I honestly couldn't see a sub I'd of made. The midfield were all excellent,taking any of them off would imo gave us less chance of winning. Minamino for Firmino maybe,but Firmino was playing well too and hindsight tells us Klopp was right to leave him on. I'm not talking about you here,its just while I'm on the subject, but every time Klopp doesn't make a sub he'll be ridiculed because of his stance on five subs. If he had 5 subs on the days he doesn't have to lessen his chances of winning the game to make them,he might have had options off the bench that improved our chances last night. Thats whats being missed in the media and missed when that fitness guru used to have a go at Klopp for overplaying his players. He has to balance that against winning football matches,so sometimes he has to take risks with players fitness and fatigue levels. What's completely forgotten is how often during a season he'll be criticised by his own supporters for fielding weakened teams to bring some balance the other way,there's not a manager in the league who walks the walk on this issue more than he does. Maybe that's why he thought he was in a position to argue the case,if he thought any of that was going to be taken into account then he was naive. Honest people have a habit of expecting everybody else to be honest too, it very rarely works out.
Yeah I think you might get good odds on trying to predict the team at the weekend. I'd say there will be a number of changes, even though we don't play for 8 days after that. It's no good saying you'll have a break after this if you are wrecked going into the game.
I've always said refs have more than the obvious ways to screw you. Atkinson is a master of it but Taylor has overtaken him. One or 2 big decisions your way is no use if 50 small ones have gone against you. He does it all the time, I was calm as I can remember being until I seen his head appear as the ref. I knew it would be tougher and so it proved. Its not something that will be ever be recognised in the media but the mentality it take to shrug that off and keep going is unreal. The game with the Gerrard slip is a classic example, we panicked and allowed ourselves to be flustered and drawn into a type of game we didn't want. Niggly foul after niggly foul, allowing them pretend to be hurt and kill another 45 seconds. Klopp doesn't allow that, he won't accept stupid fouls to allow them to breathe, he won't allow us get involved with the ref. These are things Jose wants and we just don't let him have them.
Anyone else think Jose went for that last night more than he normally would? He was no where near as defensive as he was against Chelsea or once they lead against Arsenal. I reckon he's worried about our home record surpassing his and felt he had to do something about it.
Though the Lucas for Le Celso was a surprise as Lucas is more attacking. He did though make a negative sub 20 mins later with Regullion come on fir Bergwin.
Great performance and win, I feel with our injuries, injuries to key starting 11 players, that we have a performance like that or similar in us maybe once a week. And that's the only reason we won't be running away with another league title this season. Someone mentioned above about Spurs being mentioned as title contenders and the pressure it brings, couldn't agree more. Massive pressure on you when you are having to win every week.
When Jose was talking about how many days he's in the spurs job compared to klopp at Liverpool, I would've loved someone to ask him how long was he at Chelsea before he won the league, and compare that to fergie and Wenger at the time.
Most of the other top sides play each other the weekend too. Spurs leicester Saint(3rd) City Chelsea West ham Everton Arsenal Palace away is tough but if we can sneak a win the pack will start to thin out.
I know it doesn't matter,but if you ever needed proof that somebody with a journalism degree writing about football doesn't know any more about football than the average fan, The Mirrors chief football writer gave Wijnaldum a 6 out of 10.
Just looking at those ratings Harry Kane a 7 - created nothing and missed a sitter had a better game.
Ken Early: Importance of bravery is lost on Mourinho Rather than gripe, the Tottenham manager should ask why Klopp is getting the plaudits Results For a manager who claims to be interested only in results and not at all in questions of “philosophy”, Mourinho spends a lot of time engaged in ideological warfare. Indeed, his barbs at the “poets”, the “Einsteins” and other frauds has provided much of the entertainment value in the less-successful latter period of his career. “You love the word ‘possession’ and you love the stats,” he scoffed in his press conference on Friday, in the course of a lecture on how numbers can mislead. “The stats many, many times are like an incredible piece of meat or fish, but badly cooked. They don’t tell me much.” And indeed, it is silly to criticise Tottenham for having only 25 per cent possession at Anfield, when the starting point of their game plan was literally: let Liverpool have the ball. For Mourinho the relevant statistic was: four “big chances” created to zero. Those chances fell to Son Heung-Min, who scored, Steven Bergwijn, who hit one wide and one off the post, and Harry Kane, who hit the top of the crossbar. At the other end, Liverpool scored a deflection and a lucky header from a corner and so Tottenham did not get what they deserved. The following evening, as Mourinho digested the news that Jürgen Klopp had won the FIFA Best Men’s Coach award for a second successive year, he might have reflected on the injustice of a world where everyone crowds around to shower Klopp with praise and plaudits, while he, Mourinho, with more trophies than Klopp, suffers the indignity of being dismissed as yesterday’s man by people who have never won anything. Maybe this is why, in his media conference on Friday, Mourinho came out to bat for the Bayern coach Hansi Flick, another man who had not got what he deserved. How could Klopp be coach of the year, when Flick’s team had won every competition they played in? Tie-breaker Flick had a good case, which is why the vote was so close and went to a tie-breaker. That he did not win is probably because he took over a Bayern team that was underperforming but already strong – strong enough to beat Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs 7-2 in their own stadium. Flick liberated potential that was already there, but Bayern is not his team in the same way Liverpool is Klopp’s. It’s a bit like arguing that Roberto di Matteo is the best Chelsea manager because he’s the only one to have won the Champions League. As Mourinho would be the first to point out, di Matteo was lucky that illustrious predecessors had left him such a good side. When you think about it as spectator sport, the central importance of bravery becomes clear. Without it, you don’t have a game worth watching Klopp acts as though he doesn’t care about these individual awards, while Mourinho acts as though he does. If he has designs on ever winning another one, then instead of resenting outcomes he doesn’t like, he should ask himself: why do people seem to prefer Klopp’s style? The answer is very simple, and you don’t need to refer to any statistics, overcooked or otherwise. In professional sports the only thing that counts is victory, and professionals like Mourinho know this. But in spectator sports, which have been around a lot longer, the thing that really counts is not victory but bravery. A results-oriented analysis would conclude there is no “right way” to play football. A game like last Wednesday’s is a good example. Liverpool were the proactive team, Tottenham the reactive one. Liverpool won but it could easily have been Tottenham. There was nothing inevitable about Liverpool’s victory. There was no convincing evidence that proactive football is “better”, in the sense of being more likely to lead to victory in a game like this. Taking the risks The observation that Liverpool’s approach was braver than Spurs’ – in that they were the side taking the risks, pushing up the field, leaving space behind, exposing themselves to danger as they chased the victory – feels like something serious professionals like Mourinho might dismiss as an irrelevance, a note on style, a detail that belongs in a separate, subordinate category, at best tangential to the serious question of how best to go about winning football matches. But when you think about it as spectator sport rather than professional sport, the central importance of bravery becomes clear. Without it, you don’t have a game worth watching. The league awards no extra points for style, but the fans do. You only need one proactive team involved to have a chance of seeing a game: a proactive team can bring a reactive one to life. But two reactive teams adds up to nothing. We’ve seen too many of these non-games already this season: last week Manchester United 0, Manchester City 0; before that Chelsea 0, Tottenham 0; and Manchester United 0, Chelsea 0. In each match, the sides were too afraid of losing goals on the counter to take the risks necessary to win. Liverpool’s title defence has been beset by numerous problems, but lack of bravery hasn’t been one of them. If you’re looking for a reason why Klopp and not Mourinho wins the awards these days, remember that only one of them insists on giving the spectators what they’ve come to see.