Topic: Some quality/important posts you may have missed

[El Campeador]

Penned by one of RAWK's finest.

Comedically, we should all be hoping and praying that Roy scrapes through the group stages. If he doesn't, he'll be sacked, but the epic spectacle of media backtracking, bullshitting and total self-denial won't be anywhere near as spectacular as if he just scrapes through and then gets knocked out on penalties in a bore-draw with a 'decent' nation.

That way he will surely be in charge for the 2014 qualifiers, and while it's by no means a certainty, Roy clearly has the talent to secure an abject failure for England where so many better men and managers than he is have also enjoyed abject failure.

I *almost* feel a bit sorry for Roy though. He takes his oh-so-cosy relationship with the English press totally for granted these days. I mean, this guy actually thought we were bad. He honestly doesn't have a fucking clue just how brutally and disgustingly every shred of his reputation, character and dignity are going to be taken to pieces and shat upon in bold, 30 point type faces on the back (and front) pages of every newspaper in England.

I mean, look at what the press did even with relatively dignified and semi-intelligent guys like McClaren, Taylor and Robson. Seriously, the first two aren't managerial geniuses but they conduct themselves with a lot more diplomacy than Roy ever has. The press, for the most part, ignored all that face rubbing and stuff when he was in charge of us. Does anyone think for a second that'll be off limits when we draw at home to Kazhakstan in the qualifiers? Of course it won't be. Not only that, but the press are more than hypocritical and cunty enough to dig up ALL of the shite from his time here and in Italy, to replay it over and over again. That's not even the worst of it - the cheap stuff will be more than fair game too. His inability to pronounce his 'r's will be 'widiculed' in a way that makes Life of 'Bwian' seem tame. Even now, somewhere in the horrific sludge that passes for Gary Linekar's mind a 'w' based joke is forming of such spectacular unfuniness that it may actually collapse the fabric of space time as twenty million viewers simultaneously cringe their own faces off.

After this stint as England manager he will be doddery old 'Hodgson. He'll be painted as a senile old twat with borderline pschizophrenic levels of delusion. Every aspect of his record will be re-written in the worst possible light. Every stupid thing he's said will be snidely relayed back to him by some Shreeve's style arsehole with a microphone shoved in his face. The pressure will be orders of magnitude above anything he's ever experienced before - and note here that he didn't even come close to coping with it here or at Inter. By the time the press are through with him the stupid old git will struggle to get a job in the conference.

But there he is, walking into all of this, having all the tools at his disposal to realise what he's walking into, that he's walking into a pit of starving, rabid bears stark naked with honey rubbed all over his wrinkly old cock, and he's smiling like a kid who just found out that their school has been turned into a free amusement park and that the world is made out of chocolate and crisps.

Which is why I only *almost* have sympathy for him. The despicable nature of the English press, the impossible nature of the manager's job, these aren't secrets. Even Capello, who copes with pressure better than your average cuttle fish, showed signs of fraying under the weight of the impossible expectations inevitably heaped on whoever's in charge. Now there's Roy, grin as wide as the Pacific, totally serene and confident in his own ability to succeed where Capello, Fabio fucking Capello, one of the greatest and most successful managers who has EVER FUCKING LIVED, failed before him.

Roy Hodgson - from Owl to Icarus - the epic story of one man's stupendous failure to grasp his own limitations. He doesn't deserve everything he's going to end up getting but, by god, once again he's seen far more than he could possibly chew and, once again, he's bitten into it like Russell Brand into a fit girl's arse after a month of celibacy.

Stupid old twat.

[El Campeador]

And from my other favourite poster -

Good luck Roy - you'll need it. If you thought we were bad, brace yourself.

Winter’s on a complete fucking wind-up, he has to be. Or maybe he’s just being purposely thick, gleefully wallowing in blissful ignorance now that one of his favourites has been given what Winter and people like him see as the top job in football – the English national team. They must be fucking ecstatic. Their mind-set is just so utterly intelligence-insulting, it’s unreal. They couldn’t make it any clearer if they tried that they have their favourites for their own entirely selfish reasons who get preferential coverage in their columns whilst others are consistently undermined and criticised for less (for example, I remember an article of his that I had the misfortune to read earlier this season comparing Villa Boas unfavourably to Martin O’Neill whose return to management, Winter informed us, had been greeted with a “Fleet Street party”).

Not that I particularly care most of the time – with the England team, I’m an outsider and would be fairly neutral if I didn’t dislike a good three quarters of the squad, so their insistence on inflicting Roy upon themselves is actually quite amusing, while I rarely read anything in the papers anymore unless, like this, I spot something linked on a forum, so my attitude at this stage is “knock yourselves out”. If people pay money for this garbage, then more fool them. What annoys me, though, is the memory that it was people like Winter who most loudly trumpeted Hodgson’s arrival at Anfield after a year which he spent basically tormenting Rafael Benítez in print, calling him a “cold political animal” and other such utter nonsense, attacking him over signings, results, tactics, methods, basically anything he could think of (the most ridiculous of which, to me at least, was his assertion in May 2010 that Benítez should have never sold Danny Murphy and that, approaching his mid-thirties, he was a better player than Lucas), the same type of individual who would no doubt tell you now that Hodgson only failed at Anfield for no other reason than because he’s not Kenny Dalglish.

I won’t go into Hodgson’s failings again, we all know them. I won’t go into what I think will happen with England either. What I will say is that I hold the likes of Henry Winter in utter contempt and make no apology for doing so. This is the final proof that it was never a disregard for Liverpool that had them pushing Roy for the job, on the contrary, they’re now pushing him whole-heartedly as the cure for what ails their own favourite team, namely England. These people are mad. Insane. It’s the only explanation. Winter can’t truly believe what he’s saying in this piece, he just can’t. I refuse to accept it. He’s a grown man, obviously intelligent, who apparently earns a handsome wage to observe, study and write about football, yet he believes that Hodgson represents “the road to enlightenment”? I mean, read that back again. It’s possible (though not probable) that Roy will forge a tough unit with England and may go as far in Euro 2012 or Brazil 2014 as the likes of Eriksson and Capello managed in major tournaments with England, but enlightenment?! Really?! Madness I tells ya!!

