Liverpool Vs Tottenham: Match Thread

greaves said:

And in other twitter 'news', the Isle of Wight's Women's Institute have invaded Crimea.

Click to expand...

I heard it was IKEA!

Sigh. Even though I want us to succeed I just want to be proud of us. Unfortunately that ship has sailed, run aground, hit an iceberg, broken its back and been torpedoed by u-boats.

lukadownthelane said:

I heard it was IKEA!

Click to expand...

OMG! They're bigger than I thought!

kidby33 said:

Assuming van gaal is to become our new manager in august ,if hes involved with Holland till middle of july how much homework is he doing at the moment , by then how much of his staff will he be up on , who to keep who to shift out and importantly who can he buy and improve the team . Also the current players do they know if hes coming after the WC will that be a motivation for the likes of llores and vertonghen to stay .

Click to expand...

He'd have watched every game since december.

This fall from grace was always bound to happen. You can't keep selling your best players and expect to finish higher than the season before. We were on the edge of something great but we blew it. I feel we're going to have to wait a while for us to get that chance again.

That was miserable. The players should be ashamed and Sherwood really did his critics a huge favour and his prospects for the job no favours at all. Utter waste of time turning up there today - a forfeit and 3-0 loss would have been better, it was that insipid.

CrazyHeart said:

Surely even you can see that firing AVB was a mistake by now? What the heck is it going to take?!

Click to expand...

The mistake was hiring him in the first place, just like this guy we have in charge now.

dirtyh said:

Sigh. Even though I want us to succeed I just want to be proud of us. Unfortunately that ship has sailed, run aground, hit an iceberg, broken its back and been torpedoed by u-boats.

Click to expand...

You know how to break it to a man gently. Thank you. Okay, now tell us about when the sharks moved in...

@Aaron7Lennon: Today was not good enough and we let everyone down,but the rumours about the boss hitting someone are bollocks,crazy how powerful twitter is

r9soldado
20 minutes ago
Mal partido hoy,y se escapan nuestras opciones de Champions League!Es momento de estar más unidos que nunca.Los rumores no benefician y las cosas que se hablan son totalmente falsas.COYS! / Bad game today and our options to reach Champions League decrease! It is time now, more than ever, to fight together. Rumors do not benefit at all, and everything that has been said is absolutely fals, COYS!

All the tottenham players that played today should be ashamed and embarrssed to call themselves footballers. Its not good enough that they can preform like this and get paid so much money, disgraceful.

CrazyHeart said:

Surely even you can see that firing AVB was a mistake by now? What the heck is it going to take?!

Click to expand...

As of this week, I have finally come out: sacking Redknapp was mistake. Everything since then has been the slow, erratic dis-assembly of a football team that was wonderful to watch.

I know that the market dictated that we sold Modric and Bale and that health dictated that King retired. But Redknapp at least would have retained van der Vaart. And who knows, perhaps he could have charmed Bale into staying for another season.

And we would have been fun to watch, win or lose. This season we've just been boring.

davidmatzdorf said:

As of this week, I have finally come out: sacking Redknapp was mistake. Everything since then has been the slow, erratic dis-assembly of a football team that was wonderful to watch.

I know that the market dictated that we sold Modric and Bale and that health dictated that King retired. But Redknapp at least would have retained van der Vaart. And who knows, perhaps he could have charmed Bale into staying for another season.

And we would have been fun to watch, win or lose. This season we've just been boring.

Click to expand...

We sacked harry because he whored himself for the England job. And let a huge lead slip because of it. What we did wrong is hire AVB. We needed to hire a top top experienced manager at that point. Which we have to do now

Francis Gibbs said:

@Aaron7Lennon: Today was not good enough and we let everyone down,but the rumours about the boss hitting someone are bollocks,crazy how powerful twitter is

Click to expand...

Said Aaron lennon with a black eye and a gilet stuffed up his jacksie.

I did not want Tim Sherwood in the first place and said he would be lucky to last the season and would not be the manager for preseason. I hate being proved right in this matter. Would have loved to have been proved wrong.

I lost my last bit of respect for him when he remained in the stand today. Get down on the touch line and suffer with your team. Show the players and the fans that you are in it with them.

Sherwood talked up his ability to get Spurs to play with passion. Where was it today? We showed no battling qualities. We showed no passion. We showed no will to win. We showed no fight for a battle. I thought an English manager who won an EPL title was supposed to have his team playing with such qualities.

I am not even as upset as I could and should be. I knew the outcome before the game and I am relieved it wasn't worse.

