KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Who leaves LFC FIRST in Jan 2011..........

The mistakes Reina is making have absolutely nothing to do with the managers tactics, I cant believe how nieve people can be, how can Reina throwing the ball in the net v Arsenal and Bucharest have anything to do with Hodgson and how he sets the team up

How is the fact that we spend most of the time defending got nothing to do with the manager's tactics? Who is being naive here? It comes down to pressure. Individual errors are individual errors, but one tends to make more of them when one is given more chances to do so. 3 own goals in the EPL in less than half a season makes pretty dismal reading when one considers we generally only let in one per season.

I'm not saying Pepe wasn't directly responsible for those goals - he's not had a good season by his standards. But I do feel that the sheer quantity of goals we are leaking despite the fact that we set ourselves up to defend speaks volumes for how ineffective our tactics are. We invite the opposition to run at us, which increases the risk of them hitting something unstoppable, encourages deflections and misunderstandings, and gives more chances for someone to make a critical error that lets one in. This is true for any team under any manager, which is precisely why the top teams do not use our outdated tactics as plan A.

Call it playing the percentages, if you like. You're not going to win every game simply by assaulting the opposition goal, but you are going to give yourself a much greater chance of coming away with 3 points and coming away with a feeling of confidence in your ability as a team even in defeat. Right now we have no momentum because we concede too easily and score too sporadically, and you need momentum to achieve anything. Take a quick look at the various other sporting codes (tennis, rugby, cricket, martial arts/boxing) and even some games (chess, poker), and you will find that they all have one thing in common; attack is the best form of defense. If the opponent is too busy defending he is ill-prepared to attack, and therefore at a disadvantage in terms of winning. Certainly there are tactics in all sports that take advantage of over-aggression, but again that comes down to the manager in team games; how is he training you, how does he want you to react, how far does he want you to push etc.

If we're going to build a side that wants to win by being solid defensively and being strong on the counter-attack, then we need a different squad than the one we have (who are good at attacking when doing so as a unit, but are poor in defense). That is what concerns me most about the transfer window; to make a counter-attacking side we will need a target man or two, and a number of tall, strong defenders, and some resolute fullbacks. And then we will be indistinguishable from any mid-table side in all but name, and will finish along with them in the middle of the table. I can say this with certainty because if those tactics were successful in winning silverware season after season, then Man U, Chelsea and Real Madrid would not waste time with passing to feet and running into space, and Fat Sam would be the best manager in the world.

Sam Johnstone of the Football Research Unit at Liverpool University says those speculating on the origins of the Liverpool-Everton, Protestant-Catholic thing are talking nonsense. "Both clubs were founded by the same people (essentially the wealthy, protestant middle classes of 19th-century Liverpool) from the same church (St Domingo's, a protestant church)," he says.

read it and weep !