Liverpool match thread

[Linz]

Your chance to vote for your man of the match...

The result will be used to determine the named man of the match on the match report.

 

[silverfox]

Geary for me closely followed by Stretch.

But hey all the team were great today!

 

[Greasy Chip Butty]

Geary for me closely followed by Stretch.

But hey all the team were great today!

Other way round for me, Stretch followed closely by Geary, but it was a good overall team performance with some nice play

 

[Linz]

Gone for Armstrong purely for the amount of ground he covered.

Bet this time last year he wasn't expecting to be here today

 

[Sharpy]

Stretch followed closely by armstrong

eh?

Unsworth did play well i will admit, still too many long balls though.

Geary was also good but again passing was poor

Armstrong was also good but offers little going forward

Morgan was good 1st half but looked dodgy in the 2nd half.

Tonge was good in 1st half but hardly got a sniff in 2nd

Jags same as Tonge although he was ok when put into defence

Ifill didnt really have a chance to do anything

same with webber who must learn to pass more

MOTM - Hulse, ran more than any other player on the pitch and scored.

 

[Greasy Chip Butty]

eh?
.

and honest mistake, i'll edit it

 

[7UpJordan]

Morgan kept heading any long balls in straight back out again, that was definately NOT a penalty, so he gets my MOTM.

 

[rotherhamblade]

toss up between stretch and unsy for me so i wont vote for either,stretch covered massive amounts of ground and was involved in alot of our build up play, unsworth made some very important challenges

 

[silverfox]

Good thread this.

Just shows what a great team performance this was.

Building teams is the hard bit too!

 

[shorehamview]

Jags for me, defended well and linked the attack through the middle pretty well too. With a good team performance like this, it could go to most of them.

 

[Linz]

Good thread this.

We will be doing it for every match so keep looking out for your man of the match as you watch the Blades this season

 

[joe1889]

PLAYER RATINGS-

Kenny - Did what was asked of him - 2 good saves especially from Armstrong in the 1st half - 7/10
Geary - Did ok - got caught a couple of times - but didn't look out of place
6.5/10
Unsworth - Great free kick for Hulse's goal - great block on Fowler when clean through - other than that too many long balls - was asked to man mark Gerrard - will struggle against out and out wingers. 6.5/10
Bromby - Kept a good line - steady without standing out - unfortunate to get injured - 6.5/10
Morgan - Not his biggest fan , but gave his all - good captains performance - unlucky with penalty - 1st touch still a problem - 7/10
Armstrong - Got about them - better 1st half but that applied to all the midfield -will get better as season progresses - 7/10
Tonge - Faded badly in 2nd half apart from a great piece of tracking back - the 1 person who is capable of making great strides and creating things - 6.5/10
Jagielka - Did what he was instructed to do - never ventured into oppositions half - ok performance in midfield and filling in for Bromby did ok - 7/10
Ifill - Big fan but didn't do it for me today - lost posession twice in 1st half which could have been costly - 5/10
Webber - Excellent 1st half - not much service in the 2nd , but gave Rhino good cover - good tactic putting him on the wing , looked up for it , good feet - we needed same threat from the right which just didn't happen - maybe would have liked him to have played in the hole behind Hulse and Armstrong playing wide left with 20 minutes left 4-4-1-1 as Hyypia and the substitute centre half Agger had too much time and space to bring the ball forward unchallenged - 8/10
Hulse - Brilliant debut - great goal - held it up brilliantly in 1st half - 2nd half , balls played into him were 6 inches too high , but won 90% of his headers - 9/10 *star player *
Substitutes -
Gillespie - Did ok when he came on - good tracking back - 6/10
Leigertwood - 1st touch poor - did ok - 5/10
Akinbuyi - Not the time to make his mark on the game - 1 half chance - 5/10

Overall , i think we caught Liverpool on a bad day . 100% effort given but will need to keep posession better as the season goes on. 2 shots on target at home in 90 minutes is a poor return.
Would have liked us to have gone for it once we scored , Liverpool looked defensively inept especially when the ball played in behind the centre halves and in front of the keeper.
Still think we need that special player maybe in the Koumas mould to make things happen.
Ecstatic with the result , but we can play better. We need to make our own mark on a game as passion and commitment will only take you so far. Gave the ball away too easily in the 2nd half and hoofing it as far as you can is not the answer in this league.
Once again Gerrard was our nemesis , but looking at the 2 squads , theirs must have cost over £100m and to which Gerrard and Carragher cost nothing , to ours which cost about £10m in total , we looked their equals in every department.

