I'd have thought Hendo was pretty quick. Thought I've seen some examples of good recovery pace the last few years but maybe a lot or that is down to determination, which he has in bucket loads. Phillips and Williams both seem very slow to me. We can still win with one of them playing, we'll just need to really dominate midfield and make sure the front 3 are firing.
Williams to me looks to have a bit of a turn of foot. His main problem in games has been knowing when to step up and play offside. Because he steps up and plays onside, he looks like is struggling to get back. Understandable for a young kid in at the deep end. Philips on the other hand is a more old school defender, he is definitely not comfortable with the high line. With VVD back there he Marshalled everyone and the amount of times the opposition was caught offside was a big success. Hopefully with a full week off, the players have been working on defensive structures.
If Matip not fit, Williams and Phillips can have a race to the half way line during the warm up to see who starts. These games always brings nerves and the thought of that cunt Fernandez releasing rashford on the break isn’t doing me much good. we will most likely dominate possession so vitally, vitally important we take our chances when they come.
I think apart from the obvious ball over the top for Rashford or Martial (if fit) to chase on to from a counter attack. The most likely Manc goal would be from a corner or free kick floated in for Maguires big head. I think we will create good opportunities against them but will need to be clinical, as it seems to be the template on how to play us (wrongly I think), the Athletico approach will be applied.
Once we’re clinical we will win this and most if not all games , personally think we’re not as clinical as we should be in most games.
United have only won 1 of their last 10 games against Liverpool (including 2 Europa League games) and that was at OT. Last time they beat us at Anfield was 17th January 2016, which will be 5 years to the day on Sunday. Hope that doesn't turn into one of those weird football statistics. In all of this you'd nearly forget that we have the second longest unbeaten home record to defend. What I wouldn't give to completely blow them out of the water and all their sudden thoughts of winning the league look like a load of bollocks.... If we turn up with our A-game we win, simple as. Too often though against united we have played the occasion and given them too much respect when we were much the superior team. Let's go for the jugular, no fucking mercy, they are in our house, school the fuckers.
I don't think it's realistic to expect anything other than playing the occasion when it comes to playing Utd and particularly now that it's a top of the table clash between two teams who have little between them so far this season. It's definitely been the case in the past where one or the other has had the clear advantage but the occasion does tend to reduce that down to more of a battle but I think not having crowds there definitely takes a bit of that sting out of it so I would expect that the better team will win on the day assuming the referee doesn't decide to intervene. I think there's plenty out there now in the public sphere for everyone to be quite clear that Utd defintely look for penalties, Pogba was telling players to dive during the game, Rashford has publicly said that Jose coached him to dive and Klopp has pointed it out so that has to be stuck in the officials minds now.
I’d say this will end up like the Spurs game. We will probably dominate possession but they might create the better chances on the counter. Hopefully, the better team loses again!!
I wouldn't agree with that at all ed, that is a failing which we shouldn't be allowing ourselves to repeatedly fall into. We have a hangup when playing United and Everton that we don't have playing Chelsea, Citeh, Arsenal etc. That is something which I'm sure Klopp and all the psychological experts will be looking to address.
We haven't lost a game agaínst either of them at Anfield since 2016. And just 1 loss home and away since then.
I don't agree with this to be honest, if you're looking at it with your psychological experts you've already lost. You can try your best to get players to not play to an occasion and I definitely think no crowds helps but we're talking about human beings here and much as we might want them to behave like robots it's just not possible. Klopp himself has went out of his way to make the Everton game different, remember him playing a load of English guys in his early games because he figured that they got the fixture more than the foreign players! Anyway with the way we're playing against WBA, Newcastle and Fulham if we don't play the occasion I'm afraid we're in for a bloody nose on Sunday.
Sorry ed, it is completely wrong to dismiss the sports psychology, every top team will have this as in integral part of their setup. That is an absolute part of the game. Playing the occasion instead of the team that's in front of you is really not the way to go. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
Occasion is completely different this year though with no fans. I don’t think you can underestimate the difference that can make for some players. You saw Bobby’s reaction when he scored against Spurs. We get the fake crowd noise on the tv so it can be a misleading. Watched 1 or 2 matches this season without the fake noise and it was very strange. Was like watching a training session and couldn’t really get into it. If I see Matip starting, I’ll be really happy to be honest.
And we've beaten them twice in the league, home and away since then, at a time I think we can all agree we've been the hugely superior side.
We haven't won away to them in the league under Klopp. I don't agree with @edcarroll02 that we have played the occasion but I would agree we have played Man Utd like a lot of our supporters still treat Man Utd, as in a team to be feared.
What's the difference, it's pretty much what I meant Bobby unless there's some nuance that I've missed.
Maybe I miss understood you but for me an occasion is like a cup final and saying we have played the occasion or the occasion affected us indicates we bottled it some way. Thats going to far imo, we have shown them far too much respect in the last 2 league games at Old Trafford and considered a point a good result when in reality they were poor and there for the taking. I would only have issues with those 2 games, the rest were fine as we weren't as vastly superior to them for the prior games as we are now. Edit I've read that last one back and I agree it does read the same as what you were saying. Poor choice of words from me.
If we speed up the play and stop being too predictable making it too easy for the opposition we win this comfortably. Both teams will learn an awful lot about themselves this Sunday for different reasons.