The truth is that Winter and people like him have tied themselves in knots so many times making excuses for one manager or player while simultaneously condemning another for a similar or lesser offence that they can no longer tell up from down or black from white. These people have descended to depths of hypocrisy seldom charted on so many occasions that it has become like a constant state for them. I want to briefly quote something that I wrote about a year ago regarding Winter and his love affair with Roy Hodgson which suddenly seems pertinent again:



    On 28 June 2010, shortly after England’s failure at the World Cup, he suggested it was time for Capello to fall on his sword. Why? He argued that “if Gerrard had played in his Liverpool position and Rooney in his Manchester United role up top, England would have had their two potential match-winners in tandem.” In addition, he maintained that “if England had played 4-2-3-1, they may still have lost to the vibrant Germans but it would have been worth utilising a system that coaxed the best from Gerrard and Rooney” and that “the flaws inherent in 4-4-2 were brutally exposed here as the Germans flooded through.” Indeed, he praised the 4-2-3-1 system as “a formation that gives width and central numbers.” He also bemoaned the selection of Emile Heskey, commenting that “Capello soon realised that Heskey was struggling as any resident of the Holte End could have told him.”

    Now, in fairness, Winter made one good argument here – a pure 4-4-2 formation does have severe limitations in the modern game, especially against opposition utilising 4-2-3-1 (and the vast majority of successful teams in the World Cup, including the top three Spain, Germany and Holland, used it). Yet what formation exactly does Roy Hodgson use? Could it be 4-4-2? And what system did Rafael Benítez utilise at Anfield? Could it be 4-2-3-1? Who was the one who had put Gerrard in “his Liverpool position” in the first place? Was it Rafael Benítez? And was it really as simple as playing Rooney and Gerrard upfront when Capello could be seen screaming at his players to “pass the ball!!!!!” during the Algeria game, to no effect? What use are formations when you can’t pass from A to B? I threw in the Heskey reference because, as recently as eight months earlier, Winter suggested that culpability for Liverpool’s poor recent form lay with Benítez for “ignoring prodigal sons such as Emile Heskey and Michael Owen.” Heskey? I can only surmise that Rafa must have had a chat with a resident of the Holte End, eh Henry?

    Even as Winter put Hodgson forward as the answer for Liverpool, mentioning “his time-honoured ability to produce well-balanced units,” he was criticising Capello for using the very same tactics that Roy would ultimately implement at Anfield. Remember, later on during his Liverpool reign, Roy suggested that he would not be changing “the methods which have stood me in good stead for 35 years and made me one of the most ­respected coaches in Europe.” Namely 4-4-2, that self-same 4-4-2 that had been ruthlessly exposed by the Germans in South Africa and was being put forward by Winter as a reason why Capello should go. How hypocritical. And as for the Heskey comment, what, so he was good enough for Liverpool in November but not Aston Villa or England in June?



This article is just more of the same from Winter, but fuck, he’s laying it on thick. We’ll see how Roy does with England, but I’d wager that unless he completely fucks it up (e.g. by not qualifying for the World Cup or letting the pressure get to him to such an extent that he starts biting the hand that feeds), history, as written by the likes of Henry Winter, will be far kinder to him than his predecessors. Qualify for Brazil and maybe make a quarter-final, and the press boys have won. They’ll suckle at the Hodgson teat for the next number of years (sorry for the mental image there) and then claim that they were right. Capello may have racked up an impressive winning percentage as England boss and had a list of achievements in the game that would probably require more than one pen to jot down, but to them he was just a dour, serious foreigner who barely spoke English and presumably never asked after anybody or called them by their first names. The only way they would have deemed him a success was if he won a trophy, and even then I’d wager that the likes of Rooney and EBJT (not normally one for these abbreviations but EBJT works for me, maybe because it kind of looks like ‘eejit’ at a glance) would have been handed the plaudits.

The only way, in fact, that this doesn’t work out for them is if Roy makes a complete and utter bollocks of it. But then, what are the odds of that happening???

[Sangria]

Thank god for that.  I was thinking the same but have not had a chance to watch the match again.  I can't see what people are down on him for.  Sure a few of his shits were poor but he got into the positions to take them which was encouraging.  Its no coincidence that we looked far better when he moved to the middle proper with Gerrard once Spearing went off.

I think it's a typo, but then he may have been talking about training his new kitty to use the litter tray. It tickled me anyway.

[kavah]

Good night see you in August

I bet you that the owners, for the first time, understood why anyone might pay a large slice of green for Andy Carroll. Not 35 mill  maybe, but enough to do some serious violence to the bank balance. You wouldn't even have to know too much about football to understand that Carroll's domination of his markers was nigh on complete on Saturday.

I didn't particularly want him to start. I was hoping for Shelvey and Henderson in central midfield and Steve Gerrard playing off Suarez. But Shelvey wrote himself out of the script with a performance against Fulham that was full of desire but, at times, laughably short of grey matter. And so, inevitably, a team without Carroll and without Shelvey was going to be one with Spearing at its heart. I'm sure Kenny took the decision to play him with a degree of foreboding. Who wouldn't? And it was a risk that didn't pay off. Indeed it proved calamitous.

Let's not revisit why he played badly. That would have been obvious to the watching Americans too. Suffice to say that Lampard probably wrote the lad's Liverpool epitaph when he skipped round him (from a standing start!) for the second goal. The days are long gone (if they ever really existed) when 'die for the shirt' and 'run through a brick wall' are sufficient qualities to command a place in a team with title aspirations. You've got to have skill and intelligence too.

Chelsea had that in the first half. Mata, obviously, was beautifully neat in possession and economical in his movements. He knows where to run when his teammates have the ball. Kalou too looked threatening as did Ramires (though no surprise there). Oddly enough it was Drogba who we tamed. Yes, he scored a goal, but both Skrtel and Agger were quick into him and at times - of joy! - too strong for him as well.

