calls had gone the other way nobody would care as it was just the underdog getting one over the overwhelming favorite. This dynamic affects us as well is what I'm getting at. Having teams "try harder" against ManC isn't going to change this without actually changing the underlying financial disparity at it's heart.
So for me it's more about how do we use our also overwhelming financial advantage to tilt the field just as much as ManC does? As we do have an overwhelming financial advantage against all but basically 3 teams now regardless of the bluster in the transfer forum about spending.
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