Positives From A Difficult Weekend
And why I may not be around much for a week or so
As noted on the Main Hub, I'm looking to take this week off, with regular visiting-hours trips to the hospital every day.
Thanks to everyone on the main site who has left a message in their comments in reply to my explanation of my stressful weekend, which I read this morning; I won't be responding to them in person. I'm just waiting for today's visiting hours. If I need to take extra time, I can pause subscriptions, which freezes all billing (and extends all subscriptions to cover any lost time), but I’m hoping it won’t come to that.
That said, Dave aka MadchenKliop's post on the game yesterday on the Main Hub is worth sharing on here, not least as he mentions our shared obsession, Ben Doak, who remains the best 16-year-old attacker I've seen since Michael Owen. (Albeit that doesn't mean he'll follow the same path, but he is young, direct, super-fast, strong, and can beat players and score goals; how quickly that can be transitioned to the first team is not clear. I don’t want to overhype him, but every time I see him play he’s on another level, and that has now gone from U18 football to U21 football for club and country.)
I also think that three games in six days (starting with the bruising battle against Man City), whilst already in a tough run of games, and while losing two (often key) players to injury after every match, removes all chance of consistency of performance. It's not going to be cohesive or energetic, as I noted yesterday in my brief comments on the match itself.
Anyway, I'll leave you with what Dave wrote (I tidied a couple of typos), as a free read, as I agree with pretty much every word, and I'll update people as to my return to writing once things are clearer here:
Have to say, I'm quite unmoved by this result. Everything before the match pointed towards this eventuality being quite likely. As far as I'm concerned LFC are officially in transition this season and that means we're going to encounter situations when being the finished article is by definition impossible. Neither the thing we're transitioning towards, nor the quality team from whence we've come were present today – instead we had a rag tag mix of new and old which emphasised all the features that make transitioning difficult.
For example – all the things that we've put in motion to try and break down a low block, i.e. the physicality and chaos of Nunez, the height and strength of Konaté, the guile of Thiago, the speed of Diaz, the cunning of Jota to name some of the most crucial innovations weren't available – and all the things that have led to frustration – a lack of height, old legs, the inconsistency and inexperience of young players – all these ingredients combined in a fixture which suited Steve Cooper's emerging team, down to their hostile home ground.
I really don't think any of it's big news. We didn't even play particularly badly with our severely hamstrung squad. We had chances [PT: Virgil van Dijk alone had a month's worth of set-piece openings]. Their goalie pulled off awesome saves. I'm still waiting to see Elliot and/or Carvalho to move up another level to add spectacular finishing and assisting to their already impressive games – but in fairness, I don't think this was the type of game for either of them to truly shine.
They are going to do better in a more balanced team – possibly with only one of them, rather than both plus Curtis Jones. Carvalho was ever so close to scoring a brilliant goal and you can see that his nippy, direct running can be an asset, but I think both he and Elliot are being tasked (due to circumstance) with too much responsibility for them to reach their full expressive potential. But don't get me wrong. I think they are both progressing as well as you could hope. The only problem is we're having to see slightly more of them than is ideal because of the injuries.
As for Curtis's performance, I thought he was possibly our best player on the day and was really impressed by his alertness. He almost got caught a few times taking too long on the ball, but he retrieved all those situations and showed some really nice subtle touches to keep the ball moving. I thought he was very good at being flexible, playing a number of different positions.
Salah went right back into his shell, but given the events of the last fortnight or so, I thought that highlighted the importance of our transitional plans, players and setup. We didn't even make a pretence of being able to provide that width and movement that's given him licence to make better use of space and central positions these last few matches.
But seriously, what should we expect? We had such limited resources in terms of energy. If we've got through that game without more injuries then that's a win of sorts.
Injuries apart, it's been a fantastic, morale-boosting couple of weeks. Let's not be spoiled. The cavalry is coming with Keita, Ox, Konaté, Calvin Ramsay, and more hopefully returning, along with Thiago and Nunez. And Ben Doak just completed his ascension to the U21s with a game-sealing goal and brilliant performance to win the mini-derby. I appreciate things aren't exactly looking up, but there's plenty to look forward to.