But the first half was poor from us, for reasons which have been amply covered. The opening goal was the type of goal that if your team gets...well, you know it's your day. No effort was required to score that - and certainly no ingenuity. The man who would run through a brick wall for Liverpool failed to control a regulation pass, Enrique sold himself when a bit of shepherding was required and Pepe did a 'Bob Wilson' and left his near post open at Wembley.

Meanwhile at the other end we couldn't feed our most dangerous player because Gerrard dropped back to plug the gaps left by the incompetent Spearing and the nervous Henderson. It was the wrong choice, but it was a necessary one. And of course Stevie was our Man of the Match. When the rest of the team was scared on the ball, he took responsibility. He was the only one of our players to turn on the thing and face the right way. He was the only one to go for the gaps, which he did with a lot of intelligence. If Chelsea were ever on the back foot in the first 60 minutes it was because Steve put them there. He hardly put a foot wrong through the entire game.

So then Carroll got his chance.

I've seen big forwards do this before. At all levels of the game these ponderous looking giants can suddenly, without warning, turn into rampaging behemoths. I don't know why this happens. I suspect Andy Carroll doesn't either. Anyway, number 9 had an almost instant effect. The team pushed up and - let's be frank here - we absolutely dominated possession and territory for 25 minutes. I can't recall such a sustained period of real pressure against a Chelsea side since Ranieri left (I want to say, maybe, the game where Owen terrorised Desailly at Anfield). It was an unusual feeling. We were outclassing Chelsea and they couldn't get the ball beyond the half-way line. They suddenly looked what they are - an ageing, slightly stupid team (Good luck Bayern. It ought to be piss easy for you). 

Fats called the last 25' 'the charge of the light brigade'. It's a nice phrase, but it probably summons the wrong image. I actually thought we were more subtle than that. It wasn't Agger and Skrtel lumping long passes up to Carroll, like it can be when we come to rely on his head. It was the flanks pushing back their full backs and sending in crosses from very dangerous positions. Two of the players to suffer horrible first-halves were obviously Downing and Enrique. I'm surprised by the mysterious reluctance in this thread to praise their effort in the second half. Downing in particular came strong. It was his aggression and the excellence of his timing that provided the assist for Carroll's goal. And whenever we recycled the ball on the half way line it was to the left wing that we looked. Johnson was equally heroic on the right but sadly, lacked a player in front of him with the drive that Downing had on the day. Bellamy was curiously subdued and Dirk, when he came on, was...well.... Dirk.

The other player to come good in this period was Henderson who seemed, at last, to take a leaf out of his captain's book and turn into the danger areas with the ball. He's young and still a bit raw. I have hopes for this player. 

Did the ball cross the line? Who cares now. I thought so at the time and couldn't believe why the ref didn't at least quiz his linesman. But it shouldn't have mattered. Carroll spurned a decent chance later, when he scuffed a left foot shot, and at one point the ball fell invitingly to Skrtel who was the wrong man to capitalise.

It's horrible losing a Cup. It was just about tolerable because of the magnificence of the last 25 minutes. Our fans were great. Wembley stadium is rubbish. The FA are clowns. John Terry is a right-wing nationalist. Big changes need to happen in time for next season.

[INABITSKI]

Re: Bin those plastic flags
« Reply #243 on: Today at 12:19:21 »
Let's get one thing straight - booing the national anthem, or singing over the top of it, should not be seen as an attack on anything other than a) the monarchy and b) the establishment / authorities. It doesn't mean that people are not patriotic (though lots aren't), it doesn't mean they don't respect the forces, it doesn't mean they don't appreciate the NHS. This was my take on it...

When I eventually got around to sifting through the mountains of shite that was thrown up in the aftermath of our Wembley defeat, I was pretty surprised to see so much heated debate on our treatment of the national anthem.

There were several reasons for my surprise. One was that our tradition of signing over the anthem is one that has persisted throughout decades of Liverpool finals. The other was that the national anthem – at least from where I was sat – was so barely audible that I wasn’t even really sure what the jeering was about. I mean I assumed it was God Save The Queen, but I couldn’t really tell. I sang Fields of Anfield Road instead. I was there to support Liverpool FC, not England, after all. Maybe the fact we couldn’t hear the anthem was a testament to how well we did our jobs of drowning it out? Or maybe the FA couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, and their microphones were out? Who knows? But either way, the singing itself was a bit of a farce.

Now anyone who knows scousers and who knows anything about the city of Liverpool will know that they’re a unique breed, and a unique city. There’s something very different about Liverpool in comparison to the rest of England. I suppose it’s born from its port city roots, and large population of celtic descendants. It’s also born from the treatment of the city by successive governments, by the socialist psyche of the people, and from an inherent antipathy for the establishment. So it’s really no surprise that one of our favourite songs proclaims “we’re not English, we are Scouse”. You need only look at the banners on show on both sides of the stadium to see exactly what I mean. A handful of England flags sparsely decorated the Chelsea end. A sea of red and white and a complete absence of the St George’s cross or the Union Jack adorned the Liverpool allocation until there was room for no more.

Scousers do not conform. They do not forgive and forget when they are wronged. And Liverpool supporters certainly don’t take too kindly to being told what to sing, and when to sing it.

The national anthem is so completely irrelevant to so many people, not just scousers. So to ask us to respect it, in an environment where patriotism is unnecessary, and partisan football rivalries should be the main event, is just really quite silly. As much as the FA would like the Cup Final to be a lovely footballing occasion and a showpiece for the association, with awful plastic flags being waved in unison, like characterless puppets, that’s just not what football is. Not to us. Not to the everyday football supporter, the home and away reds, the girls and lads who go to the match not for a family day out, but for a love of the club. We’re not there on corporate freebies, drinking expensive Budweiser, and eating fish and chips. No. We’re there to cheer our team on, under conditions made as awkward as possible by the authorities, after they’ve shown us and our club nothing but complete disdain over the course of the season.

