Thursday Night Lights: The 2014/15 Europa League thread

Incredible first half for de gea. fellaini absolutely useless in a match like this though, everything is just going around him the whole time

Fucking de gea, gonna regret these missed chances when hendo is sent off.

Bah should be 4-0. John Aldridge used to do the shimmy step peno back in the 90s tbf

He almost had that pen stopped too

I mean I love lil Phil but FFS stick it in with your left foot!!

fellaini absolutely useless in a match like this though, everything is just going around him the whole time

redundant second clause tbf

Carrick's coming on anyway. We desperately need to go 433 but van Gaal has seemingly abandoned it forever

looool 352

what a fucking chancer

When teams who've done next to fuck all in Europe for years decide to throw European games I just want the rest of their season to go to shit.

Boring this, innit?

a match involving lvg's man u boring surely not?

Terrible performance, not getting my hopes up for the hammers at the weekend

this is honestly one of the most perplexing managerial reigns in the history of the sport

NOTHING he does makes sense

and the humiliations just keep coming

LOL

LOL @ SCHOLES actually saying the word "British" in his dire post-match rant

turns out all those times picking up the kids from training and not yet writing autobiographies his internal monologue was worse than the ilx thread

and tbf lol at both these clubs, playing each other on a thursday night and lfc only able to score via a penalty and michael carrick failing to control a terrible cross from an offside jordan henderson

apparently Fellaini elbowed Sakho at some point before the end

I don't think I've ever hated a Utd player more. And Wayne Rooney still plays for us

was that not can. can went down just at the very end, in my stream they said there was some incident with fellaini.

not gonna get wildly excited, but i do feel liverpool are a bit like spurs post-bale, a lot of the signings that seemed a waste are growing in confidence. people even dismissed firmino earlier this year. lallana is really playing well, can is looking like the midfielder we've needed, clyne has been good from the beginning, and allen coming on seemed to steady us a lot.

i mean yeah, prob lose 3-0 next week, but there's some promise there.

I initially dismissed firmino because I watched him play for brazil in the copa america last summer and he was bobbins and missed a diabolical sitter from about 12 yards in one game

Was it him that did that crazy backheel turn between mata and whoever? Need a vine of that

that was lallana i think. he has definitely improved under klopp

Ah yeah right, that was good that

no, I think it was Firmino

edge of the box, right hand side?

Nah that was Lallana, that was unreal. Lallana is thriving. He was sensational against City last week.

https://twitter.com/realfootballhub/status/708045762849087494

Oh I didn't even see that one! This was what I was thinking of:

https://twitter.com/LFCMostar/status/708046671465172992

lallana ftw imo.

not gonna get wildly excited, but i do feel liverpool are a bit like spurs post-bale, a lot of the signings that seemed a waste are growing in confidence. people even dismissed firmino earlier this year. lallana is really playing well, can is looking like the midfielder we've needed, clyne has been good from the beginning, and allen coming on seemed to steady us a lot

Also both Rodgers and AVB gave every impression of not wanting half the players they'd just been given. Unless you have a really exceptional player or one whose playing style is particularly attuned to the EPL then it's always going to take time for them to find their feet, often time that supporters and pundits aren't willing to grant them. Obviously not an issue with Lallana but that was more an issue with injuries/confidence.

Some people even dismissed Vidic and Evra when they arrived in the Premiership, which looks ridiculous in hindsight.

