My only expectation from today was a better performance than the same fixture last season, in my opinion this was not achieved. We played some alright football at times and got the ball into decent positions out wide on the over lap but that fizzled out with poor final balls. The defence is the main concern. I believe that the current defensive coaching is far worse than it was under Pellegrino. All three goals today were avoidable. The first was just ridiculous. The second is a good header from Matip but the marking is awful from set pieces and the third was terrible communication in the offside line and then a lack of desire to win the rebound. Stoke’s defensive record under Hughes last season was terrible and we don’t look much better.

9

Hoedt is no step up on Yoshi or Stephens, Lemina is a flat track bully, Targett deserves more time, Long can run all day but a goal a season just isn't good enough, Redmond and Bertrand looked good but Redmond can only do 45 minutes. Romeu needs to come in for Lemina. We had a few good chances but just like the last 2 years we can't convert, thank god Liverpool sat back in the second half or it would have been 6-0

11

Bednarek was the only player (apart from the goalie) who didn't completely suck. Shane Long, bless, he just shouldn't be on a premiership team. All those who like him, tell me, what has he done for us lately (i.e. in the 60 appearances)? Starting him and Redmond as front two just says, we surrender, we know we'll never score against you. Totally rubbish put up front by Hughes, and so we look at the defence...oh no, look away. More total rubbish. We shouldn't necessarily expect to get points at Anfield, especialy when Liverpool are flyinf, but we should expect better team selction and tactics, and better individual performances. This was just an insult.

10

Hughes, Krueger and Reed out... bring back Nicola Cortese and Ronald Koeman.

5

I haven't seen Sam G play for a while(but I haven't seen any of our forwards play much either) but surely he must be given a chance. If we wait until we are well up in the league and four goals up in a match he will never get the chance. Meanwhile, we have little punch in attack. He was not even on the bench yesterday.

0

With the tactics yesterday we might as well have played Gallagher up the top. I don’t wish to knock Shane Long as he gets enough stick and he has some good attributes. I can’t think of a single player who is better than him at imitating a dog chasing a tennis ball but he was never gonna stand a chance at holding it up yesterday against Van Dijk and Matip.

3

Big mistake letting Dusan Tadic go we now don't have anyone who can create anything. Its going to be a long season. The January window cant come quick enough we need some good recplacements.

4

Its going to be a long season

4

Waste of time commenting, nothing has changed. We are well on course to be bottom of the league at Christmas. No way back this time chaps, we are appalling.

1

Not a report, an observation. Rathbone and Camps were the only established midfielders in the starting 11. Once Rathbone went off (63rd minute) Camps was the only experienced midfielder left. Most of us do not rate Hendo as a midfielder and Adshead has a lot to learn. An aggressive Perkins coming on, rather than Adshead, would have taken a lot of the weight off Camps and possibly prevented his meltdown in the last quarter of the game. I know that we scored after the substitutions but I think Sunderland could have had more, they took their foot off the pedal. Hilly would have his reasons for what he did, but I think his decisions have contributed to the dreadful assessment that we have given Callum.

0