So no. We will not sing your national anthem, and no, we will not stand still and quiet in the name of respect. We will not wave your embarrassing plastic flags in some orchestrated and contrived attempt at a spectacle (which ironically is an attempt to recreate something which the Kop has always provided spontaneously and uniquely). We went to Wembley to support our team. Not to provide entertainment for you, and not to respect an establishment which has consistently and systematically mistreated our football club and our city over decades. We turn up DESPITE this.

Call us a disgrace, sure. Everyone else has. But we know what we believe in and we stick to it. And that sure as hell isn’t saving the fucking Queen. We worship a quite different monarch.


The above was by Rhi earlier on. I wanted to reply in the thread but it is now locked, so those who have not had chance to see it or those coming to the forum from other places (there are quite a few over the past few days from people I know of) and whatever media sources, I guess the above answers any questions.

And well said Rhi.

[fredfrop]

to me England means the FA, John Terry, Lampard, Ferdinand, Ashley Cole, southern based duplicitous Sunday Supplement parasitical shithouse tabloid writers, tools flying shitty little plastic St George flags from Asda on top of their cars and flag waving jingoistic scouse hating bigoted c*nts the length of the land chanting Engerrland in one breath and 'Luis Suarez you know what you are' the next.....fuck them all, fuck England, hope they get twatted every game and i'd be quite happy if none of our players ever played for them again..

[Arcadian]

Ha! Succinctness is next to godliness no? Not a wasted word.

[royhendo]

Absolutely terrible season given the huge opportunity we had last summer.

Kenny had improved the league form in the back end of the previous season and although we failed to get into europe despite being sat in 5th with 2 games to go and 2 points clear, the positives were that without europe it would give us an opportunity to focus on the league and get back into the top 4 as well as possibly winning a cup along the way. Kenny had used the last few months to look at the squad, assess where it needed strengthening and who was not going to be part of his plans.

The owners spent big and brought in the players Kenny wanted, and we entered the season with great confidence. Chelsea had a new coach coming in, Spurs didn't spend much and Arsenal had lost 3 key players in the summer, and there was a very realistic chance of us getting back in the mix at the top end of the table. The owners stated that not getting back into the top four would be a "major disappointment".

The season started well, and after 3 games we topped the table going into the international break. When we returned we then lost 2 league matches and all of a sudden the wheels started coming off Kenny's plans in the league. We dropped out of the top 4 placings and we would never return back to those heights in the league all season. We spent the first half of the league campaign "there or there abouts" in 5th/6th spot, always within 1-5 points of the top 4 places and kept in touching distance until November/December time.

The turn of the year, 2012, saw us head into the worst run of league form I have ever seen, and presently it stands at P17 W4 D3 L10 which is relegation form. This run of form is worse than that which saw Hodgson get sacked, and is inexcusable for a Liverpool manager given the financial and moral backing Kenny has been given.

For us to finish 8th or 9th after that level of financial backing (2011 accounts showed we started the season with the 4th highest wage bill in the league!) and with no europe to distract us and tire the players (Chelsea had 10 more games in their legs yesterday than us, and we still couldn't capitalise) it simply can't be anything other than disasterous. We will never get a better opportunity than we had this season and we fucking blew it big time.

To only get 5 home wins in the league is shocking. You can hide behind bad luck, poor ref decisions or whatever, the reality is that is as bad as we have seen in our entire History. We are trying as a club to look at increasing capacity or get a new stadium, but do we expect fans to spend their hard earned on season tickets only to be served up shite like that?

I also don't buy this line of thought that we have performed extremely well and as soon as we get a top goalscorer we will be ok. We spent £58mill on a new strikeforce last January and you want the owners to spend on another top forward? Our football in the main has been too slow, too safe and lacking in cutting edge. We get big possession stats because we pass it around at the back for an hour each match, and we get more shots at goal because we get frustrated at not being able to break a team down and just lash a 25 yarder aimlessly into the Kop once more.

The standards at this club are to be competitive for the two trophies that make this club special - the league title and the European Cup. Right now we are so far off winning either of them its a joke. Judging by the standards of many fans we have now become a mid-table team who rely on a good cup run, or even winning one, as a sign of success. Anyone calling this season a success because we won the league cup has lowered their standards to cover up the managers failings.

Yesterday, were the Fans singing "Fuck off, Chelsea FC, you ain't got no history, 7 FA Cups, and 8 League Cups, thats what we call history"? We have to get back to competing at the top table of domestic and european football.

All this nonsense that its a major rebuilding job etc is a myth too as Kenny inherited a very good group of players who simply needed 2 or 3 really quality additions to be made to it in order to compete, and instead he ripped up the squad and reshaped it to his style (just like he did at Newcastle in his last job in England) and he must take responsibility for the fact we have brought in £55mill worth of new talent to supplement the squad that came 6th last season and we have gone BACKWARDS with fewer points, fewer goals, fewer home wins, and a lower league placing. Where is the evidence (other than blind faith and the fact Kenny won league titles 17 plus years ago) to suggest he will improve on that next season and take us into the top end of the table?

Kenny focused on the domestic cups at the start of the season, and ultimately sacrificed any chance we had of getting into the Champions League in favour of winning a cup. When the owners talked about a disconnect in strategy when they removed Comolli, I could see a similar disconnect throughout the season in the ambitions of the owners and the manager. They wanted top 4 but Kenny wanted a trophy, with the owners looking to move the club in one direction while Kenny has taken us in another.

As a fan, I want Liverpool to be as successful as it can be, and whilst winning a Carling Cup is nice, its not really what helped to make Liverpool Football Club one of the finest clubs in world football, and finishing in 8th place or lower with our lowest points total in modern day history certainly won't do that long term.

[the 92A]

Thought this was well balanced and thought provoking and didn't deserve to get lost in a sea of one liners.

A favourite buzzword this year has been 'progress' and whenever pressed on that point in interviews Kenny has continually stated: "...let's wait until the end of the season, count up our points and see where we are". Well, that time has come and the answer is eighth position, with a total of 52 points. 17 points from fourth place and 37 points from the top. We're closer to Bolton - who were relegated - than Tottenham in fourth and we've as many defeats as victories. Those are the bare facts and Kenny stated following yesterdays latest surrender that we will not hide from them and rightly so because there is no dressing our league season up as anything other than a monumental disappointmentment, especially given the alleged club ethos of the league being our 'bread and butter'.

