Green shoots
Our Jeckyll and Hyde season continues then, with consecutive defeats to teams in the bottom three, sandwiched between two wins against two of Europe’s best teams. It’s difficult to put your finger on exactly what’s going on but we put on a much improved display last night.
Klopp reverted back to his favoured 4-3-3 formation and we looked much more solid and compact with a midfield three of Fabinho, Thiago and Milner giving us a lot more control than we’ve seen in recent weeks.
Defensively much improved as well with the returning Konate. You could see a bit of ring rust in the lad in the early stages, as he misplaced a number of passes but grew into the game and I enjoyed his driving runs forward, along with his recovery pace and added physicality compared to Gomez and Matip.
Trent had a better game, he was skinned by KK a couple of times but you can’t expect a fullback to be perfect defensively all the time. The nature of their position means they’re generally up against the oppositions quickest, most skilful players but the effort and application was there from him, where it’s been lacking at times this season. Kostas on the other flank had a decent game as well I thought and two good corners that ultimately led to our goals.
Offensively, the inclusion of Jones on the LW raised a few eyebrows but I thought he had his best game in I couldn’t tell you how long. He’s obviously more comfortable in the attacking positions where he can use his footwork and ball carrying skills. Unfortunately for him, with everyone fit, I don’t see him getting too much game time in the front 3 but it will have been a good confidence booster for the lad. Salah continues to improve as the season goes on and Darwin when he came on caused a fair bit of havoc and got himself on the scoresheet to kill the game, albeit he was slightly fortuitous to be onside. He’s starting to rack up the goals now though and is another who is only going to get better.
Room for optimism then (if you dare) and if we could find that level of performance with some consistency, not too many teams will be able to live with us. The key word there is consistency however.
Spurs up next then and somehow I’m more confident going into that game than I would be if we were playing some relegation fodder, as we’ve shown a few times this season now that we can raise our game against the better teams and after the start we’ve had, it’s imperative we take points off our top four rivals when we play them. We’ve done it with City, now for the Spuds. Walk on!
Recent Comments