24 Jun 2024 09:26:15
Surely the obvious move is to play 442 with Bradley as RB and Trent as a Beckham type right sided midfield player. Or 353 with Trent as a wing back. He is not and never will be a MF player.
{Ed025's Note - its amazing how you all want to change the formation of the side to accommodate Trent....is he really that good?, yes he can ping a ball because he has a wand of a right foot...and thats the end of the story, poor tackler, very weak in the air and positionally naive, yet you all think he should be a shoe in...maybe he has pictures of your birds naked on a motorbike or something.. :)
24 Jun 2024 09:46:13
Very accurate Ed
I think he has seen a decline in performance (maybe as he has been given less opportunity to roam forward) but if we play 4-3-3 and he’s allowed to step away from the inverted role it could give him energy back
But as you have suggested - he’d need a DM and CB to cover.
24 Jun 2024 10:09:18
It'd be to accommodate TAA and Bradley and since when has changing formation been such a bad idea?
You want your best players on the pitch and they are two of our best.
Players with a 'wand of a right foot' are scarce so you accomodate them. Players that can head and tackle are less scarce so they accommodate the player with the wand of a right foot.
{Ed025's Note - well thats one view i suppose..
24 Jun 2024 10:25:38
My take on Trent is this.
He’s good when he’s given space to play but doesn’t have the touch or skill on the ball to play as a winger or a midfield player. He can’t deal with being put under pressure and will invariably give up possession easily.
That doesn’t mean he’s a bad player, just that you need to play a system that allows him to be an extra man in space to get the best out of him. When you do that he can be unplayable and can make the whole team tick.
It baffles me how people (including Southgate) think they know better than Klopp who is one of the very best managers of the modern era. He’s known Trent since he was in the U23s and gave him his debut. He’s seen his development and knows everything about him. He’s knows EXACTLY what Trent’s strengths and weaknesses are as a player and as a person.
Yet Klopp has always resisted putting Trent in midfield or as a winger and instead made up a role which allows Trent to be a spare man in space, sometimes to the detriment of the defence. Why has he done that?
Because he knows that by doing it he can get the best out of him and his best is better than most.
Yet so many fans, pundits and even the England manager keep trying to get him into the midfield because they apparently know better.
Honestly it beggars belief.
{Ed025's Note - some good points there BP, i just dont think he is that brilliant that you build a team around him mate, at the moment hes a luxury player and im not sure there is a role for that in the modern game, maybe he will find his niche and improve to become a very good player...i really hope so, but at the moment i feel he is going nowhere..
24 Jun 2024 10:26:22
Bradley is a far better midfielder now than Trent will ever be. It works with Trent at RB when we take control of a game and that allows him to push forward.
24 Jun 2024 10:41:12
And it's good that there is more than one view, Ed025.
Look, we know what TAA can and can't do, generally. So you pick him for what he can do or don't pick him because of what he can't do.
There is no right or wrong.
{Ed025's Note - its just a topical debate Rigsby and as you say there are lots of different views on the subject, its not a witch hunt though just our own views on how we think his career can move forward mate..
24 Jun 2024 10:51:52
Good take that BP.
Genuine question as i seen the other day that Bradley plays further forward for Northern Ireland.
Is that in a wingback or forward role?
We don't have great cover for Mo and there's still talk of him going to the olympics and he has 12 months to go on his contract.
Bit of a wild one but could we see Trent and Bradley trialled on the right as Rignt back and right forward.
Just throwing it out there.
{Ed025's Note - i can see that JK..
24 Jun 2024 10:54:13
Coutinho possessed a lot of talent you know, we sold him coz he did not fit in the way Klopp wanted to play. I doubt Slot will have any interest to change his system and move around every other player to fit in Trent.
24 Jun 2024 11:51:35
He is that brilliant Ed at what he’s good at. His passing is sublime and he can be game changing from a dead ball but the manager has to make a decision because the rest of his game is fairly average.
Contrary to popular belief his defending is actually ok for a right back. There aren’t many who are great defenders which is why they end up as fullbacks in the first place.
I just wonder whether it’s Trent himself driving this midfield thing and giving up on defending because like I said earlier I don’t understand how people think they know Trent better than Klopp did. If Trent could’ve made it as a midfield player Klopp would’ve played him there. You can’t tell me that they wouldn’t have tried it numerous times in training, especially 2 seasons ago when our midfield was really struggling.
I think you’re right though, if you play him in midfield he becomes a luxury player that you just want the rest of the team to accommodate.
That’s probably why Klopp never did it.
{Ed025's Note - that makes a lot of sense to me BP..
24 Jun 2024 12:24:17
I agree, BP and Rigsby. Klopp did not pick TAA and coach him up based on what he ca't do. He picked him and coached him to be the best RB or outright one of the best footballers on the planet based on what he CAN do. That is literally the essence of coaching as in, putting a player in a situation to showcase his talents and hide his faults.
@BP as much as many of us may think Trent can play in midfield, there is no proof yet that he can play it and like you said and I also agree. If Klopp knew Trent could play full time in midfield, he had every opportunity to play him and yet, he didn't.