Yes there have been bright spots, particularly in the cups, but they have been far too infrequent and not nearly enough to stave off what is a gut wrenching feeling of missed opportunity when considering the problems that Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham have suffered at various points this season. The consistency that an unfancied yet cleverly assembled Newcastle team have shown only confounds that sense of frustration.

What we need to do now and what I expect the club will be doing over the next few days and weeks is reflect and conclude on where it went wrong. What, ultimately, was our downfall? Was it primarily money poorly spent last summer, on players that did not possess the required mentality and have failed to improve us? Or was it a case of the players at our disposal not being deployed in a way that gets the absolute best out of them or (arguably) prepared well enough?

For me there is an argument to be made for both of the above and ultimately both factors come back to the management in one way or another. Comolli has already paid the price of last summers failings and the big question now is, will Kenny?

I can't claim to reserve complete faith in Kenny's management having witnessed this league season, however what I will say is I retain a firm belief that (sustained) success and stability go hand in hand. It's no coincidence that the likes of United and Arsenal are continually in and around the top places and have been the two clubs consistently there for the last couple of decades or so whilst others have risen briefly before falling just as quickly - ourselves included. Couple that with the bright spots that we have seen this season - and let's not forget that we have seen some very promising performances that we have somehow failed to convert into results - and I feel that kenny should be given another season with the complete backing of the entire club from top to bottom, ourselves as supporters included. One of the key factors in our failure, according to many, has been the loss of Lucas and personally I would be extremely interested to see how we fare over an entire season under Kenny with Lucas in place. Statistically in terms of average points per game the contrast this season with and without Lucas has been stark at (I believe) 1.92 with Lucas and 1.12 without.

Moving forward though, the big concerns for me are with our system, or plan because i'm still not quite sure what that is. Perhaps that's just my laymans mind missing the bigger picture which is clear to Kenny and the management, but if that is the case then why is that plan not being implemented throughout the club? Why do the first team play an entirely different style to the rest of the club hierarchy beneath it, which is resolute in the 4-2-3-1 system implemented under Rafa? We need to decide what our philosophy is as a club, what we are aiming to achieve and implement that throughout the club and then head into the summer looking to add the players that fit into that philosophy, rather than the entirely statistic based approach that last summer appears to have been.

Secondly, who is going to be implementing our transfer strategy this summer once it has been decided upon, because if i'm not mistaken we sacked the man that would have been heading up that side of things a couple of weeks ago and he's yet to be replaced. Will it be Kenny? But then right now it seems to be up in the air if he will remain as well, in his current capacity at least. And that's without looking at the bigger picture in terms of who is running the club from day to day as well, because for far too long we've meandered along without a fully qualified - and connected - CEO and it has cost us time and time again. We say it every summer but this time it really does feel like make or break time. We simply have to get things right, both on and off the field this summer or risk falling even further behind those clubs that we believe we should be competing with. Another year out of the Champions League is adding to that feeling. There are some big questions in my mind regarding FSG and this summer could potentially add to those. They have to get things right and that doesn't just mean reducing the wage bill, which seems to be the major talking point. Yes we need to cut our cloth to cater for the continued lack of Champions League revenue, but there is an undoubted link between financial outlay and success on the field and it would be foolish to entirely ignore that, especially given the owners reported love of statistics.

We won't have the funds that City and Chelsea will have again so this time we need to be clever and we need to be decisive and the big worry is how can we possibly be that when the season has ended with half of our management team - including our 'Director of Football Strategy' - being flushed out and not replaced? When you see Arsenal learning from last summers mistakes and persuing early deals for sought after players then it should serve as a wake up call. Let's hope that it does and we do get things right, for once.

[Hinesy]

yeah I'm with him all the way on that.

[Rafa_La]

yeah I'm with him all the way on that.

SNAP!

Came to add the post too.

Does my heart proud to see the belief.

[royhendo]

I see no evidence that they are either clever or wise. I wonder if their end-of-season review extends to examining their own short-comings and attempting to rectify them? At the moment, they are allowing a sense of panic and crisis to engulf the club, whereas a decisive statement of support is needed. For what reason are they extending this torture over a space of weeks? IMO they know full well whether they want to maintain Dalglish in his post or finesse his exit right now.

Either they value stability or they don't. Either they have a better candidate lined up or they don't. Either they have a vision for this club or they are steering us by reactive process and piecemeal advice. And when one considers that their advisors have included Broughton, Purslow, Parry, Beane, Comolli, Barwick, Dein, not one of whom has true Liverpool DNA in his pores as Dalglish does, it's no surprise that they are flip-flopping around like a wet fish on a slippery deck. The bad luck for us is that they have the capacity to take us over the edge and into the deep dark brine for a consolidated period.

Clever? I have no faith in them - their motives, their strategy, or (what passes for) their vision. On the other hand, I have total and unshakeable faith that Kenny Dalglish sweats blood to do his best by the club.

Just want to highlight this excerpt from Tony Barrett's piece in The Times:

"With a search for a chief executive having recently resumed after being abandoned a year ago, FSG has also added to the instability by removing both Comolli and Ian Cotton, the club’s director of communications, without being in a position to appoint immediate replacements for either."

What is sensible or coherent about their management?

[Arcadian]

Good shout from no666. Dark days still abound I'm afraid.

[Arcadian]

I wish I wasn't feeling these vibes from Juan, but I am... Pretty much to the word.

What a fucking shit decision. If you can’t give Kenny Dalglish a bad season, which included silverware, then you can’t allow anyone a bad season. As usual some on RAWK have turned this into a Rafa Benitez situation, but it’s not the same. Whatever you thought on Rafa Benitez was an opinion formed over six seasons. Kenny Dalglish has had one. That’s not remotely comparable although it won’t matter to some.

That’s not the main concern here though, is it? We have absentee owners with no presence on Merseyside beyond Ian Ayre, a man who some would argue is the perfect poster boy for the Peter Principle that the owners seem so keen to support.

