What a ridiculous effort though, pure class

Berge seems like a useful player, had an effective game

ggs plop, annoying our best game of the season so far by a country mile had to come away at Anfield rather than somewhere we can realistically take points

It’s going to be grim without VVD, back to the days where our CBs can’t win a header. Matip will be an improvement but he’s still not particularly dominant in the air. The good news is Salah is back to his unplayable best so far this season and we will always get multiple good chances per game just through his an Manes individual brilliance.

Henderson was great in that last 30mins, lost count of the number of times he popped up in the right place to snuff something out. Trent was again targeted, they were getting a lot of joy down his side. Still between us and City imo, no one else looks particularly solid.

Sheff Utd were good imo.

The annoying thing with VAR is we can't even get transparency over why or how the decisions were made. We are supposed to make our best to integrate it, get it understood by everybody and it's just so all cryptic

You read reports from the Athletic that apparently the decision of a foul or not was considered then it's denied by BBC and so on, why do we have to get rumours of these things on social media when thy could just make it transparent with a bit of communication for everybody. cowards

If you have an Athletic subscription they just came out with a piece on which CB Pool should be targeting come January. Whoever the smarterscout blokes might be, they have Matip as an elite header. It's just his thing to be great while making it seem super goofy and uncertain.

fwiw they think Pool should get the Brazilian Gleison Bremer from Torino. Upamecano would be a great as well.

I don't think it's going to be as bad as you think. Matip is better in the air then you give him credit for, he just needs to stay fit, and with him we can move Fabinho back to the midfield and he's much better in the air then Hendo and Wijnaldum. It's going to take a little bit of time to make some adjustments to how we play but I think we're going to be ok.

We really need to get some of our injured players back soon. Alison back is huge but we're going to need Thiago and Keita with all the games we've got coming up.

This is exactly it. They are trying to act as if they are some sort of footballing know all god that can't do any wrong. If they simply accepted the fact that the game is so fast now that they are going to make some mistakes, own up to it instead of trying to protect each other, the entire process would be much smoother and better.

I remember when the idea of VAR was being talked about and i was always against it saying human error is what makes football the way it is. Everyone i know told me i was wrong and VAR was essential. Im always right it just takes people time to realise it.

I think everyone was in favor of VAR for whether the ball crossed the line. Don't remember too many in favor of it for fouls etc. Anyone used to North American sports where it hasn't made NFL, NHL, NBA any better knew better.

Thought Henderson was night and day half to half and was by far our best player in the second half. Took full control of the midfield. Needs to cut out those scoop passes though lol

Human error would have made no difference today though. Chelsea still would not have got a deserved pen

Yes people need to stop looking at VAR as if it meant that no VAR meant we would get all the calls right

The VAR is just a tool, it's still humans making the decisions. i'm convinced that humans + tool is going to be better equipped than only a human. You just need to incorporate that tool in a system that makes sense for the game, the players and the fans but the PL has been doing an awful job at it

Agreed, the problems with var is all to do with its implementation which has been woat at least in the pl

I dont think its entirely down to humans though. Its the rules. We know the spirit of the rules. But you can't have the spirit be what is written down. You need clear laws. When you make clear laws with little grey area in a sport with a ton of grey area, it leads to silly results. See: nfl and their catch rules for years.

The issue is Kovacic isn't anywhere near as good as Kante off the ball. Kante is extremely important defensively, I don't think him running around and making tackles is what makes him great, rather his anticipation and positioning, he is always shutting down the passing lanes of the opposition, making it difficult for the opponent to play it through midfield.

Kovacic is fairly one dimensional in the sense that the one thing he does well, he does exceptionally well, which is drive the ball forward, but in many other areas (positioning defensively, he offers virtually nothing in the final third (not unlike the other two, however)), he is lacking.

This becomes a problem with the double pivot because neither of Jorginho or Kante is a proper CDM, so with only one of them on the field our midfield is not structured at all and it's easy to play through it. Kovacic isn't good enough defensively to work with either of them (vs many teams, at least). Even though Kante is (deservedly) praised for his work on the defensive side of things, we shouldn't forget that he was at his best in a defensive double pivot, with a fairly static Matic and with Drinkwater at Leicester.

Last year towards the end of the season, we often saw either Kante or Gilmour and then two of Mount/Kova/RLC/Barkley because it works alright to have more offensive and less disciplined CMs when there's 3 of them.
It'll be very interesting to see what will happen when Gilmour comes back, I wouldn't be surprised if Lampard intends to get him in there instead of Jorginho.

I do think there's games for the Kova/Jorginho set up, though, it's just match up dependent.

I agree, I definitely think Jorginho/Kante can work against teams that put less focus on playing it through the middle, and it's definitely also a factor that our defense looks like it will be able to hold its own to a higher degree than last year.


Ultimately the issue is we don't really have a viable double pivot that can do everything at an acceptable level. It's either too poor on the ball and and can't beat the pressure or it's too poor off the ball and in defense.
Feels like right now, Lampard is opting for the more defensive option because having your central midfield be an offensive liability is better than a defensive liability.
I agree with that, to some extent, partly because virtually every other player except GK and CBs is forward thinking, so Lampard has to figure out how we can progress the ball with the Jorginho/Kante CM if he intends to keep playing with it (and obviously use Kovacic as well when it can work).
I think we should've gone for Thomas Partey, he could have been the missing piece imo, he's pretty much perfect as the dynamic midfielder who is great defensively and can move the ball forward under pressure.

They are making it up as they are going along wrt VAR

two weeks in a row they have changed their explanation as to what they looked at in the VAR checks in the Liverpool game between HT and FT in response to criticism

whole thing is a complete farce

See there is your problem.

It is the same thing with Bailly. I believe he would be good, I also rate Matip, but when was the last time he could string 15 games together without suffering an injury?

For the record I think VVD will be a huge miss defensively, but as long as you have Mane/Salah fit + avoid further injuries, I think pool are in a decent place still.

VAR should be used only to cut out the obvious examples of human error, (e.g., sending the wrong player off) or to support the referee when he has not had a clear view of the incident (e.g., Zidane's headbutt).

It's clearly ludicrous to use it for offsides that are not a clear error. In other words, you either eyeball it or have thicker lines to account for a margin of error.

Ditto for other types of marginal decisions. I haven't seen the Maguire incident, but random grappling in the box is sometimes given, sometimes not and there is a degree of subjectivity. In other words, you can't delineate decisions like grabbing or handball into objective binary yes/no decisions by tweaking the rules without also creating situations where if you follow the letter of that law, you will end up with some absurd decisions.

Literally never.

It was not random grappling it was a full on headlock, if the Ref sees it he gives it 100% of the time.

I've seen it now. My estimation having seen it's was those types of decisions are given ~80% of the time.

However, even stonewall decisions are not given 100% of the time.

While they are not given 100% of the time, with VAR assistance we expect them to get the obvious things right. That's my issue with it.

It's a foul and no one in their right mind would argue sending it to VAR to overturn the decision had a penalty been awarded.

I agree VAR should be for clear and obvious decisions - I'm not sure this foul meets that threshold though (which in itself shows how difficult it is to reach binary decisions when assessing subjective criteria).

The two most egregious missed calls in the last two weeks have nothing to do with the rules. The Pickford "tackle" on VVD and Maguire playing WWE are easy to spot fouls. Those missed calls are solely down to the incompetence of the humans using VAR.