JPJCB

Exactly- unless players should run away from the fans when they celebrate?

Lots of parallels with early buendia. He’s off the pace atm to be candid. Regularly dispossessed, not strong on the ball, ponderous, giving it away too easy. And he’s a confidence player so he’s hiding rather than showing for that team to an extent. BUT…you can still see he’s got quick feet and he’s getting into great positions. There were also signs today of his vision: a couple of good moments where he played digne into space; and a great pass into space on the break to set Watkins free (which watkins then ran into traffic). Like buendia, it will click into gear for him and then he’ll be great. But we’ll need to accept another couple of games at least of lower impact, frustrating performances before he really gets going. Patience is the word.

He’s benefitting a lot from gerrard’s arrival and style of play. Under smith he had to start much wider and there was no one he could play between the lines with which is where he likes to operate. Our midfield was typically a combination of McGinn, Ashley young, Bailey etc and dominating the centre of the park wasn’t the game plan. Under gerrard he now has players like Ramsay and coutinho in and around him and the goal is to dominate the centre and play between the lines. You couldn’t think of two players better suited to the two inside 10 positions than buendia (who likes to start on the right before moving inside) and coutinho (the same but for the left)

I wouldn't be as critical of that second half performance as some on here. Everton had a specific game plan of hoofing it long and being extra physical. Even the top teams will struggle to get their game going in that environment. But I do think Gerrard took far too long to bring on Hause. Everton's only threat was aerial/physicality and having three at the back with hause dominating calvert lewin would have completely neutralised that threat and given the confidence to play our game

Mings, Konsa and MArtinez all super solid - think Konsa has been the pick of the bunch but credit to Martinez for bailing out Digne after that error who's been a bit ropey. Buendia has been immense - what a player he's turning into. Coutinho is off the pace but a couple of nice touches and he takes up good positions. I'd like to see more from mcginn and Ramsay - when they get involved is when we start to make overloads and really press the advantage

Poor steward….what’s even the point?

It’s striking that he’s our main goal threat from midfield. With his current rate of development and coaching from gerrard I can see him being a regular 10+ goal scoring midfielder. We haven’t had one of those since milner

I agree with this. I’d still say jack is comfortably the better player when on form because he’s pretty much good at everything going forward (apart from finishing) and his dribbling/ball retention/touch is world class. but I’d say that buendia is a better passer of the ball- particularly those through balls of the type that led to the 2nd goal.They are inch perfect and there are few players better at them in the league

He’s gone from a player that I wasn’t bothered about coming on as a sub to our arguably our best central midfielder in the space of about 4 months. Stunning improvement

So pleased is starting to work out for him. The prospect of him and coutinho is mouthwatering

True- I’m not saying guardiola can’t do it without superstars who’d cost a ton of cash. I’m saying that he’s unproven in that respect whereas alternatives such as Klopp are

Being controversial for a second this reveals the bigger issue at play here which is that in football we’re absolutely obsessed with refereeing decisions when we should just accept that mistakes from referees are just part of the game (like the weather) and move on. I blame the media for that mainly. Every pundit discussion is part dedicated to some decision which might/might not be wrong rather than just moving on and focussing on the football. You don’t see that in other sports (rugby, cricket, tennis) which just take the decisions as a given and move on. That drives fans into obsessing over the refereeing as well and calls for ever greater accuracy (I.e VAR). But really it’s just spurious accuracy and all VaR does is focus even more attention on decisions that might or might not be wrong- it’s funny that everyone thought VAR was well used at the Euros- it’s because they basically decided to have a really high threshold for it being used at all so it rarely interfered with anything. I’ll admit I fall into this trap as well- look a few pages back and you’ll find me raging at the decision the other night. But football would be better if we obsessed less over refs and more over the game.

Another way of making the OP’s same point though is can he do it without a ton of cash to spend. Guardiola did it this way with Barca but benefitted from a set of unbelievably gifted academy players including the best player in the world so was pretty lucky. if I were a PL chairman and my money was at risk I’d prefer Klopp to guardiola because he can achieve the same success on a more reasonable budget. Guardiola has spent a simply astonishing amount of money even by city’s standards and we should never forget that- in every position he’s got two c£50m players at his disposal. How much did salah and mane cost Liverpool? Less than 50m between them? What about Robertson? £8m?

I’ve always thought a big difference is that Chelsea developed and retained a much better sense of identity than city. That started with terry and lampard being the soul of the team and arguably bolstered by mainstay big individual personalities who came to define the club and its culture- Cech and drogba and others. Arguably mourinho as well. They still retained a sense (albeit less so now) that it wasn’t all just money or even trophies but also Chelsea itself as a club that they were fighting for I just don’t see the same sense of identity with city- they’re basically a bunch of mercenaries as far as I can see

This might be right in theory and is certainly the case for Liverpool but it’s striking that our form has dropped off since nakamba got injured and we were much more solid with him in the team playing closer to a pure 6. I’d also note that we played much better in the second half yesterday with luiz staying deep/being more disciplined possession wise. not to say that the 3 8s system isn’t what gerrard wants to play ideally but tbh I’m not sure McGinn/Ramsey are disciplined enough defensively for it to be the best system for us

So you're offside standing there - maybe you're having a smoke, maybe you're having a wank, maybe you're doing anything else other than paying attention to the game - then someone else runs into you and you've fouled them? Ok then....

This is completely right. At any attacking free kick, you'll always see players standing in offside positions for tactical reasons - i.e. so they can engage in the second phase of play when they're back onside unmarked. Obviously they aren't looking to engage in the first phase of play since that's not the gameplan nor do they need to under the rules. This VAR ruling for Cavani should incentivise players on the defending team in those situations to just run into the offside attacking players since they'll then get a foul called in their favour

Promising today but really lacked composure - very much forgivable and he's still progressing well. He's a solid first team player now

I just don't get what people who rate him so much see. Lacks pace, often sloppy in possession, makes bad decisions when marking opposing players. The best thing about him is his beautiful raking long balls but he needs all the time in the world to do them effectively - would be much better off in the Spanish league

The VAR decision was ridiculous and absolutely typical of playing this lot. First half was tactically quite interesting. We did the Gerrard style of playing extremely narrow/trying to dominate the centre of the park and Ragnick (ironically given he basically invented that style of play which he passed on to Klopp who passed on to Gerrard) decided to mitigate through playing old school 90s really wide 442. Basically allowed us to dominate the middle but for them to dominate the flanks which gave them some joy. Not sure what happened in the second half but the dynamic completely changed and we bossed them. Maybe its just one of those periods of time where our xG will be higher than our actual goals - these trends do pass and I can't fault any of the front 3 for their performances. But I agree with others that our decision making at times was just terrible. What exactly does Aaron Danks do? Recruited in the summer to help coach our attacking play but the coherence between the forwards has been terrible at times and hasn't improved under Gerrard.

If I were comparing I’d actually say grealish was moderately better at outright ball retention than coutinho- I think coutinho tries more tricks/flicks so loses the ball more frequently than grealish who’s somewhat more conservative. but I agree, coutinho has got more pace than grealish so is arguably a better “runner” with the ball. He’s also got much higher goal threat (still grealish’s weakest attribute)

I agree. It’s possible we might need to upgrade to meet the demands of Gerrard’s system but in my mind CDM and CB (in terms of squad) are by far higher priority areas to strengthen

The fact coutinho played his best football while in the prem is the big difference here for me. It’s widely recognised that the pace and physicality of the PL is higher than other leagues- coutinho is a proven performer in that environment; James wasn’t