It’s a depressing sight that some people have chosen to place greater faith in a hedge-fund than in Kenny Dalglish, due in part no doubt to a sparkly PR campaign and their continued desire to paint themselves as The Thinking Men Of Sports. Henry wears a sleek suit and glasses. Everything he does is considered and couldn’t possibly be seen as wading in cack-handed. We need to synergise, we need blue-sky-thinking. What’s key is that we target the Asian market and hit our key demographic by giving them a product they can touch, can feel. Fuck off. A year and a half on we’re without plan on the stadium, without manager, without head of communication, without a genuine CEO and without a Director of Football, a position that we’ve often been without but one they themselves we soon keen to bring in. There’s a danger in believing anything that comes out of Christian Purslow’s mouth, but so far, after a year and a half, we don’t see too far away from his comment that the best thing about FSG is that they exist.

But as we carry on ignoring the elephant in the room that perhaps FSG lack both vision and resources to move it forward, we’re stuck looking at what that vision actually means beyond the window dressing and buzzwords that FSG willingly serve up.

We know nothing about what they actually want. We see them slapped on the back for being bold and free-thinking. They somehow are getting praise for removing Kenny Dalglish because they were decisive. The same thing happened with Comolli. “These FSG lot don’t fuck about, do they?” well, that is unless you feel that by sacking people they hired themselves within a year is fucking about. Kenny Dalglish, Damien Comolli, Graham Bartlett – these are all men FSG hired. They’re all men FSG fired, because they’re ruthless. They also appear to be either impatient or clueless, but they’re ruthless. They won’t accept failure, but also won’t acknowledge their complicity in that failure. You’ve all heard the Jovetic’s and the Alves’, and some even remember the ones Houllier and Evans missed out on before that. Add Jelavic to that list.

But we move on. We move on FSG’s man, if we’re to believe that Kenny wasn’t that but they handed him a 3-Year contract anyways. They might not be malicious, but they don’t seem to be smart at this point. But yes, we get our first FSG appointments since the last lot. With our first game coming up at the start of august we have two and a half months to get ourselves a director of football, conduct a proper interview process for the manager, bring in that manager, and then strengthen the squad. A skeptic could think this is a clusterfuck of a situation.

But what do FSG actually want from their man? So far the one thing that’s leaking is that they have to be young. Oh sure, ideally a winner, but young. They’ve got to be fresh-faced, innovative. Football’s Billy Beane.

Once again their failure to move away from the sport they love will influence our club.

So whilst we’re looking for a manager, we in all likelihood, won’t be talking to Fabio Capello who is available. We will not be talking to Louis Van Gaal, who has won the league at every club he’s managed, plays great football and has been occasionally ruthless in bringing youngsters through. The early rumors seem to suggest that we won’t be talking to Rafa Benitez. Yes, despite Henry’s fascination with the academy at Liverpool football club, we won’t be talking to the man who helped revamp it. I wouldn’t want Rafa back myself, and I wouldn’t want Capello either, but these are men you should attempt to interview if they’re available. In particular you have to interview Van Gaal and Rafa Benitez if, as is the case with John Henry, you’re convinced the future of the club is the academy and the key is to be able to bring players through that on mass. Van Gaal has worked at Barcelona and Ajax – you listen to what he has to say. Rafa has worked at Real Madrid and brought in the people at the academy at present, you have to listen to him as well. You try and talk to Pep Guardiola, but my bet is his agent never replies to the voice mail.

FSG though seem likely to look toward a younger man, which is why you get links from Martinez to AVB. Personally, I’m not a huge Martinez fan, but I think we’re awful in this country for not giving managers like him a chance at better clubs. A lot of people have compared the CV of Martinez or Rodgers to someone like Rafa when we took him from Valencia. What we need to do is look at them compared to Rafa when he got the Valencia job, not the Liverpool job. Rafa was a promotion specialist who ended up getting sacked or relegated when he got to La Liga. Valencia looked at the man, the methods and what he could potentially bring, and it worked out brilliantly.

If we were actually a well run club I would have no problem with Brendan Rodgers because I think he’s incredibly impressive. Far more so than Martinez who gets an undue amount of praise for the football Swansea play when Rodgers has taken it on light years. If we were a club with a strong director of football, and a coherent vision that extended throughout the club then hiring someone like Rodgers or Martinez (or Lambert but I know less of him) as a ‘head coach’ might just be the bold gamble we need. WE ARE NOT THAT CLUB. FSG may like to pretend that we are that club, but we’re fucking not. We’re a club without a director of football, or a CEO, with no one captaining the ship on this side of the Atlantic. We’re a club where both chairman and owner are in Boston. We’re a club who don’t know if they’re going to appoint the manager or the director of football first.

We’re exactly the sort of club that would kill a manager like that at present, because we are visionless. Once you look past all the hyperbole there’s nothing there. Once you look through all the clever ideas that are never actually expanded on you’ll see No Stadium, No CEO, No Manager, No Director of Football.

Good luck with that, Roberto.

[No666]

Thanks to The Gulleysucker here's a brief summary about some of the men behind FSG who form their strategies and a wonderfully descriptive summary of Ian Ayre:

It's not like the old days anymore, a local guy owning a club and running it for love and as a form of community support.

To FSG, this is just an investment, and these guys are fanatical about getting returns and getting them quickly. They make H&G look like amateurs but as far as I can see are cut from the same corporate greed cloth as far as their objectives are concerned.

They pretty much follow the plan preached by Seth Klarman, who is one of the FSG men.

They buy cheap and undervalued and their sole objective is to tart things up and then sell high. And that's their objective. Nothing else.

Unless it impacts on their projected profitability, they don't really give a shit about Anfield or Liverpool or the people who have devoted their lives to following and supporting the club.

As for Ayre, he gives me the impression of a very ambitious fly by night lackey coated in teflon who has developed a fine skill of self preservation by shifting responsibility and has now hit pay dirt and will do anything to please his bosses. He currently seems to have got his tongue so far up FSG's arses it's sticking out of their mouths. In 10 years time, possibly less, I imagine he'll be in the US running hedge funds or some similar scheme.

