I want to start by saying this has been a great season so far. Arne Slot and the Liverpool FC squad have by far exceeded realistic expectations. However, I think it’s only fair to say Slot got it wrong yesterday. It’s a learning curve for him though and it took Klopp a couple of years before he fully understood the FA Cup and the levels lower league teams can reach in a one off game.
The 2nd tier in England is not like it is in other European countries where they only have 2 tiers of professional sides. Plymouth, even at the bottom of the Championship, have to be better than at least 48 other full time professional teams. That’s more Pro-teams than there are in total in most other countries.
You saw in the Leyton Orient vs Man City game that when City were struggling for a breakthrough, Pep could turn to his bench and bring on someone like De Bruyne to turn the tide for them. For Slot’s most senior players on the bench to be Nunez (our 2nd choice CF) and Jones (our 4th choice CM) he really left himself with nowhere to go when Gomez picked up a knock and others weren’t at the races.
I don’t care who you are playing against, you don’t win a game of senior football playing most of the game with a midfield three who are 17, 20 and 21 years old. If it were possible, one of the Prem u21 teams would win the EFL Trophy every year. The worst part is, Curtis Jones was sat on the bench twiddling his thumbs.
Kelleher – didn’t have much to do in terms of saves but was far too slow to release the ball every time he had it. Cost us multiple chances to counterattack and even at the end when we needed a goal he had absolutely no urgency about him. 3/10
McConnell – clearly not a RB but was still better there than the other kid. He also did well in midfield for about half an hour, but he was badly hampered by his midfield partners. 5/10
Gomez – rushed back from the looks of it. Never looked right after slowing up in his first recovery sprint. Not really his fault but he was poor in his short stint on the pitch, probably as a result of the muscle injury. 4/10
Quansah – defended okay on the rare occasion he had to but he was against some truly woeful attackers. What mattered more for us was how well our defenders performed in the build up phases and he was truly abysmal with the ball. He gave it away several times trying to do too much and taking far too many touches. 3/10
Tsimikas – his worst ever game in a red shirt. His delivery from open play and set pieces was pathetic. It’s literally all that was required of him all game and I can’t remember one good cross. 2/10
Endo – didn’t have much time in midfield due to the Gomez injury. Shame as we needed his battling and experience in there. Played well at CB and was one of the few players who didn’t want 10 touches on the ball. He actually tried to keep the ball moving with 1 or 2 touches. MOTM, but it was a low bar. 7/10
Nyoni – out of his depth. Harsh reality is he’s just miles off being ready to start a must-win game of senior football. His passing was slow and after his yellow he was a passenger, unable or scared to make a tackle. 2/10
Elliott – embarrassing. After hassling Slot to give him a chance as the AM, he let everyone down, but nobody more so than himself. Bottled out of challenges, tried to force passes that weren’t on (which went straight out for goal kicks as a result) and just generally waltzed around in slow motion like Plymouth owed him a favour. His touch was also shocking and he got caught on the ball as a result several times.
The penalty was just the final nail in the coffin. I’m baffled why he chose to jump like he was playing basketball and cost our defence a clean sheet in a game where they were facing no legitimate goal threats. The first and probably last time I’m going to give someone a ZERO rating. I have no choice, because we’d have been genuinely better with 10 men. He was so poor that if you took him out the team and left us a man down, I think we’d have ground out a goalless draw. 0/10
Chiesa – A* for effort but a D for actual substance. One good cut back for Diaz and one good floated cross for Quansah. Other than that you’d be hard pushed to find anything he did well with the ball. 3/10
Jota – allowed himself to be bullied by their defenders. His end product just deserted him as well. He had one half decent effort from 20 yards near the end, but he was totally ineffective if I’m honest and the save was more routine than the blinder people have made it out to be. 3/10
Diaz – Poor bloke must be thankful he gets to play with our best team most weeks because he was virtually on his own out there at times. His hold up play was good and he fed Tsimikas in for perfect crossing opportunities multiple times only to see the Greek fluff them. He should’ve done better with Chiesa’s cut back, but he was probably in shock a pass had reached him. 6/10
Mabaya – same as Nyoni, simply out of his depth. Gutted that he had to be subbed off after being subbed on. That’ll wreck his confidence, but his performance level and needless booking for kicking the ball away left Slot with no other choice. 2/10
Nunez – ran around a lot, trying his hardest and had a couple of half chances. Drew the only proper save out of their keeper. Ultimately, was never going to change the game on his own, but at least he tried unlike a lot of those who started. 5/10
Kone-Doherty – another kid totally out of his depth. Did nothing but was unfair of Slot to throw him into that situation, in my opinion. 2/10
The positives to take away from this game are 1) that we won’t see a worse performance again all season and 2) that Slot and some of the kids will have learnt valuable lessons about the standards required in the FA Cup.
Let’s hope the weekend off for the first team is justified by us going and pummelling Everton on Wednesday to go 9 points clear. It’s a massive shame as we had a very real chance of winning the treble this season given the drop off from the other big hitters domestically and in Europe.
I still think this can be a season to remember though and hopefully yesterday is just a long forgotten low point by the end of May.
Written by MK Scouser February 10 2025 13:31:12
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