Shots conceded per game by PL teams

We could score 100+ goals and not win the league, i guess it depends on how the goals are spread out, if you hit 3 everyone game youll likely win, but if you have a load of 5-0s then only score 1 or 2 in the others games youll likely drop alot more points, the real test will come when our attack has an off day and its up to the defence to not let a 1 goal advantage slip, but this is just me spouting random things..

It means our defence isn't bad but keepers are. Other top teams have one or two good keepers like Arsenal. We have none.

But the goals we concede arent just due to the keeper messing up all the time, its defenders making mistakes aswell, guess you can blame both really

Spurs have the best defence in the league, as they did last season as well. Not one Liverpool defender would make the best defence in the league.

comment by sandy, senior citizen, but young at heart (U20567)
posted 23 minutes ago
Spurs have the best defence in the league, as they did last season as well. Not one Liverpool defender would make the best defence in the league.
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I agree Spurs have the best defensive unit in the league, however Clyne over Walker would be an obvious improvement, individually. As a unit I'd keep Walker in as Spurs have a solid centre, in defence and in the middle with Dembele and Wanyama, so full backs better in attack are of most benefit to the team as a whole.

comment by Mike (U1170)
posted 4 hours, 47 minutes ago
"Not drawing any conclusions though"

Great article.
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Lazy journalism at its best...

comment by kneerash-23 Cara Gold (U6876)
posted 3 hours, 31 minutes ago

I'll discuss

It's a product of how we play, we hold onto the ball for prolonged periods against many sides therefore immediately restricting the amount of chances a side can have against us as they don't have the ball, LVG's united were the same in this respect.

Also the way we press, especially so high up the pitch means we regularly have a high number of turnovers again reducing the opportunity for a side to get a shot on goals against us.

It's actually not a shock to see this stat as it makes sense, allot of our defending is done with the ball if you get me, or in the first 10 seconds of us losing possession.

But you have a terrible defence I hear them cry!

Well we don't have a terrible one but it's certainly not brilliant my any means. The goals we concede are down to 2 main reason IMO, defending set pieces has been an issue for us for years, it's not specific to Klopp, we conceded several set piece goals so far, this, for me, isn't a reflection on our defensive system, it's a product of lapses in concentration or the opposition targeting areas they see a weakness in, also a bit of bad luck too, like take the goal v West Brom, offside and it fell perfectly to the lad, 9 times out of 10 that ball doesn't fall so perfectly, personally not too worried about this, think plenty of teams have similar issues and in the PL you face teams who are simply really good at set pieces and can hurt you from them, also overall we're not a very tall team, this will have an impact when defending set pieces.

Secondly we have issues if we give up possession cheaply, as the system means the full backs push on, if one of our centre backs or say Henderson gives the ball away inside our half we're in trouble as a team can spring a counter and end up with either extra men running at our centre backs or at least a 2 on 2 situation.

This added to basic lapses in concentration have led to us conceding too many soft goals, we've had this problem for a while again not exclusive to Klopp.

However if you look at the numbers we're improving albeit slowly. Matip has made a difference both aerially from set pieces and also in terms of his concentration levels being better than say Skertl or Toure / Sakho for example. Karius too has begun to make a difference as his starting position is naturally higher, this in turn pushes our centre backs further up and so we're defending from a higher starting position and therefore allowing us more time to get back into a defensive shape when countered on.

Also I think it's always worth pointing out that there is always 2 teams involved in a game and in the PL the opposition will nearly always create some chances to score, even when you dominate, like we did v Watford, a PL side will have some chances, while we did concede v Watford we also defended well in other situations where they attacked us, Karius mad a few decent saves.

When you're 5-0 up a lapse in concentration and/or aggression can be expected, what we need to ensure is when the game is tight we do our best to maintain the highest levels of concentration and not give away cheap goals like we did twice v Palace for example.

Mistakes will happen, I'm not overly concerned with that, the Lovren mistake for the first palace goal, nothing much Klopp or the rest of the defence can do about that. Lovren showed character to get the equaliser so that was great to see.
Overall we’re not as bad as made out at the back but we’ve plenty of room for improvement (and our fans tend to be a bit too defensive when defending the defence), so many pundits are throwing away remarks that you can’t win a title conceding so many goals while neglecting to point out that really the defence has not cost us points so far this season bar Burnley, we had more than enough shots to still win that game but we panicked, tried to force the issue by trying to score two goals in two mins, we’ve been much more patient in our build up since.

When we’ve given up a cheap goal we’ve generally answered the test, Arsenal getting us back to 3-4, West Brom making it 2-1, giving Palace two equalizers or Chelsea pulling it back to 1-2, each time we’ve done this we’ve seen the game out to win. Something only 12 months ago we didn’t have in our locker.




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tl;dr

comment by There'sOnlyOneReds (U1721)
posted 2 hours ago
comment by sandy, senior citizen, but young at heart (U20567)
posted 23 minutes ago
Spurs have the best defence in the league, as they did last season as well. Not one Liverpool defender would make the best defence in the league.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree Spurs have the best defensive unit in the league, however Clyne over Walker would be an obvious improvement, individually. As a unit I'd keep Walker in as Spurs have a solid centre, in defence and in the middle with Dembele and Wanyama, so full backs better in attack are of most benefit to the team as a whole.
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I should have balanced it up by saying Liverpool have the best attack in the league.

comment by sandy, senior citizen, but young at heart (U20567)
posted 3 hours, 7 minutes ago
comment by There'sOnlyOneReds (U1721)
posted 2 hours ago
comment by sandy, senior citizen, but young at heart (U20567)
posted 23 minutes ago
Spurs have the best defence in the league, as they did last season as well. Not one Liverpool defender would make the best defence in the league.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I agree Spurs have the best defensive unit in the league, however Clyne over Walker would be an obvious improvement, individually. As a unit I'd keep Walker in as Spurs have a solid centre, in defence and in the middle with Dembele and Wanyama, so full backs better in attack are of most benefit to the team as a whole.
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I should have balanced it up by saying Liverpool have the best attack in the league.
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You could have but then I would have thought your carer had commented on your account after you forgot to log out.

The trouble is people don't understand good defending in the modern game.

They say 'they can't defend', when what they actually mean is, 'on the very few occasions we bypass the press and get near their goal in numbers we might have a chance of having a shot'.

The way we play is all about defending, as well as attacking. It's the same with Barca, Bayern, City etc. Spain at their best.

It's modern football, defend by having the ball ans keeping the opposition away from your goal. That is defending, and seeing as we have won 11 of 14 games this season, id say we are doing it pretty well.

Burnley is the only game in the 14 where it didn't work, because we conceded a poor goal after 2 mins.

I can live with that happening once every 14 games thanks.