And by then, I'd lay money on it even though I'm not a betting man, we'll even probably still be at Anfield (which is not such a bad thing).

It's all very depressing. I guess they don't need or even want us old fellows anymore.

[Flinstone]

I know too well how you feel mate. I know you've got no time for baseball as a sport (rounders and all that) but being born and raised in The Bronx, NY, I've been through this song and dance before with the Yankees. You grow up loving your home team with all of your heart, you spend countless hours and dollars on the obsession and then the businessmen who know nothing of the history, the fans or the sport move in and decide its time to really rake it in by appealing to the "upper crust". To hell with the lifers and locals, they can't afford to lease luxury boxes and all that. Imagine hundreds of grown men reduced to tears as they smashed in the walls of the cathedral that was Our Yankee Stadium in the name of progress. Imagine losing seats that have been in your family for 40 years because you refuse to pay a fucking license fee just for the right to buy season tickets that go up in cost year after year. As professional sport becomes soley about the money, clubs lose their identity and any real connection with the supporters is tossed aside. There is just no time for silly locals who want to live in the past, but what they're missing is that the past is what enabled them to get into the money making position that they are in! Sadly, the only way to change the current climate is a complete protest, no matches, no television, no kits, no nothing. Unfortunately, there are thousands of know nothing, Johnny come lately types queued up to take your spot.

My advice is this and it is genuine and may seem defeatist in nature, so please don't take it the wrong way or think me condescending. Make it about the sport, even if only in your mind. Ignore the peripherals. Change is inevitable whether we want it or not. They don't care about us, so why give them a second thought. After all, the sport is what we love, not the business side although the two are sometimes inseparable.

I know you love this club and you're hurting, but don't let them take it away from you.

[royhendo]

Thanks for that but I think it’s later than you think. I think it’s gone. It’s in a box of beautiful memories. For me, my memories. They’ll go when I go.

So no more jolts and bangs and shocks and torches for the club. It’s dead. The club is dead. It is a morgue.

Fans are fans. I’m not talking about prawn sandwiches. I’m talking about the childish belief that good beats bad. That cheats don’t prosper. Even for Chelsea fans. Or Arsenal fans. City fans are 'good guys'. We like to think we’re unique (and we did a lot of things a whole lot better) but it’s a common bond. That said, I never found a Manc I could stand...

The fans are still here but the club has gone. So that is all that’s left. The fans. But there’s one more connection on the brink. The link between young and old. It couldn’t have been clearer on here this week.

Us aul’ fellas can either walk away, mumble in our beards and wait and see what the new thing is - see if we can stomach it or not; or, whatever the club gets up to, we could offer some leadership. A bit of direction to the young, patronising as that sounds.

I had a lecture from my elder daughter yesterday. About ‘classical’ values and ‘post-modern’ self-delusion and post-rationalisation (she’s at University, bless) but essentially she was talking about sticking to what you believe in. So, there’s hope. This young/old thing is a two-way street. So, tweet if you must but make some noise while you’re doing it.

There aren’t no master classes on the Kop no more but we don’t have to put up with cheating. We don’t have to put up with diving and dishonesty and laziness and... all the other stuff that belongs to winning at whatever cost. We don't have to settle for fourth when there's a title to be won. Here to win trophies and be a source of pride to the supporters. That’s what the man said.

We don’t have to call a ‘lack of principles’ at the ground but we can encourage the right thing. Cheer for hard work. Praise decent behaviour. Never give up. No surrender. Do or die. Because right is right and wrong is wrong. And that’s what we’re there to celebrate. Together, because we all believe it.

All shockingly old-fashioned but if our club goes so far as to become the kind of club that lets Terry lift a trophy and not see the falsehood in it, or if we think that the club has done that already, then we can walk away and good luck to them. It’s not the club that was our club anyway. That's dead.

.

[milzibkit]

Excellent summary of Lucas' attributes as a potential captain (whether I think he should be or not)

Well, its baffling to me how you can characterize Lucas with those 3 words, attributes you would want any captain to have, and then in the same sentence say he is not inspirational nor does he show leadership because had you actually watched any of his performances you would have seen him exude leadership in abundance.

Leadership isn't just about shouting at your teammates or belting 40 yard game-winners into the top net. No, leadership is more about demonstrating focus and attention to detail on a personal and squad level. He first accounts for his immediate defensive responsibilities by assuming the best defensive positions and cutting off passing lanes that lead to dangerous attacks. Once he has his defensive area under control, he then identifies where his teammates need help in defending and he then goes and provides support.

WBA (a) is the best example of his leadership skills.

We were penned in our own half for a good 5 minutes and Adam and Henderson were doing a terribly ineffectual job of pressing the wings and pushing the opposition back. We couldn't get the ball out of our half.

However, Lucas is very intelligent and saw that we were being penned back in our own zone and it was because we weren't applying uniform pressure on the opposition. The team pressing was completely out of sync and players would press an opponent only to realize that they have no secondary support covering passing lanes and options which meant WBA had no trouble passing the ball around in our defensive third.

Lucas realized that this spell of possession would eventually be costly if we couldn't get the ball out our defensive third and so he took matters into his own hands.

He was playing centrally in between Adam and Henderson who were responsible for pressing wingers and fullbacks but were doing it with no effect. When Lucas realized that his midfield partners were not able to press properly he took over both of their pressing responsibilities on either flank. When the ball went down the left the next time, Lucas sprinted past Adam and did the pressing job himself, and the same exact thing happened with henderson when the ball went down the right. The WBA attack was forced into rushed passes and they had to retreat. Lucas' efforts eventually resulted in a counter attack in which he played Suarez into space and Luis then smartly played it to Carroll for a 1 v 1 and a goal.

And what is most remarkable is that Lucas did this covering duty with out ceremony. He didn't slag off his teammates for no reason, (im looking at you, Carra), instead, he encouraged them and reassured them that he has their backs covered.

