VVD and the Title

[mom]

Let's be honest, the whole defence was based around him and he and his abilities carried us at the back for the last two seasons. I like Gomez, but only when he plays alongside VVD. We were lucky to have two seasons of an injury free VVD.
The whole team was based around playing from the back and pressing very high up the pitch. Now he's gone, we've had to relearn how to play the game to some degree and make big adjustments. On top of all this, we've had no decent CB to replace him. I know its all frustrating at the moment, but, was the league a realistic expectation without VVD from so early on and no decent replacements? I don't think so.

 

[ibromurph]

Pretty much this.

 

[mwake]

• There's more to Liverpool than VVD.. but, I can't seem to escape the thought that before we had VVD we were defensively chaotic, sometimes good and sometimes bad. After we signed him (and Allisson) we steadily became more solid and instead of the team worrying about letting goals in you could see throughout the team, there was freedom and robustness in equal measure.

• But its not just VVD...If we had Matip and Gomez around I believe we are top of the league as it sounds. Losing all three and playing our best midfielders has messed up the spine of the team.

• Talking of unbalanced, every title-winning team I believe has had a recognized spine. Can anybody say at the moment that we have a decent enough spine? Our midfield and defence are comprised by playing Faby and Hendo in defence. We have no real synergy to the spine of the team from defence and attack. Hopefully, if the new defenders can come and do a job we can finally see Fabinho and Henderson in their normal roles.

• Its also frustrating when you hear other fans saying "yeah you've only lost one decent defender!" This is crazy talk to me, Matip and Gomez get into most teams on the planet , let alone Premiership. They might not be headline-grabbing like VVD but if Gomez and Matip didn't get injured as much as they do I believe they would have joined VVD as consistent World Class players. So to lose them as well as VVD was the killer blows to our title chances.

• But I also think the club are to blame...I really like Jota don't get me wrong but the club knew it had 40m to spend then we should have invested in a top-class defender as we all knew Matip is not reliable so it was like knowing that we had to go all season with VVD and Gomez. Of course, the club gambled that VVD and Gomez would get injured but that was a high-risk gamble.

• PS - Also our defensive injury crisis bleeds into the topic of Thiago... with a full-strength team I don't see Thiago playing as big a role as he has, I think with a full-strength team Thiago is used sporadically and tactically, but at the moment Thiago is having to play almost as the main man in an unbalanced team.

And yes I like bullet points and talking about other players as much as VVD in a VVD thread lol

 

[mark1975]

City have had an interim few years where they have struggled with the impact of losing Kompany, firstly by his injuries and rotating him more, then by him retiring. It's taken until now for them to start to look like they have something resembling a settled defense again. So for all the quality we do have at the back without VVD, every side struggles with the transition of losing it's best players for lengthy spells, especially in defense.

Spurs have struggled with their defensive injuries, Arsenal struggled for years (and still are) to rebuild their classic defensive lineup, United struggled to replace Ferdinand. So it shouldn't really be a surprise that we've suffered as a result of losing VVD.

Look at how defensively inconsistent we were before we signed him, we've basically just gone back to that again, so it's not a shock that the performance levels drop again. People talk about money and squads, but you're never going to have that level of quality on the bench. We had an adequate and able replacement in Matip, but he's fucked, otherwise we'd have coped with the VVD injury better than most sides would have. We've just been really, really unlucky (though everyone knew Matip was fucked).

So for the media to bash the "excuses", on the back of Pep pointing it out ahead of Sundays game, it's just typical headline grabbing bollocks. The same bellends would just as quickly defend another side for having the same issues, it just fits the usual British Sport mentality of loving to see teams and individuals crash and burn. They've wanted a stick to beat us and Klopp with for a few years and how they have hated it. So let them have their day in the sun, don't rise to the bollocks in the press, and get our heads down and prove them all wrong.

 

[mwake]

City have had an interim few years where they have struggled with the impact of losing Kompany, firstly by his injuries and rotating him more, then by him retiring. It's taken until now for them to start to look like they have something resembling a settled defense again. So for all the quality we do have at the back without VVD, every side struggles with the transition of losing it's best players for lengthy spells, especially in defense.

Spurs have struggled with their defensive injuries, Arsenal struggled for years (and still are) to rebuild their classic defensive lineup, United struggled to replace Ferdinand. So it shouldn't really be a surprise that we've suffered as a result of losing VVD.

Look at how defensively inconsistent we were before we signed him, we've basically just gone back to that again, so it's not a shock that the performance levels drop again. People talk about money and squads, but you're never going to have that level of quality on the bench. We had an adequate and able replacement in Matip, but he's fucked, otherwise we'd have coped with the VVD injury better than most sides would have. We've just been really, really unlucky (though everyone knew Matip was fucked).

So for the media to bash the "excuses", on the back of Pep pointing it out ahead of Sundays game, it's just typical headline grabbing bollocks. The same bellends would just as quickly defend another side for having the same issues, it just fits the usual British Sport mentality of loving to see teams and individuals crash and burn. They've wanted a stick to beat us and Klopp with for a few years and how they have hated it. So let them have their day in the sun, don't rise to the bollocks in the press, and get our heads down and prove them all wrong.

Yes fighting talk that's what we need, so blessed to have Klopp as a manager...Seeing posts like "has Klopp lost the dressing room?" just baffles me...We need to keep him happy even more than we need VVD fir tbh. As long as Klopp is made happy at Liverpool and with adequate resources we defo have a fighting chance of getting the league back next year. This team overall is too good!

