CHOULO19

I know there's a lack of top 'traditional' strikers everywhere, but you just can't call a player world class when half our academy has better technique than him - and I'm being generous there. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate Diego. I think his movement is among the best I've seen from a striker, his instincts are good and on form his finishing is exceptional. But, in addition to his lack of technique, he's weak in the air, his ball retention is almost nonexistent and his decision making can often be well below the level of the team; he chooses to dribble so many times, especially on the wings, despite the fact that he's so predictable and bad at it that even the weakest defenders can stop him most of the times. But all that doesn't take away from the fact that he can be an excellent striker if we play to his strength. To me, this is like when people were calling Matic the best DM in the world, or Thibaut the best GK in the world, almost no one without blue-tinted glasses thinks that. Doesn't mean that all of them aren't/can't be very good.

This is beyond stupid. He's at the very least at the same level as our other CBs, only considerably younger. Pay the penalty in the loan contract, bring him back, put him straight in the team. This is like when we refused to give Bertrand a chance when we had no one else at LB and and have been stuck since then with Azpi on the left and Iva on the right while Bertrand makes it into the EPL team of the year. Except this time Christensen has A LOT more potential and we'll probably end up with Mikel being moved permanently to CB!

You get the feeling that Matic has been holding that one in since the 'can't make a simple pass' comment!

#KeepItClassy

Not to state the obvious but the contrast between Jose and Cote is just striking!

He REALLY isn't. Eden is the only world class player we have. Maybe Thibaut and Cesc at their best. But Costa isn't even close.

Obviously upset, but equally obviously a meaningless red card in a meaningless friendly would certainly not have made me feel any better.

Honestly, I don't think you can get much info about your team in these 'extreme' situations when the physical readiness of the players is no where near complete. On a related note, we've been defending very well deep all game long.

Makes a scary 'psychopath' face when he gets cards out as well...

It was undoubtedly a red card challenge, but you'd hope that the ref would have the understanding that this a preseason friendly and neither us nor Liverpool would want any player from any team sent off because that ruins all the tactics being tested and analyzed by the managers.

@Barbara You had to jinx Cesc's tackling, didn't you?

LOL Traore shaking hands with practically everyone at the stadium

Couldn't we have had Willian and Bats on at the same time just for a few minutes

Getting used well to his new role. People here have been making assumptions about our central midfield options, but mine is that there is no way that our starting central midfielders in a 4-4-2 won't be Kante and Cesc.

Pressing in particular looking impressive despite the obvious lack of mobility of our CBs. I think Conte has been working a lot on changing how our players choose focal points for pressing which we had serious trouble in under Jose.

The transition from defense to attack needs more work, imo. Need more triangles to get out of Liverpool's pressing in the middle and more diagonal passes to the wings.

You should try some real Turkish coffee instead of that muddy water expresso stuff

Good to see Cesc controlling our tempo from deep. Positive sign.

Haha Conte shouting at the ref in a friendly. Love it!

Bloody hell ref...

Not sure if this is a manager's instruction, but our pass selection is a bit too risky. Need to play more safe passes.

Was just about to say that. We also seem to be looking to force to ball to the bi-line and double press when it get there. On a related note, I'm liking the movement from the front four on the ball. Been a while since we had an actual attacking system.

Is it me or are loserpool taking this match a bit too seriously?

Good leap.

Morning. Anyone else feel like they need caffeine injected straight into their blood? I'm getting too old for this...