For me, Trent is an absolute unicorn in the things he can do with a football and his vision, technical and passing ability esp. from deep or short range and playing RB has allowed him to showcase all his talents. Hence for me, Trent should be playing RB like he has been doing all these years. Now since Slot likes inverted fullbacks, we will have to see what he does and that is NOT changing the team to fit in Trent. That is how Slot plays fundamentally.
24 Jun 2024 15:12:51
If we play 4 - 2 - 3 - 1 and have Bradley at RB - a genuine defender but with the freedom to overlap and TAA as a Pirlo / Xabi creator, supported by a genuine DM, our right side with Mo on the right side of the three seems ‘adequate’ to me. That said I’m not an expert and defer to the opinions of those on here who have their UEFA badges. Nearest I got was a Blue Peter badge and a picture of John Noakes and Shep.
24 Jun 2024 15:14:21
If TAA is a unicorn maybe that's why he can't head a ball.
24 Jun 2024 16:41:54
We sold Coutinho because he insisted on going. Nothing to do with Klopp's tactics at all. If memory serves correctly both Klopp and the club tried everything to get him to stay.
24 Jun 2024 17:42:40
I remember exactly the same thing about coutinho, flash, it’s not like couts couldn’t get a game under klopp, he was used whenever he was fit, so clearly he fit into klopp’s plans
As for Trent fitting into the way that slot plays, again I have to reiterate that the way Trent was used by klopp does not at all correspond to how slot gets his fullback to invert (only one inverts and steps into midfield to create an advantage) . Klopp has Trent step into midfield to be the orchestrator and spray risky passes into the attacking third, exactly like a quarterback in American football. This is an absolutely unique situation in football and can’t be compared to the way other coaches use inverted fullbacks generally, basically klopp and pep chose to invert Trent this way because Trent is Trent, if it was anybody else they wouldn’t play a quarterback role and assume the risks that Trent does with his passing.
Slot does not have his inverted fullback create from deep, and he doesn’t really use a lot of long passes to begin with, so even if Trent does feature in that role he will be asked to play it very differently because slot’s inverted fullback is more like a zinchenko than a Trent or even a Porro, they step in there to create an overload in the middle so they can advance up the field in triangles, and so in transition they don’t just get ploughed through the center of the park if they lose the ball.
The point is not that Trent should keep his place and play the way he did when we won all the cups, because slot’s system is simply not the same, at least the one he has been using at feyenoord generally, through the tweaks he had made over two or three years. The question is whether slot will devise a new system to accommodate Trent’s unique abilities, the way klopp and pep tried to do (with the caveat that defensively it left us very open because the defensive aspect of inverting the fullback was completely ignored, with there being no real plan to revert, as ed001 has said, and plug the spaces by returning to a defensive shape whenever we lose the ball after the risky passes we always make in the opposing half), and whether this new system works better than the one we had the last two years.
To my mind this is really the question, and contra ed025 I do think slot will think long and hard about how to get the best of the best progressive passer in European football, to the point of developing an entire formation to do so.
{Ed025's Note - a very informative post there PB, but forgive me for asking why you rate Trent as the best progressive passer in European football mate?, given plenty of room and space and if he felt like it at the time then maybe he makes the top 20 but i feel you are over egging him massively..
24 Jun 2024 18:07:06
I don’t think so Ed, he has a very unique skill set in world football I think, klopp and pep built a system around that skillset for a reason I think, now whether he is worth building a system around is another question, and whether there are better systems for that purpose is another, personally I think the centrality he had in klopp’s system was wrong because basically he was tasked with being a sort of miracle creator to find impossibly small windows in packed defenders, and that he wouldn’t have to do that if we advanced up the field quickly instead of as slowly as it took to give Trent the ball and have him take his time, but I find it hard to think of somebody with his range of passing and precision, maybe kroos, but kroos obviously doesn’t have anything like the same role.
I think if we find a way to make Trent and important creative outlet in an aggressive and fast tempo game rather than the primary creative outlet, then we will be smiling. His ability to whip any sort of ball in behind at speed or switch the play effortlessly to get us into space is just unlike anything I have seen in recent memory.
{Ed025's Note - i honestly dont know where you get this worship from PB i really dont, hes not KDB mate hes a half decent full back who when he gets forward can produce some great crosses, takes a good free kick and can shoot from distance at times....and thats it!!, he cannot walk on water, heal lepers or turn water into wine like you seem to think.. :)
24 Jun 2024 18:38:26
PB, how do you know that how Klopp inverted his fullback was an absolutely unique situation in football?
Nnd how does TAA have a very unique skill set? He's a good passer and ceosser of the ball but he's not very unique.
I don't think you can be very unique, anyway. You're either unique or you're not.
24 Jun 2024 19:03:38
At least I haven’t seen anybody play the inverted fullback position in that way, rigsby, I stand to be corrected if you can supply an example.
24 Jun 2024 20:22:00
So you don't know that it is absolutely unique, PB?
I can't correct you so we'll agree that it is unknown whether it is absolutely unique or not.