Philby

Genuinely fascinated to see how Liverpool's midfield shapes up once Thiago is settled in. Fabinho & Ox aside they rest are pretty flexible in terms of the roles they can play. One thing to keep an eye on this season is the distribution of assists across the squad. Front 3 (Mo, Firmino & Mane): 19 + 8 + 7 = 34 (~43%) Full-backs (Trent & Robertson): 13 + 12 = 25 (~32%) Midfield (Hendo, Fabinho, Keita & Milner): 5 + 3 + 3 + 2 = 13 (~17%) The rest (all max of 1 assist): 6 (~8%) That's a huge skew towards the full-backs relative to midfield. If, for example, giving more game time to Keita and Thiago at the expense of Milner and Wijnaldum means Liverpool play less through the full-backs and more through the centre of the pitch then we should expect to see these stats level out a bit.

Is there an updated view on this, post COVID-19? Would be interesting to see if Hendo stayed top.

Alex Stewart, Joe Devine & Seb Stafford-Bloor take a look at Liverpool full-back back-up transfer options https://www.tifofootball.com/podcast/sensible-transfers-liverpool-crystal-palace-celtic-roma/ Out of interest, they came up with the following options (...while also highlighting that promoting the likes of Williams & Larouci may be the smarter move) They are mainly more experienced, lower budget options who may be happy to play more of a supporting role. LB Mario Rui (28) - roma Bastian Oczipka (31) - schalke RB Daniel Brosinski (31) - mainz Valentino Lazaro (23) - inter

How Liverpool Surpassed the Golden State Warriors Ryan O'Hanlon https://nograssintheclouds.substack.com/p/how-liverpool-surpassed-the-golden?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MzMwOTY3LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoyMjM4MDgsIl8iOiJSTjhOMCIsImlhdCI6MTU3OTAxMzA5OCwiZXhwIjoxNTc5MDE2Njk4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNDA4MCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.AdjXFb9T1n3GIXPohrSqjQqsQ3rblmUnsgTPo4Og6fI

The great man retired today. Best of luck to him. Sure he he lacked a little grace on the ball but he was an absolute machine defensively - covered the grass at a tremendous rate & tackled like a man possessed. I'll always remember him for putting in arguably the crunchiest tackle ever seen in the Charity Shield. 2006 on Ballack. 25 secs in. It also reminded me of one of our best chants of the last 15 years!

Wishful thinking I know - but we have a much tougher cluster of fixtures than City around the CL semi-final dates. But looking back to 3-4 years it's a joy that such a "concern" is even on our radar.

This makes for nice viewing ;-)

Anyone come across any high-quality photos of last night? It wasn't pretty but the boys got the job done.

Happy Istanbul Day! Missed a trick not working this into an '05 song

Top work jonesy

Mate that would be amazing. Much appreciated.

I was looking through some stats earlier and saw that this is the 12th season running that either Messi or Ronaldo will be the top scorer in the CL (...in 2015 they were joint top with Neymar). That, more than most, underlines how they have been a level above the rest for so long. Also, I see that Sadio has committed more fouls than anyone else (22) and is the third most fouled behind Neymar and Suarez. Well in lad.

Tuesday night's exploits were amazing and I love having good quality pics to look back on big nights like this. Here are close to 150 in pretty decent resolution - https://lfcglobe.co.uk/photos-incredible-scenes-at-anfield-as-liverpool-defy-odds-to-reach-champions-league-final/ Does anyone have any relatively high-resolution pics of Istanbul, Tuesday night or any of our games? (If so, post the links here so we can share the memories)

I spotted that too, but assumed his reaction was an anguished one after leaving in a relatively saveable shot?

On the face of it that seems a shocking indictment, until I checked the stats and saw that Shaq/Mane/Origi didn't make a single tackle or interception all night. Although Liverpool were the more ambitious side on the night Barca did rack up 37% more passes, in theory giving the our front 3 even more opportunity to win back possession. An odd quirk of a highly unusual game.

From 17th March to 20th April We will have played at least one game more than City. If we manage to finish the season strongly then you'd expect we'll be top for the majority of that period. Failure to keep City honest over the next 4-5 games would be hugely disappointing. If we do keep the pressure up & City progress in the two remaining cup competitions then we might just see their squad fray at the edges a bit. City play Burnley 2-3 days before the CL semi-final first leg. They're more likely than not to still be involved at that stage. They also play both Man Utd and Spurs in that window between CL quarter-final & CL semi-final. If City are to give us an opportunity to nick it then the PL games in the 20th-to-28th April window will be it. Helluva lotta ifs there unfortunately. But I'd rather that than for our players' major concern to be deciding which Dubai resort to choose for their summer break.

Allan is starting his 6th loan in 4 seasons. After only playing 4 games for Eintracht Frankfurt his loan was terminated and he has now been loaned back to Brazil (Fluminense) for the remainder of the season. The goal was to get a decent number of appearances in a top European league under his belt to support a renewed work permit bid for the 21 year old. The loan back to Brazil won't help a bit on that front. It's starting to look that we'll likely sell him without him ever having made a competitive appearance. I think we extended his contract prior to the Eintracht Frankfurt loan move so you'd expect a reasonable profit on the inital £0.5m outlay. https://www.liverpoolfc.com/news/first-team/338139-allan-liverpool-fluminense-loan

That shot from distance in the first half was a beauty. If only Big Willy wasn't in the way.

Last night was the first time that this back 4 (Clyne - Matip - Lovren - Moreno) started together.

Not on the same level as those above, but I think we would've wanted to keep Maxi for an extra season.

Encouraging the range of attributes that he showed in that compilation. Pace, strength, hold-up play, technique, ability to drop deep & knit the play, finishing.

Not sure I really get your point above mate. But the key things is requesting a B sample, after you've already been informed of the substance which raised the red flag, is really only of use if you think there was something wrong with the procedure to test the sample itself. If an athlete is disputing whether the substance is worthy of a red flag (or whether the processes in place for athletes to vet substance prior to consumption) then the resolution is based around your legal argument, not querying whether some fella in a German lab cocked up the test.

IMHO the main reason to request a B sample is if you genuinely think that something has gone wrong with the initial test - i.e. that it was a false positive. Sakho doesn't dispute taking the fat burner so there would have been no real reason for him to draw things out by requesting that the B sample be tested. Do you agree? Back to the main point: At the time of the article above it wasn't clear whether Sakho had taken precautionary steps prior to consumption. For me, that's the key thing in terms of assessing Sakho's professionalism. For what it's worth, I was in touch with the journo via Twitter and he confirmed that a certain level of due diligence was undertaken by Sakho/LFC prior to consumption - but he couldn't confirm the specifics. For me that puts Sakho in a strong position (both legally and also in the eyes of the fans). If he took reasonable steps to verify that the pills were ok to take and the reason why no red flag was raised was down to WADA's procedures having a hole in them... (i.e. acting on additional information from an enforcement perspective, which is not made available to the athlete at the point where they are vetting a substance) ...then he'll rightly avoid any further ban and will have solid grounds for legal recourse.