Tonto

He's a natural selection through the middle.

Wasn't it "a hobbit running up a volcano"?

Bizarre how often the clearing header was mentioned. Especially given that it went central, straight to one of our players and allowed us to set up the winning chance.

Our offside side trap was phenomenal. It's a whole new capability to our defending now. The speed we were able to step out was amazing, especially from their short corners.

Why does no one contest drop balls anymore? Every time it happens there's a conference in the middle of the pitch to decide how to proceed. Strangely the ref usually seems to facilitate these discussions when surely it's none of his concern.

Agree, and I was stunned when the ref gave the pen. If Mignolet had put his foot through the ball and sent it to Row Z then no one cares about the follow-through catching Vardy. The fact that the first bit didn't happen reflects badly on Mignolet and the fact that the ref allowed the second bit to influence his decision reflects badly on him. Of course the ref's mistake is the most important and worse of the two.

He's a Firmino-like forward rather than a striker though isn't he?

Don't disagree with those points, but for me the criminal thing on that goal was Arfield being left in splendid isolation in the single most dangerous spot on the pitch.

Except that Kerr was talking through his a***. Dear Sir, I saw this article: http://www.balls.ie/football/ragnar-klavan-liverpool-brian-kerr/343511 Mr Kerr is quoted here: "He actually played against the Faroes when I was with the Faroes, and I remember studying him before the matches and thinking he was a bit of a weak link. I never thought he was a fellow that would be playing for Liverpool in the Premier League. We got three goals against him with the Faroes, and we'd a load of part-time lads. A load of lads working in the fishing industry and so on. They were good enough to expose him." There are three big mistakes in these quotes: 1) Faroe Island have never scored three goals against Estonia as claimed. They scored two; 2) In that game when Mr Kerr was coaching Faroe Islands and they scored two goals (07.06.2011), Klavan did not play. Match sheet can be found on Estonian FA website: http://jalgpall.ee/protocol.php?st=style_fp.css&nteam_id=1&proto=509&game=423; 3) Mistake number two means that the last sentence "A load of lads working in the fishing industry and so on. They were good enough to expose him." is not true as Klavan did not play in that match. Thank you in advance for correcting these mistakes! Best regards, Mihkel Uiboleht Estonian Football Association Media Officer

This. There was a moment in the 2nd half, at 2-1 and with the game on a knife edge, when Can went for a 50/50 on the halfway line and Gini and Salah, either side of him, broke forward in anticipation of Can winning possession. He didn't and we suddenly had 3 men wrong side of the ball in that part of the pitch with Gomez totally exposed behind them. Defenders make mistakes when they're pulled out of position, isolated, constantly scrambling. It often looks like our defenders can't do the basics that well-trained kids can but then, as was pointed out in the City game thread, our defenders don't even play in the sort of standard defensive line that is drummed into kids. We can surely do better than some of our defenders but this team will continue to make decent players look ropey when we play the way we do. Klopp has shown in certain games that we can be a bit more conservative and solid, so it's not that it's beyond him. This is a choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7pxjK6gyX8 Go to 18:00. Ouch.

Am I right in remembering that that was at 2-1 to us and Everton scored their equaliser pretty much straight afterwards?

Lots of impressive stuff in there. A mistake to lose the striker for the penalty shout but the foul itself was a positive for me.

indykaila News ‏@indykaila 23h23 hours ago Emerick Aubameyang misses @BVB training. The reason is unknown. Was he meeting a English club to discuss move?? 859 retweets300 likes Reply Retweet 859 Like 300 More Borussia Dortmund ‏@BVB 22h22 hours ago @indykaila The reason is pretty well known in fact: He missed training due to a personal appointment. Will be back tomorrow.

I think he meant in contrast to strikers who prefer balls into space for them to run onto to.

Bit of a hybrid by the looks of it, on that corner at least. Our biggest men (Skrtel, Lovren, Benteke) seem to be zonal along the 6 yard line. Firmino and others seem to be detailed to pick up runners from deep (like Dann) and presumably try and stop them getting a clear run. I guess the idea is that while Dann might start his run from deep, he won't make contact with the ball until in around the 6 yard line where our bigger lads are. Benteke starts out standing in a position where he could have directly challenged Dann, but for some reason he moves towards the ball, misjudges it and takes himself out of the game. Skrtel, who was the middle of the three, tries to get across to cover but is too late. I'd say there were three problems on that goal: Firmino not being enough of a nuisance to Dann, Benteke being attracted to the ball and leaving his position, and Mignolet not pushing the ball away from goal.

Agree, Dirk's only problem was pace.

Did you see Stevie had to stretch the armband out a bit before putting on Henderson?

That was ridiculous and clearly intentional by Terry. He had Raheem pinned down for about 20 seconds while we were in and around their box. It was outside the penalty area right?

Didn't see the game but what sort of role did he play? In the highlights, he and Lallana seemed to be very close to each other most of the time, who played further forward?

Something I've noticed a lot lately is that we seem to get into that sort of situation (Valencia vs. Lallana & Allen) a lot, where our players stand very flat relative to the player on the ball. It means that if the attacking player can pull off a piece of skill, as Valencia does, he has taken two of our players out of the game at once. Wouldn't it be better for Lallana to have dropped into the space behind Allen, or for one of the players to tackle Valencia while the other hangs back as cover? We seem to do this a lot where we outnumber an attacking player yet stand off and still get beaten.

We'll need a song for him first.

Can did enough to warrant a place on Sat. Henderson in for Allen, Gerrard for Lucas, Sterling for Markovic. Lallana or Coutinho is marginal except that Phil is going to be fresher. That leaves whether you persist with Borini, revert to Balotelli or go with the diamond and play both but at the expense of a midfielder. I'd stick with Borini to start.

Sakho out for another week:

Don't think we can do much on the attacking side until Sturridge comes back in. We need him to push defences back and create space for Coutinho, Lallana etc. We can't keep relying on Sterling alone. Without that threat, teams will push right up on us and we'll keep seeing our attacking midfielders being smothered. Hopefully, we'd start seeing Markovic looking more lively if he has more space in front of him too. Defensively, who the hell knows?