Saturday September 23rd.
17:30
King Power Stadium
Liverpool injuries: Lallana, Clyne
Potential doubts: Lovren
Suspended: Mane
Leicester injuries: Huth
Potential doubts: Vardy, James, Fuchs
Suspended: None
Top scorers: Vardy (4), Mane (3), Salah (3), Firmino (2)
Referee:
Anthony Taylor. I'll put that in bold too. Joy.
Thought I'd get this started to hopefully draw some of the attention away from the post-match post-mortem for the League Cup tie.
So, obviously went to the cup game last night. As usual sat with the Leicester fans, as I do. And a couple of things absolutely summed up modern football fans for me, and why I'm really starting to actually hate it. One of them was the 'Have you ever seen Gerrard win the league' chant. You're Leicester City, do you have any idea how moronic it is for a club who has won less than Steven Gerrard during your whole existence to be mocking him for not winning a particular trophy...? You're not our rivals. You cant force a rivalry. Banter right? Fucking banter. Second thing, and this was more annoying, was a couple of blokes sat behind me in all seriousness discussing when Klopp was going to get sacked. First half, they were discussing when 'You're getting sacked in the morning' chants would start. Seriously. And that's Leicester fans, so just to be clear....it is out there.
Game itself was much like many others we've seen. Dominate, look good, have them pressed back, cant get out of their own half, don't score, cede that pressure, give them an opportunity to regroup, concede sloppy goal, push forward to try and equalise, concede again. Not only have too many games gone like that over the last eighteen months, but I'm pretty sure every single time we lose to this shitty team its that exact formula.
Onto this Saturday then, and yeah we do need to win. Mainly to make sure we don't drop too far from our rivals. Not because there's pressure on Klopp, because there isn't. Lets just be clear on this, there isn't. Our owners get enough stick, but they're not even going to consider sacking a manager like Klopp for a long time yet. There isn't a crisis. Its a series of games where through a mixture of luck and confidence, we haven't won. We could very, very easily have won them all. And yes, I realise how daft that sounds considering we lost one of them 5-0 but I'm going with it.
We know what we'll get on Saturday. They'll do the same as they did last night. Sit deep, rely on Vardy and Mahrez causing our defence problems. They're not going to suddenly change their style, it works. Especially against us. So we need to a) be MUCH more clinical and b) be MUCH more solid. Easy.
I'm just going to put this here. Its from the Guardian
“Sometimes we make mistakes because we are offensively that strong,” said Klopp before Saturday’s game against Burnley. “If we lose the ball in the wrong moment, it is the most difficult thing to do to defend these situations. It is not that I like it but I still work on it. It is not like I can fix it like this [clicks fingers].
“We are in a very dominant mood and good playing here and there. We were really good from the beginning [against Sevilla] and yet their first offensive situation resulted in a goal. It is not that we don’t see, it is not that we don’t want to fix it, it is not that we ignore it – I said if there would have been a solution out there we would have done it.”
When it was put to him that Van Dijk could have been a solution, he replied: “I cannot speak in this country about any players I tried to get.” He added: “We watched all of them [potential new centre-halves] 500 million times and, to cool the people down, what if the new player doesn’t hit the first ball and he makes exactly the same mistake [as Dejan Lovren did against Sevilla]? A mistake they all made in their life but it is like: ‘He is a £65m signing, he will improve.’ Why do you think the other one cannot improve? I don’t understand that.
“A big part of football and life is really put faith in the people you work with – trust them – because they all can improve. They are all good out there but they are not that good that you say yes, they help immediately. I had to make a decision and the decision was our boys are not worse than them.”
This is how our manager does things. He has made it CRYSTAL clear, he'll try and sort things on the training ground first. We can go over, time and again, why we didn't sign a CB. Its done. What we need to do now is EVERYONE get behind the team, the players and the manager. If you're not happy with that, if you're not happy with a manager who will focus on coaching first before making big signings, then really honestly you need to take a step back and think about what you do want in a manager. This is what we asked for. This is who we asked for. We have him, he's doing well. He's got us back in the CL, he's improved pretty much every player since he arrived. We're on an upwards trajectory.
If you (and if you think I'm talking about you, then I am) have any influence over this man not getting enough time and patience to complete his job here, then you can take FULL responsibility for it.