One question I would ask of the manager is how much time did he spend watching Liverpool's games against Aston Villa, Southampton and Arsenal? Those three games would have helped him prepare for today's game and given the team a chance. We lost it once he submitted his team sheet.

Not revolutionary but this isn't the first time Michael Cox has had a pop at Sherwood's tactics:

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/mar/30/brendan-rogers-tactics-dominate-tim-sherwood

Brendan Rodgers' clever tactics outfox Tim Sherwood's shambolic Spurs

The open, attacking style of this contest was partly the result of aggressive team selections from both coaches.
Liverpool
's manager, Brendan Rodgers, played Raheem Sterling in place of Joe Allen, switching to a 4-3-3 system, while the Tottenham manager, Tim Sherwood, selected four attacking midfielders with only Nabil Bentaleb for protection. Both sides wanted to dominate.

This suited Liverpool, who were allowed the freedom to demonstrate intelligent, cohesive, confident attacking football throughout. The match followed the pattern of their similarly convincing home victories over Everton and Arsenal, 4-0 and 5-1 respectively; they started at tremendous speed, opened the scoring early, then sat deeper before attacking directly and ruthlessly.

For all Liverpool's dominance they rarely put constant pressure upon the Spurs backline, or threw men forward relentlessly to cause overloads in the final third. They didn't have to – their front three harried Spurs' defenders, forced mistakes and created opportunities for themselves, then used the ball efficiently.

Liverpool's second goal summed it up – Steven Gerrard hit an aimless 40-yard ball at Spurs' substitute defender Michael Dawson, whose wayward square pass found Luis Suárez. The Uruguayan immediately sprinted in behind to score. He nearly scored his second before half-time, when Younès Kaboul's pass was intercepted by Sterling and Suárez's header forced Hugo Lloris into a brilliant save. Liverpool's pressing was less obvious than against Arsenal or Manchester United, for example, but Spurs' complicity in the home side's goals was quite remarkable.

Sherwood's strategy must be blamed – the adventurous formation asked an awful lot of Bentaleb and exposed a nervous backline. It also makes little sense to deploy a wide forward, Nacer Chadli, in the No10 role with the central playmaker Christian Eriksen out on the left. Eriksen was exposed for Liverpool's opener, failing to track Glen Johnson.In fairness, Sherwood has never promoted himself as a strategic visionary. His back-to-basics approach initially had a positive impact as it provided such a contrast from André Villas-Boas, but now the honeymoon period has passed, Tottenham's lack of strategy and cohesion has become obvious.

This Spurs performance was just as bad as the 5-0 home thrashing against the same opposition in December – which led to Villas-Boas's dismissal. Sherwood's pre-match admission that he was 'too scared' to watch footage of that defeat suggests, in terms of preparation, he got what he deserved.

Also, quite an interesting comment in the section below the article. I really don't think Tim has what it takes but his numbers aren't all that bad:

I think the 'bounce' thing is a little misjudged. I always stress that it's important to look at who the opposition were, rather than just the results. With that in mind, our league wins after Sherwood first took over were against Southampton, Stoke, United, Palace and Swansea. Since then we have lost five games, but four of those have come against City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. So, I don't think it's to do with a bounce effect, but rather just coming up against better opposition. We still beat Everton and Southampton in recent games, after all.

If you compare results under Sherwood to those under AVB in the corresponding fixtures last season, AVB has 23 points to Sherwood's 22. Under both managers we have been badly flawed, but in polar opposite ways. We played a style of football under AVB that was pretty unimaginative and meant we struggled to create opportunities, but also made us harder to beat. We are far too adventurous under Sherwood, which means we are actually beginning to score a few more but we are also far more open. Each manager has had 16 games in charge this season, and under AVB we scored 15 and conceded 21, while under Sherwood we have scored 25 and conceded 23.

I think the simple fact of it is that our defence is not good enough. I am not convinced it is just the players fault, although we need to get rid of a few and certainly buy a quality LB and RB and at least 1 quality CB, if not 2. I think there is something wrong with our coaching setup we need some more experienced coaches just employing former players becuse they are interested in the job is not good enough. I really don't believe in wholesale changes but something has to be done if we are to progress. If we don't we will end up with a nice shiny, half empty new stadium.

Oh and Sherwood has to go in the summer. He may have done a good job with the youngsters, but if he wants to be a coach for a top team he has to get his experience elsewhere first!

Francis Gibbs said:

@Aaron7Lennon: Today was not good enough and we let everyone down,but the rumours about the boss hitting someone are bollocks,crazy how powerful twitter is

Click to expand...

AGAIN!!!!!!!

Does anyone know why Paulinho didn't even make the bench?