Suarez's first season he was p sloppy

I mean obviously if it's one or two players they get a bit of leeway unless there's a massive fee attached, signing five or six with the money from a talismanic player is pretty much asking for trouble. Was kind of exasperating to watch Liverpool repeat that exact same mistake barely a year on from Bale.

there's the interpersonal element of large scale squad overhaul which does take time and trial/error - poch was insistent on shipping out who he perceived as bad apples spoiling his ideal most receptive group - but imo it's simply the difference between a manager thinking deliberately about specific pieces in a specific puzzle versus recruiting and having around players who just represent endless bloating ~options~ . i mean brendan might have had vague glimpses of possible tactical formulations but there was no clear-sighted vision of plans a b c (and no i don't excuse him from the actions of the transfer committee) and it seems mainly he was driven by his kind of sick vanity backing himself to whip something together ad hoc as he went along, with his talent presumably outshining all the expensive broken toys it left behind. basically the "time to find feet" line is bullshit mostly and applies to the coaches 100x more than the players

like not that brendan didnt come up with solutions in his time but he also spent huge swathes of seasons experimenting before he happened upon them. and by the end they were all knots he'd tied himself anyway

klopp's use of joe allen as 10 these days is quite cool ja

it's motivation as well. dunno if liverpool have ever had a boss who could keep a squad happy, in the way that fergie was so brilliant at doing. klopp seems good at this.

the allen substitution last night was genius, though at the time i cursed it. instantly ended man united's threat.

agree that rodgers seemed to act as if he constantly had to start again, rather than finding ways to use players and keep them happy. it's actually hard to work out how any sort of klopp overhaul in the summer would pan out. he's kinda brought most of the players into the fold again.

man imagine if brendan could wangle himself a gig at like roma or one of the pozzo clubs (place ur bets if quique runs aground), the wholesale clearing house ventures, he'd be like a pig in target-ambivalent shit

Nah that was Lallana, that was unreal. Lallana is thriving. He was sensational against City last week.

― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Thursday, 10 March 2016 22:45 Bookmark

him fronting yaya in the cup final (lol was there not one single ilf mention of this entire occasion btw?) was the peak berserker kloppness

basically the "time to find feet" line is bullshit mostly and applies to the coaches 100x more than the players

Yeah I should have caveated that by saying you need a manager who can actually use them in a way that will play to their strengths AND fit the system. Rodgers had a system in mind that seemed to work okay at Swansea (and for some of his time at Liverpool) but he never really bought (or adequately developed) central midfielders with the sort of intelligent passing and movement required to make that vision a reality, or for that matter decent CBs. By the end he was just attempting endless fudges to offset shortcomings or imbalances in every area of the pitch and that sort of clarity of approach just disappeared. AVB had a more coherent system as well, it was just the wrong system for most of the players he had.

There's no doubt in my mind that both Poch and Klopp are superior communicators to Rodgers and AVB, players seem aware of exactly what they're meant to do, and are coached properly to fit into that system. Klopp is a way behind Poch in the curve but, signings allowing, he'll get there. You can just *tell* when players are slotting neatly into allotted roles and when a load of square pegs are being torturously hammered into a succession of round holes.

I suppose what I also meant by finding yr feet is the situation of a player like Etienne Capoue, who was part of the perceived bad apple/shipped out group at Spurs but has been doing fine at Watford. Flores in general doesn't get enough credit for taking virtually an entire team's worth of new signings, most of them new to the Premiership, and quickly getting them to look like an actual team.

Im excited

A reasonably strong Lazio side is currently 0-3 at home at half time vs Sparta Prague.

Im excited

― i;m thinking about thos Beans (Michael B), Thursday, March 17, 2016 2:02 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

Carrick and Fellaini midfield

https://media.giphy.com/media/TeDpSbeCLAPtu/giphy.gif

Not sure if I can be bothered to watch. I spent the vast majority of last week's match looking at my phone instead* and that was when the tie was still in the balance.

*surfing the internet, not just watching it sit on the table

Srsly? No room for Ander? Xp

groin strain

Amazing assist from Susaeta vs Valencia. There was a clear handball in the buildup and GNev is going nuts.

Assist from Garcia, handball from Susaeta.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ygajq_aritz-aduriz-decisive-goal-after-brillaint-assist-by-raul-garcia-vs-valencia-2-1-hd_sport

Flick is pretty sensational