6 Feb 2012

Liverpool Line-Up vs. Spurs: Enrique injured; Bellamy starts

As I predicted earlier today, Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has left Luis Suarez on the bench for tonight's game with Spurs at Anfield.

Jose Enrique is injured, which probably means Glen Johnson will play at left-back.

Full Team: Reina; Kelly, Skrtel, Agger, Johnson, Spearing, Adam, Gerrard, Kuyt, Bellamy, Carroll.

Subs: Doni, Suarez, Henderson, Coates, Downing, Carragher, Aurelio.

I'm surprised to see both Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing on the bench; it's the first time this season that both have been on the bench at the same time in a league game. I think it's a good decision, and given his good form at the moment (i.e. actually contributing towards goals) I would definitely choose Charlie Adam over Henderson in central midfield.

Probable formation:

----------------------- Reina

Kelly --------- Skrtel ---- Agger ----------- Johnson

-------------- Spearing ----- Adam

Kuyt ---------------- Gerrard -------------- Bellamy

---------------------- Carroll

For me, Carroll up front on his own is a mistake for this game. Spurs have pace all over the field - including defence - and with Bellamy and Kuyt likely to be defending more than usual due to presence of Bale, I can see Carroll becoming pretty isolated.

Alternatively, we could see a standard 442 formation:

----------------------- Reina

Kelly --------- Skrtel ---- Agger ----------- Johnson

Gerrard ------ Spearing ----- Adam ---------- Bellamy

------------------ Kuyt ---- Carroll

I personally prefer this formation, but whatever way Liverpool play, there is one inescapable fact: Bellamy aside, this team severely lacks pace, and Spurs will probably exploit that.

Jaimie Kanwar


57 comments:

  1. I think we got a good chance of grabbing win tonight. Spurs don't have their first XI either, though the obvious key players are there, apart from Lennon and in-form Kaboul. Kranjcar is not all that a player and poor replacement for Lennon. They haven't got a great bench either tonight. 

    If Bellamy turns it on tonight, we got a damn good chance of winning. 

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  2. Just to add, didn't realise that Spurs have so many injuries at the moment, with no VDV, Lennon, Sandro, etc.

    We can win tonight!!!

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  3. Liverpool are very poor at playing 4-4-2. Our strength is keeping the midfield packed. Final delivery will be essential as well as the support that   Carol get. I feel the strikers will tuck in to support Carol. If he holds up the ball well we can cause them damage.

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  4. First half gone. Some has to take a gamble when we get the crossess from the byline. When Carol attacks it towards goal. One of the midfield should be ten yards behind him to pick up any clearance.

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  5. Disappointing performance going forwards from us, considering Spurs are there for the taking 

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  6. Come on kk take Adam off...useless as usual ...

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  7. wwhy take kuyt off when Adam should have been took off and Gerrard into his position ...

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  8. WWhy the fck is Adam still on the pitch...what does he offer to the team...too slow and everything sideways and back to reina ...kk wake up

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  9. Two points dropped, as we dominated the game.

    To make it worse, they had the best chance of the game with Bale, despite us dominating the game and them being generally poor.Our best chances of breaching the Spurs defence was with hoofball with Carroll, instead of the passing game we were trying to do for most of the game. Frustrating.Carroll is like Wayne Rooney with all his constant cursing and moaning at the ref. Just as bad, if not worse. Add Suarez' moaning and theatrics, we got a right pair up front. Just hope they can conjure up the goals to mask their behaviour

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  10. We just don't have anyone producing defense splitting passes except for the occasional Gerrard magic. Getting the ball from midfield to attackers is either made via a hoof or from some set piece. Let's get a German in to teach some attacking tactics..

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  11. We stopped a rampant Spurs team playing! Yes we should have won we need work on the final ball, but anyone can moan about the performance or slag off any of the players is having a laugh especially when most on here think most of them aren't fit to wear the shirt!

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  12. Not happy at all, with what Suarez did on Parker. Stupid idiot. 

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  13. Oh how the standards have fallen

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  14. A rampant spurs without their best three attacking players...defoe...van der vart ...lennon ....says something about us

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  15. You know what, Suarez can get the **** out of Anfield if he is going to do more cowardly acts, like he did tonight against Parker. Have had to put up with his theatrics but this is even worse. Coward.

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  16. Another childish post-match set of comments by KK

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  17. Who are you kidding Mali??  Surely you haven't forgotten about Adebayor(9 goals, 7 assists), Modric(3goals, 6 assists) and Bale(10 goals, 8 assists)!!

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  18. Thank god we are still in the cups...thought carroll had another good game and his lay off's were coming off well today. Suarez is back and needs game time!! Bring on the mancs!!

