KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Liverpool vs Stoke City

It did not seem like it.

No, it looked just like the second half against City the other day!

Haven't seen the game yet, so please forgive the 'blind' post, but was it really fielding three centre backs that was the problem? We played the same formation successfully in this fixture last season. In theory, it should enable Johnson and Enrique to play further forward while providing defensive insurance in the absence of a specialist defensive midfielder and another head to repel the set pieces which are Stoke's biggest threat.
Where exactly did Downing play? And why was the out-of-form Kuyt the lone striker? Seems to me that with two wing backs patrolling the flanks either side of a midfield threesome, Carroll and Bellamy - as a Tosh'n'Keegan-esque forward partnership - would have made a more suitable spearhead than Downing and Kuyt. I'm not knocking either player, it's just that Kuyt's not playing well enough to shoulder the lone striker burden at the moment and the formation seems to render Downing superfluous.
But as I've said, I've not seen the game yet so please tell me if you think I'm talking nonsense.

horrible formation.

ever notice when we get the ball its very static and hesitant.? no one seems sure, there's not much flow to our play, some days. and then other days we look very fluid.

You are in for a real treat

Yes, I've noticed, but that's not necessarily down to a formation that's been effective at times. I do think that, with both Lucas and Spearing out, the lack of defensive midfielder upsets the shape of the team and the fluidity of the play suffers.

No doubt! I watched the full LFC TV re-run of the Northampton game last season. It's just morbid curiosity.

We played 3-5-2, which I wanted Kenny to try a few weeks back because we were struggling to score goals. So I don't think there was anything wrong with the idea, as long as we focused on having Johnson and Enrique forward as much as possible. However, as Rafarendum pointed out at the time, the game becomes overly defensive and ends up more like 5-3-2, which is exactly what happened against Stoke. Enrique somehow got forward LESS by starting higher up the pitch, for example. If Johnson had a good game as a wingback, then by all means bring on Kelly as RB and put Johnson at RM so that we're not so crap down that flank. That will allow Downing and Bellamy to alternate on the left with Carroll up front on his own - a proper 4-3-3. Then if we really wanted to attack we could play Gerrard-Henderson-Shelvey in midfield and try to score 5 in every game - real damn the torpedoes stuff that would at least make the games fun to watch if we insist on giving up on 4th the way we clearly are. It seems Kenny believes winning the League Cup will be enough to save his job, but I think he's wrong.

4-3-3 comes with a caveat however. I think we can learn the lesson that without Lucas we are poor in midfield. That means we need to change to a system that does not rely on a DM. One would have thought that was 4-4-2, but for some reason our 4-4-2 ends up with 9 men behind the ball. A lot of people say we are solid in defense, but that can't be true if we put 9 men behind the ball in every game! We're not going to win a lot of games with that attitude - it's a bit like we're trying on Hodgson's 33% win ratio for old times sake. I feel that we would attack more were we confident at the back, and if we aren't then we need to sell players like Kuyt now and get either a CB or a DM so that more of our players can spend more time in the opposition half of the field.

One thiing I'm wondering about is why KK choose not to use his 3:rd substitution yesterday.

Bellamy, Carroll and Shelvey all started warming up, but only 2 of them came on.

Why?

Shelvey for Adam wouldn't have weakened the team IMO.

too right - a lollypop woman would have done more that mr diagonal pass