Buoyed by Optimism - Liverpool's Season Ahead
It’s a weird feeling not really knowing how to manage your expectations as a Liverpool fan. I’m 38 - a seasoned pro at this. However, never in my experience of supporting The Reds can I remember a feeling of such enthusiasm surrounding the club.
Not Then, Not Ever
Even after Rafa’s fantastic 08/09 team came within touching distance of the title there was still the unmissable grey Hicks & Gillett cloud hanging over Anfield. We knew Benitez had almost achieved …
Klopp's Liverpool and Doing Things the Fun Way
Playing the Liverpool way.
It’s a fairly common trope, perhaps an oxymoron when every football club seems to have a “way” these days – there’s even a “Norwich way”, apparently. For Liverpool fans, however, identity is everything. Football is bound together by its unique fan culture, the interconnectedness of the football landscape means stories are perpetuated, and Liverpool’s story is one of decorated trophy cabinets and an envied atmosphere.
Perhaps Anfield’s atmosphere hasn’t lived up to its hype recently.
But …
Can Pulisic Break the Curse?
All major signings come with an element of risk. Will they settle in a new country? Adapt well to the pace of the game here? Or to their new clubs tactical framework? For some players, the risk is an even greater one. Their name is Christian.
[caption id="attachment_35751" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Stewart Lee has really let himself go.[/caption]
Liverpool's problem with the name 'Christian' began back in 2000 when they illegally approached Christian Ziege and signed him by meeting the exact …
Why Christian Pulisic would be Liverpool's Ultimate Investment
With football’s ever-growing obsession with the word “potential”, it’s not often one gets to make statements of absolution. Indeed, football is obsessed with making resolute, consummate statements within a game that is transient and is cursed with never really knowing what is real and what is just, essentially, an educated guess.
Football clubs have the power of analysis, of an endless stream of statistics and opinions from those most qualified to make decisions, and yet no decision ever made could …
How Klopp Could Unleash the Big Guns in the 4-2-2-2
A manager requires perpetual change if he’s to succeed in the savage land that is the Premier League.
That’s the narrative that gets swung about on the regular, amidst pundits and fans alike. In Pep Guardiola’s first season, his tactical ministrations were seen as too imposing, not giving English Football’s top tier its due. Jose Mourinho has been accused of remaining “stuck in his ways” on multiple occasions; accusations which surprisingly were most stark in the Champions League against Sevilla. …
Why Pepijn Lijnders Would be the Ideal Buvač Successor
Liverpool refuse to do things the easy way.
5-2 up in a Champions League semi-final ahead of the second leg, Jürgen Klopp would surely have been less restless had his side already confirmed a top four place, but alas the looming figure that is the tie in Rome seemed to provide enough distraction for Stoke to slip away with a point.
Surely, focus was in order. Then news broke that Klopp’s assistant coach – one of the two men who …
The Klopp Revolution
The year is 2016, the date April 14th. Liverpool welcomed hordes of Dortmund fans as they flooded the city. The Germans had finally landed on English soil. It is the second leg of the Europa League Quarter-final, with Liverpool managing the all-important away goal in a 1-1 draw at the Westfalenstadion the week previous.
The fans greeted the team bus with vigour and joy not seen since the 13/14 season when the league seemed within our grasp. The Liverpool fans …
Klopp, Liverpool, and How Emotion Conquered Perfection
Ah, the word “passion.”
Somewhat overused in the day and age of exposition, Liverpool Football Club has something of a connection to the idea of pure, unadulterated passion in the vast landscape that is football. Everything is magnified tenfold, because of its relation to everything else in the football sphere.
So, when people marry the word “passion” with Liverpool; the fabled atmosphere, the manager, what are they actually saying? What use is passion, really, in a game so dominated by …
50 + 1 = Fan's FC
We have all heard of, or seen on TV, the electrifying atmosphere in Bundesliga stadiums. A sight rarely witnessed in football anywhere in the world. The Bundesliga is breaking attendance records each year – well over 40,000 on average at each game – this season so far that number is over 44,000. More than 1,000 fans out of the 80,000 packed Westfalenstadion in Dortmund are from England at each home game. There’s got be something that is worth the trip.
…
LIVERPOOL ON THE UP: A statistical look at pressing and team performance
Liverpool’s current league position and recent Champions League performance emphasise the fine job that Jurgen Klopp is doing. Things are not perfect, they indeed rarely are in football. However, despite the squad still being a work in progress, the year on year improvement is undeniable.
A large part of Liverpool’s success this season is down to the fine-tuning of the acclaimed gegenpress. The addition of the likes of Van Dijk, Oxlade Chamberlain and Salah have only served to add more …