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  19. As usual, Mali341 is back on form. You post rubbish when win (once in a blue moon), draw (everytime) or lose (everytime). Please go support another team.

    Luckily Bale was kept out of the game. Gutted about the result. Yet another draw at home but Suarez is back and please from now on play Kelly at RB. What a waste it has been sitting him on the bench. He should never have been relegated as a sub when Johnson came back from injury.

    Carroll is improving with every match which is great. Personally I would have taken of Spearing and brought on Henderson and Suarez for Kuyt was the right move, should have been done sooner as Kuyt did not do much in the match.

    Suarez to take his revenge on Evra, bring it on :)

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  20. Modric,Parker,BALE,Adeybayor,Ekotto and Walker still enough fire power and speed to run us ragged but they didn't only VDV was missing, Defoe and Lennon are subs and Defoe? Thought most fans on here turned their nose up at Defoe! 

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  21. Most on here were expecting us to get turned over! The team showed they have got the pace and power to match a team like Spurs .The final ball was a let down but there were still chances to win the game and the Spurs defence throwing themselves in front of everything. After what Spurs did to us away with 9 of that team starting (no Defoe or Kaboul) the team showed they have progressed.

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  22. If we cannot beat tottenham without half of their first team playing then lets kiss 4th place good bye

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  23. What standards are you talking about? Seeing that we haven't won the league in over 20 years you must be talking about the 80s!
    Hyypia? Rather have Hansen!

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  24. Mate are you saying that the spurs team today was at full strength

    it shows how inept we are when we play a team with so many first teamers missing who were there for the taking and yet we are celebrating a draw

    if we had Agger Gerrard bellamy and suarez missing and played a top ten team; we'd have problems

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  25. The Spurs team that is THIRD and still had NINE of the players that started against us at Spurs earlier in the season!

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  26. That doesn't mean they are the best nine in the squad. Kaboul is immense, van Der vart lennon and defoe have over 30 goals and assists between them

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  27. Charlie Adam is meant to be doing the passing but as usual instead of defense splitting passes ....its back to reina or sideways

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  28. Agree with you about Carroll improving ...

    .as for Adam he's playing like Adam and not Alonso...

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  29. Still 9 of the 11 that took us apart at Spurs and gave us the run around!

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  30. I must be one of the rare oddities besides j75j who thought our boys put in a magnificent performance. Spurs barely got a chance to play! Assou Ekotto was pinned back almost the entire game and Bale was not given much space to run into, and when he did, Agger protected our goal well.

    For all of Parker's excellent anticipation, our high pressure execution starved him of any meaningful outlets for a pass. Somewhat like I suggested previously, we man marked Parker and Modric out of the game, but instead of using Henderson, Gerrard was parked on Parker. It didn't matter that Spurs were devoid of some of their stars. The 4 who truly counted were indeed on the pitch against us and they were all but completely neutralised. The emergency slotting of Kelly in at right back with Johnson out left meant that not only was Kyle Walker outpaced, the defensive nous of of Kelly left us wondering "Gareth who?" until the 85th minute.

    Not only was Spurs comprehensively neutered, we were, for large parts of the game, able to hem them in within their own half and at the same time, only allowed them 1 counter of any note at all. There is no team our boys find harder to defend against. Arsenal come a close second with Man City a not too distant third. I was expecting the worst when I saw Adam's name on the teamsheet, but Kenny's big surprise was using Gerrard defensively against their star defensive player. Modric may be the playmaker, but Parker sets the pace and wins him the ball. When Spurs lost at Old Toilet, neither Parker nor Modric played. With those 2 marked out of the game, it was Adam orchestrating our moves, which explains why we were so slow, but if not for the tactics used, we would HAVE been hammered. It was how well our guys did that the very idea we could have been hammered seems ludicrous.

    If Johnson played at rightback, he would have been owned by Bale, not for pace, but for being dodgy defensively. Man-to-man against Walker, Johnson edges it on experience and it was telling when Walker no longer saw any sense venturing forward, which gave Johnson tonnes of space to operate. Modric and Parker aside, the other Spurs players aren't great passers, and with Parker restricted to fouls and clearances, Johnson was able to mop up any loose balls, of which there were plenty.

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  31. That time when we had 2 players sent off.

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  32. a German? would rather have some Spanish from the Barca school of football.

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  33. I agree that we outplayed them and it is a very positive point. However, I'm dismayed that they still had a much better chance to score in the game than we did. This story could have easily been one of total Liverpool domination but with a 0-1 scoreline..

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  34. Good points but I must say we do not have good delivery from the widths. Our strength is in the centre and our weakness is the wide area in attack.

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  35. Quality of the crosses was absolutely rubbish! We could manage only one proper cross to Carroll's chest which he blew off the target!