 

[moron]

Sorry but there is no way that VVD was the reason why we won the title - to say so is to show a lack of respect for all the other team members who contributed to winning the title. VVD is very important to our team - like any other title winning team in terms of requiring a world class defender in the back-line but that is as much as it gets, - to say so suggests that Southampton should have won the title when they had VVD. I think we have done well without him defensively when we had one of Gomez / Matip available to play with Fab. Also both Matip and Gomez in their own right can be very good / brilliant.

I think the obvious reasons for our inconsistencies this season has already been mentioned many times on this forum so I ain't getting into that, but I will say that part of the reason this season is that I feel the hunger levels of our front men has dropped considerably.

 

[Dreambeliever]

We weren’t setting the world alight with him in the team this year but of course he makes a huge difference. Definitely a knock on effect.

 

[Frogfish]

We weren’t setting the world alight with him in the team this year but of course he makes a huge difference. Definitely a knock on effect.

Nobody was setting the league alight - until recently even City were struggling even though now they've settled into a rhythm. It's the effect of having virtually no Summer break and then a constant barrage of games without end. I have no doubt whatsoever that without the season-ending CB injuries we've suffered we'd be right up there with City.

 

[moron]

Nobody was setting the league alight - until recently even City were struggling even though now they've settled into a rhythm. It's the effect of having virtually no Summer break and then a constant barrage of games without end. I have no doubt whatsoever that without the season-ending CB injuries we've suffered we'd be right up there with City.

Also think if we had a mass celebration after winning the title - the players would have loved it, and things could have been different. One thing that is clear though - is that City don't need fans to play well, probably the only team that can do that in the league as most are mercenaries.

 

[gkmacca]

We reached a league cup final, a Europa Final and a CL final without VVD, and with a smaller, weaker, squad, playing football that was a million times better to watch than not only the spineless, witless, mess we've been served up this season, but, IMHO, also considerably more enjoyable to watch than the - generally - cautious stuff that won us the league last season. Personally I feel that's what makes this season so galling - not just that we're failing, but we're failing like THAT. I'd rather we revert to the more wild and reckless play that we used to have - our CBs then were, arguably, no better than Fab and Hendo, and they leaked goals, but my god we scored enough. If you have enough attacking players and not enough defensive ones, I say go for attack!

 

[darkstarexodus]

We reached a league cup final, a Europa Final and a CL final without VVD, and with a smaller, weaker, squad, playing football that was a million times better to watch than not only the spineless, witless, mess we've been served up this season, but, IMHO, also considerably more enjoyable to watch than the - generally - cautious stuff that won us the league last season. Personally I feel that's what makes this season so galling - not just that we're failing, but we're failing like THAT. I'd rather we revert to the more wild and reckless play that we used to have - our CBs then were, arguably, no better than Fab and Hendo, and they leaked goals, but my god we scored enough. If you have enough attacking players and not enough defensive ones, I say go for attack!

Yes, the swashbuckling first season under Klopp was far preferable to the last season under Rodgers and this current one, serving up turgid, limp performances.

It's a good thing there arent fans at Anfield to watch this filth.

I want us to win, style aside. But if we're not doing that, let's have some fun and go down swinging.

 

[Brizzle]

Our defence isn't actually that bad without him, but the whole change of our system by having Fabinho & Henderson at CB has been significant, coupled with the face that we are definitely facing deeper defending from opposition knowing that we are struggling to find a system.

I am actually surprised we were so focused on CBs in Jan when we need more options in attacking mid/ front three than we currently have.

 

[Farkmaster]

We had faster versions of every one of our forwards then, against teams unfamiliar with them.

It's our midfield and attacking patterns where the problems lay. We spent so much time creating from the press and really pin point crossing that we are in a rut of all ruts. Jota made a huge difference. So would an attacking am, and a change in systems. If your fullbacks aren't doing it, they can't be the be all and end all of attacking play. If they are going to be, they need legitimate competition. They have none.

 

[rurikbird]

We reached a league cup final, a Europa Final and a CL final without VVD, and with a smaller, weaker, squad, playing football that was a million times better to watch than not only the spineless, witless, mess we've been served up this season, but, IMHO, also considerably more enjoyable to watch than the - generally - cautious stuff that won us the league last season. Personally I feel that's what makes this season so galling - not just that we're failing, but we're failing like THAT. I'd rather we revert to the more wild and reckless play that we used to have - our CBs then were, arguably, no better than Fab and Hendo, and they leaked goals, but my god we scored enough. If you have enough attacking players and not enough defensive ones, I say go for attack!

Unfortunately Salah, Firmino and Mane are not 24 any more. We need to seriously refresh the attack to go back to the "swashbuckling" period.

 

[bluebell]

Didn't we stop winning when we lost Gomez? Matip was as good as not being there.
A make shift defence meant we lost our shape.

 

[gkmacca]

Unfortunately Salah, Firmino and Mane are not 24 any more. We need to seriously refresh the attack to go back to the "swashbuckling" period.

Fortunately, they weren't 24 even back then. They were 26. You're introducing quite a bombshell if you're claiming that both can't run quite fast any more two years later. You should have started a separate thread for that claim!

 

[tombrown]

We reached a league cup final, a Europa Final and a CL final without VVD, and with a smaller, weaker, squad, playing football that was a million times better to watch than not only the spineless, witless, mess we've been served up this season, but, IMHO, also considerably more enjoyable to watch than the - generally - cautious stuff that won us the league last season. Personally I feel that's what makes this season so galling - not just that we're failing, but we're failing like THAT. I'd rather we revert to the more wild and reckless play that we used to have - our CBs then were, arguably, no better than Fab and Hendo, and they leaked goals, but my god we scored enough. If you have enough attacking players and not enough defensive ones, I say go for attack!

I think Virgil was very much part of the team that got to the first CL Final, albeit only for the knockout stages, but your point is no less valid