Result - 9/10
Performance - 1st half 9/10 , 2nd hald 5/10 overall 7/10.
WELL DONE BLADES

 

[Sharpy]

Kenny - Did what was asked of him - 2 good saves especially from Armstrong in the 1st half - 7/10
Geary - Did ok - got caught a couple of times - but didn't look out of place
6.5/10
Unsworth - Great free kick for Hulse's goal - great block on Fowler when clean through - other than that too many long balls - was asked to man mark Gerrard - will struggle against out and out wingers. 6.5/10
Bromby - Kept a good line - steady without standing out - unfortunate to get injured - 6.5/10
Morgan - Not his biggest fan , but gave his all - good captains performance - unlucky with penalty - 1st touch still a problem - 7/10
Armstrong - Got about them - better 1st half but that applied to all the midfield -will get better as season progresses - 7/10
Tonge - Faded badly in 2nd half apart from a great piece of tracking back - the 1 person who is capable of making great strides and creating things - 6.5/10
Jagielka - Did what he was instructed to do - never ventured into oppositions half - ok performance in midfield and filling in for Bromby did ok - 7/10
Ifill - Big fan but didn't do it for me today - lost posession twice in 1st half which could have been costly - 5/10
Webber - Excellent 1st half - not much service in the 2nd , but gave Rhino good cover - good tactic putting him on the wing , looked up for it , good feet - we needed same threat from the right which just didn't happen - maybe would have liked him to have played in the hole behind Hulse and Armstrong playing wide left with 20 minutes left 4-4-1-1 as Hypia and the substitute centre half Agger had too much time and space to bring the ball forward unchallenged - 8/10
Hulse - Brilliant debut - great goal - held it up brilliantly in 1st half - 2nd half , balls played into him were 6 inches too high , but won 90% of his headers - 9/10 *star player *
Substitutes -
Gillespie - Did ok when he came on - good tracking back - 6/10
Leigertwood - 1st touch poor - did ok - 5/10

Akinbuyi - Not the time to make his mark on the game - 1 half chance - 5/10
Tonge a 6.5 yet jags( Tonge was miles better than jagielka today, anybody could see that) gets a higher mark? Tonge faded but so did jags.

Jury is still out on ifill and jagielka in the prem for me.

 

[The One]

i thought geary had a good game today too. Didn't let anyone down. Battled hard.

 

[I Love Chip Butties]

sorry joe, them ratings have one big problem . . . .

TONGE outshone JAGIELKA yet again. We dominated the game when Tongey took control, jagielka wasted too many balls and just booted it forward when there was no-one there.

Apart from that id say they were pretty acurate

 

[joe1889]

Akinbuyi - Not the time to make his mark on the game - 1 half chance - 5/10
Tonge a 6.5 yet jags( Tonge was miles better than jagielka today, anybody could see that) gets a higher mark? Tonge faded but so did jags.

Jury is still out on ifill and jagielka in the prem for me.

It is all about opinion Sharpy , and mine is that Jags stuck to his task very , very well today which mean't we kept our shape well.
Plus he had to play in 2 positions , and even though i thought Tonge would have been rated as 8/10 in the first half but probably 5/10 in the second , i thought 6.5/10 is in my opinion a fair reflection of his OVERALL performance.

Regarding Akinbuyi , i always rate players at 5/10 , whether they play 1 minute or 90 minutes as 5/10 represents average or a good starting point.
So for a player to be rated 3 or 4 out of 10 is again in my opinion a below average performance , and 6 or 7 out of 10 as an above average performance.

Thus given Akinbuyi got the same ratings as Ifill (who HAD the time to impress but DIDN'T ) shows that he didn't really have time to give an above average performance.

 

[joe1889]

sorry joe, them ratings have one big problem . . . .

