CHOULO19

My pleasure Your sig is fine, if it were too big the site wouldn't allow you to use it.

We depend on him because he is part of the new spine for the team just like Cech-Terry-Lamps-Drogba were for the past 8 seasons. He is vital part of our team and hope fully will be in the future. His performance naturally has an effect on the team. What do you mean "mere defender"? There are 11 players on the pitch and all are vital for the team. Everyone has his job and they all have to do them well for the team to succeed. The midfield often has more impact on the game but that does not mean that you should not care about defenders. I though yesterday that our midfield was great for most of the match, but Liverpool were on top because our back 4 were terrible and we were practically playing without a striker. Luiz is not responsible for the distribution alone, in fact he hardly did any of that yesterday; only one of his many long balls found it's target and his passing accuracy was somewhere in the 70s% which is just awful for a defender. Mikel was doing all the distribution. And Liverpool didn't dominate the game, they dominated exactly 7 minutes at the start of the second half. They hardly managed to create anything outside that period. Finally, we are focusing on Luiz simply because this is his thread. The other players performances are discussed in their respective threads.

Hello. I'm sorry I can't help you, but I would suggest you start a thread in the Tickets and Travel section, you'll find someone to help you there.

All Luiz did in the first half was lump the ball up field to no one in particular. He must have done it more than 10 times in the opening 20 mins. Most of the mistakes he made were when he was under no pressure what so ever. His positioning throughout the game was just indefensible. Luiz has probably been our best player since the turn of the year, but he just had a shocker yesterday.

I didn't think Luiz had such a bad game until I re-watched the match and noticed some of his mistakes. In the first half alone, he was dispossessed 3 times in our half! Twice Iva recovered well and once Downing played a pass to an offside Suarez. He was also too aggressive in his defending, imo; tried to nick the ball before it reached players on a number of occasions and failed allowing them to just turn him easily. And throughout the match, the gap between him and Iva was just ridiculous. He was also out of position too often. Take the first goal for example, he was the one who was supposed to press Suarez and not allow him to play that ball, instead he wandered off trying to double with Bertrand on Downing and left Suarez completely unmarked on the edge of the box. Bertrand is blameless for this one. I'm the first to praise Luiz when he does well, but I'm also the first to point out his mistakes because I like him as a player.

Hmmm...Nop, sorry, I'll continue to express my opinion, but thanks for the suggestion..

No the point is it to prove, by logic that is clear to the majority of people, that your opinion is more viable. Trying to discredit the other people by trying to paint a picture of them that they are not 'fit' enough to give an opinion (Like question if I watched the match) is just weak attempt to hide that you don't have faith in the logic in your opinion or your own skills to prove it. I don't want to get into a debate about the horrible game Luiz played yesterday, but I think it is quite clear that the better option yesterday was the composed short passing. I watched the game (twice as a matter of fact) and, again, I though Mikel was very good for reasons I've already stated twice. Great theory, except I do criticize Mikel, every time he has a bad game, as well as in general. I've said many times that he's slow and needs to react faster at times. In fact, in the same post you just quoted, I said he's had a bad month and is off-form atm

Here's a little advice: You can always skip my posts in this thread if they annoy you so much.. Another little advice: Try to learn to argue without trying to discredit other people's opinions. Their opinions are worth just as much as yours, you know? Yeah, he certainly hasn't had a good month except the games against United. Could be fatigue or just could be that he's off-form atm. But I honestly thought he was very good yesterday, especially in the first half where he broke up play nicely and was composed enough to find the right pass (unllike Luiz who was just playing the long ball to no one in particular every time).

Thought he had a very good game yesterday, especially in the first half. And that goes the same for all the 5 men we had the middle yesterday. Shame that the Suarez BS eclipsed the game because there were some real positives to take from the match. I though it was one of our midfield's 'better' performances. Too bad our back four were just terrible and we were playing without a striker. On topic, I thought John was his usual composed self on the ball and he did very well defensively with some interceptions and standing tackles. I loved how he hounded the ref into giving Suarez a yellow card for the hand ball Good leadership skills when our captain and vice captain were not on the pitch.

Lazy marking for the second goal as well. He even lost a few balls dangerously and was lucky we did not pay for his those mistakes. Just had a terrible game all around.

The FA will tell you it was more "hand to mouth"!

He hasn't had the best of months, has he? Completely understandable at his age, hope he finds his form again.

How could the ref have seen that?! 1) It was off the ball. 2) There are 20 other players on the pitch to look out for. 3) A bite is not exactly something a ref looks out for. He probably saw that there was a coming together between Iva and Suarez, but who in the world would have guessed: "Hey, maybe he bit him"?! 4) It took 3 replays for us, the viewers, to actually see what happened and a couple of minutes to comprehend that he actually bit him! If you want to blame the ref for something, blame him for not blowing the whistle on time, or for not showing Shelvey or Sturridge red cards. But all that aside, if Luiz and Iva were "doing their job" and marking the only man in the box in the 97th minute, we would still have gotten the 3 points.

He was MOTM as his team (can't spell their name right!) beat Anderlecht to go top of the league!

Inevitably had a good game against us, but my opinion about him has not changed one bit. He is far from a world class player and won't ever be. But he is certainly better than Torres and was treated very unfairly by the club. The lack of minutes he got this season were disgraceful. We made a mistake in selling him and keeping Torres. Bottom line is, had we sold our other striker like we should, we would have picked up 3 points yesterday.

Why has that late goal yesterday changed so many people's opinions? Most of you would have taken 4 points from Fulham and Liverpool 5 days ago. Nothing has changed much really. It is going to be tough like we knew it would be and we're going to have to get something from the Tottenham game like we were always going to have to. Hopefully that late goal works in our advantage and the players have more of the "us against the world" mentality and come out with a bit more fight.

The incident was off the ball, the ref couldn't see it. I don't blame the ref for that, refs miss stuff in every game. And we shouldn't rely on someone doing something incredibly stupid and getting himself sent off to win games.

How does Suarez's bite excuse our school-boy defending? All the back four were just terrible, throughout the match. That's were the two points were dropped. This thread will only help deflect the blame from the real problems in our team.

But can we really risk dropping more points in the league, even if it is a 1% risk?

Suarez take-out menu :

I get that we are all frustrated and that emotions are high, atm, but there is absolutely no need for that kind of language.

Right, need to move away from that horrible Liverpool game as quick as possible. I've been saying that we take this competition seriously but we just can't take any more risks in the league. We need 13 points of the remaining 15. So we should really start the 'B' team for this one.

Bite marks on his hand:

I though all of the 5 in the middle were excellent today, hazard by far the MOTM, but the points were dropped in defense. That last goal is just embarrassing Sooo lazy from both Iva and Luiz. If I were the manager, I'd be giving them a piece of my mind now.

Was terrible defensively. I would say he was the worst player on the field, but Luiz somehow managed to be worse today. Shambolic defending by all of our defense today.