    Kenny needs to give them lesson on how to cross!

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  36. So for all our tactics on keeping them quiet and keeping the ball, we didn't create much and only looked dangerous with hoof ball.

    We are at home, we are Liverpool, they had players missing and we had a lot of the ball...therefore, we should be creating chances...and we simply didn't

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  37. Why did we get 2 players sent off? Because we couldn't get any where near them and kept giving away fouls!

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  38. Why is everyone on here making excuses for Spurs?
    They have allowed 4 players to leave in the transfer window Pavlyuchenko, Pienaar,Corluka and Bassong! They were missing VDV he his the only one out of the front line missing who has been a starter this season. Lennon hasn't even played half the games this season he has been injured and Defoe has mainly been a sub this season.

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  39. This is where we were a let down the crossing and final balls, over and over again we would get into threatening positions and hit the first man with our crosses or over run the ball!
    Most probably why Carroll missed when he blasted it over, shocked that the ball had reached him. 

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  40. Probably because Kuyt was turning in yet another typically pitiful performance, while Adam was driving forwards from central midfield

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  41. Adamoffers those curled balls from deep into box for the forwards to attack.

    Even if nothing else, that's a lot more than Kuyt has to offer - he can't even control the ball to complete a pass, much less pass it sideways!

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  42. You need players with pace as targets for those defense splitting passes, otherwise it's just pointless and the defenders will just mop them up easily every time...

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  43. The point wasn't handed to us. Tottenham are a good team and put out a strong lineup against us (unlike Man U earlier in the season).

    We had to play well to earn that point, and I would've expected Liverpool to be getting more credit for such a performance tbh

    Unfortunately Bellamy had his worst game in a while, and was joined in his ineffectiveness by Kuyt on the other side, so there was no incisiveness from out wide (which is sooo important and why I'm always going on about wingers) but overall it was a good team performance as far as I'm concerned

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  44. lmao Lennon is better than Bale now right?? Defoe is a bench player and I've never seen a team's "best" player subbed as much as VDV!

    It says something about you that you want to pretend that Spurs sent out some understrength team last night...

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  45. So many first teamers missing?? EVERY team will typically be missing 2 or 3 first team players in any given game.

    Just last night we were without Enrique & Lucas with Suarez not trusted to start - I think that tallies up with the loss of VDV and Lennon from Spurs' first choice 11!

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  46. You're just lying to yourself if you're going to argue that Mr. 60 minutes, Cheapo Walcott and Mr. Super-sub (the guy that fans were turning their nose up at just a mere week ago!) are the best players in the Spurs squad.

    - King is easily Spurs' best centre back. And Dawson is immense.
    - Modric and Parker are the team's most important midfielders.
    - The teams attack is built around Adebayor.
    - Adebayor, Bale & Modric have over 30 goals between them (I can pluck stats out of the air too!)

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  47. Bale played on the right for most of the second half and I didn't see him "owning" Johnson at all.

    I don't know why people are soooo loathe to give Johnson any credit at all, but he had guys running at him all game and he shut them down each and every time. While still getting forwards to support the attack, even playing on his weak foot. He made sure that the absence of Enrique was barely even noticed.

    Everybody's so eagerly waiting for him to make just one mistake that they can latch onto, and the blacklash against him is so harsh that Johnson has actually become ridiculously underrated now!

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  48. Did people really go into the game expecting Spurs not to have a single chance throughout the entire 90 minutes??

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  49. Van Der vart ....7 goals 4 assists in premier league

    Defoe....8 goals in prem

    yet they are crappp ???


    Compare them to our stars.....Carroll and Adam who were playing....says it all

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  50. Dawson is immense? that's why he's played 5 games this season and Kaboul who in your point of view is not good has 21 full games in the prem this season.

    That's like saying carragher is immense compared to agger

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  51. Can you point out where I, or anybody else, said that they were "crappp"?? (Aside from the topic where Defoe was being linked to us of course...)

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  52. can you point out where I actually said that Kaboul is not good?

    (btw Dawson has been suffering with injury problems all season. When he plays, he typically plays well)

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  53. I badly worded cos was in a hurry but the impression being given to me is that if Lennon ..Defoe..van Der vart and Kaboul were playing the other nite then spurs would have been a weaker team and to me spurs were weaker without

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  54. They are Spurs, they were only missing 1 dangerous player - vdV. Parker might have been shackled, but that didn't stop him from putting in an excellent shift in the space he was limited to. While he couldn't pick out Modric or start anything for Spurs, he still protected his defenders well, which accounted for our own lack of opportunities. Dawson is also a better defender than Kaboul on a good day, except Kaboul was always more likely to get a good day and it just so happened Dawson had one against us.

    We're still unbeaten at home.

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  55. So much for your analysis...

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