TONGE outshone JAGIELKA yet again. We dominated the game when Tongey took control, jagielka wasted too many balls and just booted it forward when there was no-one there.

Apart from that id say they were pretty acurate

Again ILCB , it is all about opinions and i am NOT slating Tongey in the slightest. I thought Tongey was excellent in the 1st half and he is the 1 player on show today who we rely on for the creative spark.
You are right that when Tongey took control we looked a threat , but once he was out of the game , our performance subsided somewhat , whether you put that down to poor distribution by his team-mates is open to discussion.
A lot is expected of him this year , and on the showing of the first 45 minutes , he will surely be up there at the end of the season when it comes to picking up awards but i feel he needs to give that kind of performance over 90 minutes and not just 45.

 

[Sharpy]

Fair enough pal, dont think we help either by sitting back in the 2nd half. Id like to see jagielka at right back this season tbh, he has every single asset needed to play there.

Tonge was excellent in the 1st half and jags was good, hopefully we can keep the ball abit better in future games so that these type of players can create things for us.

4-4-2 for blackburn hopefully.

 

[rotherhamblade]

i agree with everything there sharpy and put leigeterwood in the centre of midfield

 

[joe1889]

Fair enough pal, dont think we help either by sitting back in the 2nd half. Id like to see jagielka at right back this season tbh, he has every single asset needed to play there.

Tonge was excellent in the 1st half and jags was good, hopefully we can keep the ball abit better in future games so that these type of players can create things for us.

4-4-2 for blackburn hopefully.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments there Sharpy.
Personally , i think Jags should make the right back spot his own .
There are certain matches when he is a very good box to box player but i think he was given specific instructions to sit in front of the back four yesterday.
I feel Quinny should come into the equation at some stage.
Tongey is a player i rate highly who needs to be involved in everything going forward as he is a gifted individual but the donkey work side of things should be left to players like Jags or Leigertwood.
Yesterday we sat back too deep after we scored and we just gave the ball away too easily thus making us chase everything without having an outlet.
We will learn that posession is an important quality in this league .

 

[S64 Blade]

Armstrong for me. Was excellent!

 

[Sharpy]

Armstrong for me. Was excellent!

He was awesome, i just watched the game back and he did soooo much running.

I was also a tad harsh on webber looking back, he did play alot better than i thought at the time. Geary was excellent in the first half but worried me in the 2nd tbh.

Morgan was outstanding thougout but unsworths long balls just kept the pressure on us in the 2nd half.

 

[The One]

He was awesome, i just watched the game back and he did soooo much running.

I was also a tad harsh on webber looking back, he did play alot better than i thought at the time. Geary was excellent in the first half but worried me in the 2nd tbh.

Morgan was outstanding thougout but unsworths long balls just kept the pressure on us in the 2nd half.

i agree with this, he defended well and didn't let the side down but did tend to try and play the long ball once too often.

 

[Linz]

It's a draw between Hulse and Armstrong

Thanks for voting and look out for the next MOTM thread on Tuesday.

 

[Greasy Chip Butty]

He was awesome, i just watched the game back and he did soooo much running.

I was also a tad harsh on webber looking back, he did play alot better than i thought at the time. Geary was excellent in the first half but worried me in the 2nd tbh.

Morgan was outstanding thougout but unsworths long balls just kept the pressure on us in the 2nd half.

The long balls did just give the ball straight back to liverpool because we had all our players back defending. But in the first half when we had players up the field the long cross field balls put us into good positions.

 

[Berks_Blade]

Pah, poll closed before I get home from Sheff and log on? . My vote would probably have been for Stretch, which makes him the late winner.

 

[Come from away]

This one was really a team effort, so my man of the match goes to the whole damn team.

 

[TonyAgana]

Pah, poll closed before I get home from Sheff and log on? . My vote would probably have been for Stretch, which makes him the late winner.

Well I only get chance to get online during the week and I vote for... Geary so it doesn't make any difference!!

Went for Geary because he's never been expected to play much of a part in the Premiership, he's been first on many Unitedite's lists for those players that won't cut the Prem. Surpassed most fans' expectations and will prove a thorn in the side of many-a high profile left winger (I can think of a few!!) this season.