Watched the game back this morning. Football is all about goals, and I want to focus on our ability at either end.
I don't blame Ricardo for the first goal. It was just all round sloppy defending. Ndidi was as much to blame as anyone as he didn't spot the danger and was attracted to the ball. He should have been where the ball went.
The second goal was clearly Maddison's error. We now defend set pieces with a mix of zonal and man marking. It looks an absolute mess but yesterday was the first time we've been caught out with it (so far). Our best headers of the ball no longer man mark which is just counter-intuitive to me, and I think, to them too.
Whatever way you look at it, young players make mistakes and we're going to concede goals like we did yesterday. Especially playing a back four with two attacking full backs and central defenders that are encouraged to pass out of defence.
We averaged 1.6 goals against last season and I see no reason why we're going to do better this time overall. Unless Soyuncu is some genius, the same issues remain. The problem with this is that we then need to score at least two in most matches to get anything.
Taking Mahrez out of the team means fewer goals for us. Maddison is the solution to this but he's got too much pressure and expectation on his shoulders for my liking. We're absolutely desperate for Vardy to come back in and be at his best for us. Ultimately, I just can't see us scoring more than last season or conceding less.
So, it doesn't really matter that much how the playing style is changing, or our possession stats are improving, or our average age is reducing. We remain a team that can usually be okay against weaker opposition but who can also never really compete with teams with the better players.
Klopp spoke about how he was happy with his teams performance, including sitting back and playing counter attack when we had spells of possession. Mourinho was exactly the same. It's nice to see us playing good football but it's not good enough to hurt these teams. They will mostly be able to keep us out and then exploit our inevitable errors.
So, much as I can see that the football is better than it was in the second half of last season, what are we trying to achieve? When we played a style of football that was deliberately different, it gave us a chance against anyone. Now we're just settling for secondary status and a few condescending pats on the back.
If you're spending over £100m on an already strong squad, is that enough? We should be nowhere near a relegation battle as our squad is far superior to several others, but is all we're about trying to finish nearer to 7th than 10th and hope to avoid the big teams in the cups?
