Our defence

[pauliewalnuts]

Oh, and another thing, one thing that niggled at me from the start with Torres was he'd only even played for his home town club, and his home town is a very small town.

Now he is abroad, at a different team, in a different league. That is going to be a challenge. It would be for any player, but not many get to his age having spent almost 20 years at the club down the end of the road.

[Clampy]

Wasn't Van Dijk a bit dodgy when he first joined Liverpool? I know people are only saying what they see but some players do need time.

[pauliewalnuts]

Moreno was with us, too, so i get that.

I'm a bit worried that Torres's total lack of pace isn't something that can get trained into him.  Learning how to work with it, maybe, but even so.

[PaulWinch again]

We’ll see, but I suspect we’re drawing too sweeping a conclusion from a very small sample size.

The small sample is pretty damning though.

It's great that he can play out but that needs to be on top of being able to defend, not instead of. At the minute he looks like a midfielder that's been converted to defence and is struggling with the concept, and every other team will be targeting him.

I’ll come back to the point that he’s done it in elite European competition and for Spain, he’ll have faced the type of threats he’s facing. I don’t think we should underestimate that the plan was clearly to bed him into the team, but he’s now basically the most senior centre back. That’s an awful lot on him. He’ll sort it.

I think the problem might not be so much him in general, but his ability to play the way we play.

With that high line (and I know, it's boring hearing people go on about it, so apols), when he gets into a situation where he needs to use his pace, I am looking through my fingers, as I know he hasn't got any pace.

He's slow. To get over that he needs to make up for it with his game-savvy so fingers crossed that happens soon.

I get that but Emery played a similar style at Villarreal didn’t he? I think so and Pau worked well then. Who knows maybe I’ll be proved wrong, but I think a lot of this comes down to adapting to a new league and probably dropping him in faster than we wanted to.

[Mister E]

From what I've read of the post-match thread and this one, I'd say 2 things:
- clearly, the high-line defence will be exposed if our front runners and midfield are not pressing the ball;
- a high line requires all of the back 4 / 5 to be disciplined, communicative and strong: we have new players in the back four and we've mixed up the personnel in defence a lot in these last 6 games, which seems to be compromising the discipline required.
My main concern is that we leaked goals in the pre-season and we continue to do so in the games where the oppo are decent; compared to the last games of our last season.
Despite his renowned planning, Emery doesn't appear to be preparing the players well for these tough away games ...

[Risso]

Wasn't Van Dijk a bit dodgy when he first joined Liverpool? I know people are only saying what they see but some players do need time.

No I don't think so re VVD. But in any case, he'd proven at Southampton that he had the necessary attributes to be a huge success. Tall, quick, powerful, and great on the ball. Our Tyrone has similar attributes, but when we first came up he made a few mistakes. Once he cut them out, he turned into one of the very best, elite level central defenders. Is a defender who isn't strong and isn't quick going to suddenly acquire those attributes, and if he can't, is the rest of his game good enough to compensate? We'll see I suppose.

[Smirker]

I'm definitely not writing Torres off but he was appalling today to the point I wanted him off at HT.

[PaulWinch again]

I don’t think he’s actually physically weak, I just think he’s been getting his positioning slightly wrong. That’s how he was turned against Burnley.

You don’t excel in Europe or do well for Spain if you have no defensive capability, irrespective of your passing attributes. He’ll be fine. And for all the nice things said about Ty, he’s had absolute pelters at times. The manager who has got genuine, consistent, quality out of him is Emery so I’m confident he knows what he’s doing and Torres is a player he really wanted.

[LeonW]

Torres can’t cover the left side for the high left back of Moreno or Digne. He doesn’t have the physicality or pace. So we need a rethink here or we’re going to get exposed big time. Liverpool stoped his build up play big time today.

[RamboandBruno]

I don’t think he’s actually physically weak, I just think he’s been getting his positioning slightly wrong. That’s how he was turned against Burnley.

You don’t excel in Europe or do well for Spain if you have no defensive capability, irrespective of your passing attributes. He’ll be fine. And for all the nice things said about Ty, he’s had absolute pelters at times. The manager who has got genuine, consistent, quality out of him is Emery so I’m confident he knows what he’s doing and Torres is a player he really wanted.

This is all true

[chrisw1]

We’ll see, but I suspect we’re drawing too sweeping a conclusion from a very small sample size.

It’s a small sample size at Villa, but there’s a large sample size of stats that state he’s low percentile on aerial duals and tackles.  So far he’s looked exactly like his stats suggest - some excellent passing and some weak defending.  I’m not sure why people are so confident this will change?

[Brend'Watkins]

It’s clear he hasn’t adjusted to the pace of the league yet. He’ll need to and very quickly if he is going to make it. I suppose the idea was to ease him in rather than throw him in. On that basis the new goy might be a slightly better option.

[PaulWinch again]

We’ll see, but I suspect we’re drawing too sweeping a conclusion from a very small sample size.

It’s a small sample size at Villa, but there’s a large sample size of stats that state he’s low percentile on aerial duals and tackles.  So far he’s looked exactly like his stats suggest - some excellent passing and some weak defending.  I’m not sure why people are so confident this will change?

What’s his percentile for interceptions? Reading the game etc? You’re right he’s hopeless, he’s never performed at a high level so we should give up after 4 games.

[Bad English]

On that basis the new goy might be a slightly better option.

He'll be able to play on Saturdays then!

[passport1]

Yes we had an all round bad performance today but as ever there seems to be a need to scapegoat one player.