Erikse

Got rested today, allegedly due to fear of suspenion (yellows). Edit: didn't see that it was pre-planned.

Against Brentford (in isolation) I don't think there was one single instance where he was in the box and someone could have crossed to him, but didn't try. Burn tried once, but obviously that didn't go very well. There was one time where maybe Murphy should have passed it back to him, but went for the cross infront of goal instead. Our biggest problem against Brentford was to create any sort of attack at all, we usually gave it away before we even got to that stage. It is no secret though that the more we use Woltemade in the build up, the less he is going to be ready to finish a cross.

Moneypools second choice goalie starting over Raya..

Ah I thought he withdrew. My bad.

I didn't watch them match. How much was he involved in the buildups yesterday?

Yeah, but they needed to win by 12 or something to even have a chance.

Italy has to beat Norway 9-0 in the last game. Yeah, that's not happening. Norway finally qualified.

Italy is such a mess. Still hasn't scored against a team that Norway beat 11-1.

Well. Italy just gotta get through a 19 goal lead in 2 games. Not done yet.

Oh boy. If Norway doesn't beat Estonia..

Actually according to @Mase he was signed to play the first game of the season. How did we forget that? They needed a keeper that game, can't blame them.

They bought him when we were in for him just incase they didn't get an even better one. Because they can. While for us it was a big investment.. They don't have to make tough choices in the market, they can just choose both. That's PSR for you.

I don't mean to be pessimistic btw (maybe I was), just saying that finishing 7th would be decent all things considered. 6th or higher would be a huge turnaround.

I think we need a high scoring striker for that to happen. I know Woltemade will score goals, but I doubt he will be scoring at the same rate as Isak or Wilson did during our best winstreaks. That's why I mentioned Wissa going to AFCON. We beat every bottom 7 team away last season. Not sure how close we can get to replicating that, and the mid table teams are still an issue currently.

Considering our away form and congested fixtures, top 7 would probably be the best we can hope for imo (top 6 at a stretch). Especially if Wissa goes to AFCON. I would take 7th right now if someone offered it, although I think we could actually have a chance of winning Europa League if we qualified, especially now that CL teams doesn't drop down into it.

"Livramento joined Chelsea at under-9 level from local club Roundshaw. At Roundshaw he played as a striker." We don't need Wissa.

At 14:25 you can see that Liverpool really didn't care that much about winning the EFL cup in 2024, as the celebrations were calm and collected. In the background you can observe that the Chelsea players weren't really bothered about losing the final. After all it was just a small trophy to them.

Aye. They had 1 game of importance left, a final, and they weren't motivated for the game, because they all their focus was on tournaments that were already over before the game.

They had just been eliminated by PSG, all they had left to play for was the final against us.

No team in England (or any major league for that matter) will ever not be 100% motivated for a domestic cup final. Other than money, these players only care about winning as many trophies as possible. If anything, our players would have more nerves considering that it might be their last chance to win something like that, while most of the Liverpool players are used to playing finals. They went through the entire tournament game by game only for that final, and then they somehow weren't 100% motivated to win it?

If this is how it is in the EFL Cup, why don't other teams than the biggest ones win it? Surely there are many teams in the league who "wants it more" every season, who hasn't won anything in ages?

I have no idea, but to me the EFL Cup feels better, because of who we beat on the way. What is your point with that, though? When judging how big an achievement is, surely what matters the most is how difficult it is to achieve?

Compare the winners of the EFL Cup to the winners of the Conference League.. Chelsea won it on walkover last year, only because they just happened to be in it. Other than that the winners are West Ham, Olympiacos and Roma. It is 10 times more difficult to win the EFL trophy than it is to win the Conference League.

That was actually 23/24, when we finished 7th. 85 goals, which is wild for 7th.

We're the first team outside the "big six" to win it since Swansea 2013, 12 years ago.