Newcastle’s porousness and Liverpool’s attacking incisiveness could spell another bleak afternoon for McClaren, whose position is reportedly under threat after just two wins in 14 league games.
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Speaking on Sky Sports after the game, former Liverpool midfielder Hamann said: “A tame Lovren header [in the 85th minute] was the first shot Rob Elliot had to save”.
The 19-year-old scored in Liverpool’s 6-1 away win in the Capital One Cup against Southampton to increase his goal tally to two this season. The players care and there is desire – you saw that today. Even now the attendances are wonderful and I understand what they are going through.
Many would equate Skrtel’s most recent performances to be just average.
McClaren says that loss – in his penultimate game in charge – and a 2-0 defeat at Dortmund earlier that season did him no favours. “We only just arrived on time”.
But McClaren knows he needs to make it all come together quickly and added: “To be perfectly honest, at the moment, if everything was as it should be, we’d be winning more matches”. That was one of the reasons I joined Manchester City because they had not won anything for a long time.
Throughout his short Liverpool tenure, Klopp has made it a point not to look too far into the future.
In the wake of the evisceration of Manchester City, he mentioned Liverpool’s defending had been poor.
“I can imagine playing in a league which rates physical football”. If we combine those two bets in a score-cast, then we get very tempting odds of 251.
Klopp has also received some good news from the treatment room however, as Kolo Toure, who picked up a knock on the knee in training, travelled with the squad to the north east. What we are working on is coordinating our efforts as a team, recognising when the time is right to go for the ball and when to sit off, and having people doing it together.
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Under Klopp, Liverpool have conceded only 8 goals in 11 games, which suggests that the current defensive unit is capable of consistent solidity.
