Liverpool 4, Dortmund 0: A lovely little pass around

What started out with the intensity of European football, slowly drowned itself in the atmosphere of a true friendly.  Most of our side glistened save the ever turnover prone and utterly useless Glen Johnson who refuses to let the match come to him and forces error after error.  He needs to benched, sold, drawn, and quartered.  Keep him off the pitch, Rodgers, please, at least until he returns to his form of three years ago.  He doesn't play defence and it's like being a man down every time he gifts the ball to the opposition, which is entirely too often.  Opposing managers must smile every time they see him take the pitch, he is always a counter goal waiting to happen.

The passing, for the love of Xabi, was absolutely brilliant.  We picked apart their defence like the Visigoths on Rome.  Pass after scintillating pass came from the feet of Gerrard, Sturridge, Coutinho, and Sterling, who found a better form in the second half, though far from his best.  That one looping lob from Gerrard that found Sterling down the left was harken of our captain's finest displays and the entire episode leading to Sturridge's assist to Hendo was artful, though the ball did go out.

Lovren was solid in the first half, but not really needed in the second.  In fact, we could have filled the back four with Salif Diaos and it wouldn't have mattered.  Fans seems to be smitten with Manquillo's performance, but I guess harder to impres because for me, he didn't do anything spectacular.  He was adequate and far better than Glen Johnson, but so was the hot dog man, me Gran, and that baby elephant. (It even looks like Glen Johnson, don't it?)  I'll withhold a verdict until he plays in a match that matters.

The bottom line is the matches don't count until next Sunday, but if we can play as we did today, natural-like and calculating, we will win a lot of matches.  The loss of Suarez put us at an advantage of sorts, defences won't know how to stop us.  Before, if you could stop El Conejo Loco, you had a good chance of beating us, but now we are more of a team.  If you stop Sturridge, we've got Sterling, then Coutinho, then Gerrard, then Hendo and so on and so forth, and we score on set-pieces, even more now with Lovre.  That's just scary.  If we are going to win the league though, we must not let one thing beat us, ourselves.  When the opposition scores and they will at times, we must maintain composure and believe we will still win no matter the circumstance.

Is Marco Reus the 'dream signing'?

It seems some people believe that Marco Reus would be the 'dream signing' for us.  Well, other than the fact that he would cost at least £35m to sign him, yes, he would be a great pick up, but do we really need him? I don't think so, he is a better all-round attacking midfielder than Sterling and Coutinho, but he's also 6 years older than the former and 3 years senior the latter. Let's look at their outputs from last season:

	Marco Reus	Coutinho	Sterling
age	25	22	19
app(subs)	26(4)	28(5)	24(9)
mins	2208	2323	2220
p90	24.5	25.8	24.7
goals	16	5	9
assist	13	7	5
chances	90	64	51
npgp90	0.41	0.19	0.36
gcp90	1.18	0.47	0.57
ccp90	3.67	2.5	2.06
ap90	0.53	0.27	0.2
ccv	14.4	10.8	9.7
pass%	74.5	80.6	81.7
bp%	44.5	36.7	46.8
sacc%	43.6	28.7	48.9
shot%	14.5	7	20
TTI90	17.6	11	12.1
gap90	1.27	1.43	1.26
gsp90	2.41	3.02	2.8
gop90	1.14	1.59	1.54
tgop	1.24	1.32	1.32

Stats definitions can be found here.

Reus seriously dominates the individual p90s, his 3.67 chance created per 90 is impressive alone, but 14.4% of those are converted into goals, better than both his above counterparts.  His passing overall could improve and probably the most perplexing stat is his goals on pitch 90 being -0.10 less than his team's gop average. Also his true turnover rate is a dismal 17.6, mainly due to his errant passing and being easily dispossessed.

Do we really need to spend £35m on an attacking midfielder? Don't get me wrong, I understand we can play him 'in the hole' behind Sturridge, but we could also you those funds to buy better defenders and not have to try and outscore all of our opponents.  Plus I think we need to give Sterling, Coutinho, and even Jordan Henderson as much time on the pitch as possible to so they can become as good as Reus is now.