Mails: With the same budget, Klopp > Guardiola

Mails: With the same budget, Klopp > Guardiola

If we have to work, you have to mail. Keep them coming to theeditor@football365.com…

Great win, average performance
That was an excellent result which was born out of an incredibly average performance at best. Mane looked dreadful. I can only presume he’s completely knackered and hopefully the AFCON will at least have some games which are played at a slower pace than Klopp football. He definitely needs a rest. Can was very slow in possession and that often forced us to recycle the ball backwards in order to retain it when we were in promising positions. The only players to come out with a great deal of credit were Wijnaldum, Klavan and Mignolet.

Credit to Origi is also due. I think he must’ve been told when coming on to not even think about scoring and instead to hold up the ball and be a nuisance. He did an excellent job and took the pressure off the defence massively.

This definitely seemed to be a game in which Klopp tried to turn Guardiola’s focus on possession into a weakness. There seemed to be a plan to leave certain passing channels open to funnel the ball to Otamendi in defence or Sterling in attack and then once they were on the ball the hounding began. Both players had tough afternoons and gave away possession numerous times. It might’ve been that Silva and De Bruyne were just completely anonymous, particularly in the first half, but I thought it reflected a well executed plan by Klopp. I also thought we fouled more than usual and played a lot of long balls compared to normal.

I can’t imagine how many of that XI will be fit enough to start at Sunderland. It wasn’t the most fun to watch but it was exhausting for me on the sofa…can’t have been easy to play in.
Minty, LFC

Yeah, how dare you not work at 9pm on New Year’s Eve
What a disgrace not to publish a 16 conclusions on Liverpool v Man City. Shame on you F365.
Bruk (make us dream again) LFC

Gini in a bottle
That’s what Wijnaldum does. We may not win the league and I will bite your hand off for third right now but one thing is for sure: Jurgen Klopp is one lovely bastard!

I love you… happy new year everyone.
Pete (alcohol induced email), Birmingham

One conclusion
*Klopp is better than Pep as a manager. Yes, I said it, given the same resources, Klopp will beat Pep every single time.
Dave, Somewhere

Liverpool’s defence is hardly creaking
Read earlier today that Stan Collymore who achieved little as a player and even less as a pundit, thinks Liverpool won’t finish in the top four due to defensive frailties. He thinks Man City will win the League ahead of Chelsea (not sure how), Arsenal third and Manchester United fourth.

Lets just quickly look at goals conceded, as Liverpool have scored 6 more than closest team Man City:
Liverpool – 21
Man City – 20
Arsenal – 19

Chelsea don’t have a defensive problem at present but they are capable of conceding in quantity if the right team takes them on (Liverpool scored three) and City tore them to shreds time after time, didn’t take their chances.

Frankly tired of the defensive frailties argument, as it can be levelled at both City and Arsenal equally (but it isn’t) and after 18 games we have outscored both by far and not reliant on 1-2 players for the goals (Sanchez / Aguero Ibrahimovic etc).
Ash, LFC

Oh it’s on
I see Robbie Savage, Stan Collymore and now Harry Redknapp have all written Liverpool off.

Oh joy.

This has to be our year.
Garth Litmus

The clever plan
So, much to the annoyance of my wife, I commandeered the TV at my friends New Years party and plugged in my Chromecast and watched the football. Totally worth spending early 2017 in the doghouse.
Carl (crappy game though) the Welsh

Swansea made Bradley look okay
Swansea lost again yesterday. Players looked rubbish. It’s the first game under a new and non-American manager ergo he needs a reasonable amount of time before the results can be chalked up to his coaching.

It therefore stands to reason there must be some minimum sample size of results from which to draw aforementioned management. It’s how statistics works. Can anyone help me out with how to go about determining this minimum number of performances require to constitute a statistically significant sample size?

Of course not. But enough with the existential and let’s get a couple of inconvenient facts that, in my mind and the patterns it sees:
1) Those were the same players Bob Bradley had at his disposal. He arrived mid-season without a transfer window and was thus forced to work with the tools at hand.
2) if those same players deem themselves worthy of being called professionals (let alone deserving of their massive wages), can they claim that Bradley’s “archaic” coaching was responsible for a continuing degeneration of their technical abilities and thus the outcome of the match is such madness one genuinely HOPES that those stories in the rags WERE plants because surely no one could be so stupid as to actually say such a thing.
Was Bob Bradley of the standard or in possession of the qualities to save a flawed team from relegation? I’d hedge on the side of “yes” but is that in any way shape or form a reflection of his Americanism? That’s a bloody easy answer. It’s “no” and there’s no hedging there.
Matthew LFC Washington DC