He exhibited the same leadership traits when flanno and robbo first came into the side. Whenever they had to play on-the-ball defense against an opposition runner down the flanks, Lucas would come from his CDM position and apply secondary pressure on the attacker mostly forcing them into mistakes, and then he would give all the CREDIT for the defensive play to the young fullbacks and encourage them to continue that high level of defensive play.

He possesses all of the most desirable and sought after traits of a true club captain. Selfless to a fault, ferociously loyal and supportive of his teammates, extremely composed in the most important games, comprehensive 360 degree player awareness, and then you add that rarest of all ingredients; humility.

He is able to lead his teammates and drive them to become better because he had to drive himself to become better and confront his defensive frailties. He has confronted his weaknesses and conquered them through sheer determination and force of will. His teammates have also witnessed this metamorphosis over the last few years and he now has their unconditional respect and admiration.

When he speaks to motivate his teammates to push harder or perform better, his words carry an unavoidable weight, because he exudes that determination at all times on the pitch so his sentiments aren't empty cliches. No, he leads by example but also realizes that some players need guidance and direction in order to attain that level of mental focus and it is not in his nature to leave a teammate floundering.

And one last rare gem of Lucas' character is that he makes himself completely expendable for his teammates no matter how much they are asking of him, and yet, he never demands or even acknowledges that their should be a reciprocation on their part. No, Lucas makes sure that no one has to do extra work or go out of their way to cover for him because he may have neglected or have been unaware of certain defensive responsibilities.

That is absolutely absurd. The side relies on him to do all the covering and he asks for no recompense in return.

He is a leader of men, simply because he puts himself last instead first. That's what a captain's duty is. They do what is required of them, not what their impulse compels of them.
 

[tea_tree]

Excellent post about from the Gerrard thread about him and the problems we have as a club of focussing on the individual instead of the team.

This saying "we can never replace" X or "we should keep picking X because of all the things he's done for us" isn't the liverpool way is it?

When Kevin keegan left, were people saying "We can never replace him". When Souness left was there the same wailing and gnashing of teeth. When Kenny dalglish started to hang up his boots, were liverpool fans filled with the same sense of dread? When Rushie was sold to juventus..... In every instance we found a slightly different player, and adapted our system and pushed on. Back then liverpool had a particular way of playing, and we went out and found players who could play pass and move football, and allowed them to express themselves, but they had duties to the team that they had to fulfil or they were out. The players we hung onto for a long time were the ones who were brilliant at reading the game like hansen, who used their vision and awareness to compensate for a lack of pace.  They had to contribute at a high level, or they were out.

Back when liverpool dominated everything, it looks like the system was more important than individuals. And while individuals did receive a lot of devotion, everyone, particularly the managers knew these players would be replaced when they no longer were up to it, by other players who would slot into the system. You were a great player, but you were great player because you were a liverpool player, and you were never allowed forget that. Now this is the liverpool way.

The other thing that I don't understand is that when some club legend is treated harshly, that is also described as not being in the liverpool way. In many respects the sacking of kenny dalglish is little different to accepting one of bill shankly's many melodramatic offers to resign, and then banning him from the training ground. Shankly himself treated injured players like lepers, and the club was very ruthless in getting rid of players who they didn't feel were up to it any more, or fell short in some way. The liverpool way seemed to revolve about doing the right thing at the right time. It wasn't always nice, but making the right decision, at the right time, often isn't nice.

I can't help feeling that as the glory years drift further away (and to be honest I was a small boy who caught the King Kenny era) we've become increasingly focussed on individuals, and hoping that they are going to magically lift us to glory. It started after the horrible shock of the souness years with Robbie Fowler. Here was a footballing genius, who made scoring goals look like the easiest thing in the world. Basically he could do no wrong. But He was basically allowed to take the piss, and as long as he kept banging in 30 goals a season then it was grand. He never developed and just stagnated, and then it all started to go wrong. If Robbie had come through 20 years earlier, Bob paisley would have taken one look at him, spotted the brilliance, and would have spotted what needed to be added to make him the complete forward. Robbie Fowler was a genius, but Ian Rush is the greatest ever liverpool forward. A brilliant goalscorer, who used his tactical intelligence, and his hard work to consistently score against the toughest teams in europe. And when we didn't have the ball, he was always working to get it back. he was a complete forward.  He is the liverpool striker against whom all others must be measured. Roy Evans wasn't the man to do that. By that stage Robbie was nearly bigger than the club. In some way we let down Robbie by calling him God at 18.

And then it was Michael Owen. He was also very good at some parts of the game. Bob paisley would have taken him in hand and made him express his particular talents as part of the greater system. Instead we gradually became this armour plated defensive rhino, and our attacking became increasingly about getting the ball to michael owen so he could use his pace on the counter attack.  We used him all the time. Contrast this with how man utd handled ryan giggs. They frequently rested him as a young player, Ferguson tried to protect him from the media, kept trying to keep his feet on the ground, and encouraged him to change his game to become a more complete team player. They changed his game to reduce the number of his hamstring injuries, whereas we kept making michael Owen sprint at top speed past defenders all the time.  The end result is that giggs is the only active player whose career spans both division 1 and the premiership, and he's 27 games short of a thousand senior club and international appearances. Michael Owen trains race horses and tweets a lot.

This brings us on to Stevie G. Now Stevie, like robbie, and Owen is an exceptional talent in many respects. But he's another player who has been poorly served by the club and the fans I think. The things that made him exceptional were, His incredible physique. Here was a player who was the size of a centre half, who was charging at the defence like a missile, and he could rampage around at top speed all day. He was an incredibly proactive player. He would launch himself like a missile into tackles, and when he got the ball his first instinct was how can we do the most damage from here. He was an exceptional striker of the ball. This gave him superb long range shooting, accurate crossing, and an ability to complete a high proportion of long, or difficult passes. All of this added together to produce a player, who was always looking to make something happen, and was frequently capable of pulling something off.

Once again he was pushed straight into the team, and was going to be the messiah that was going to save us. Now this is a dual edged sword. This puts massive expectation on the shoulders of teenagers, but it also sends the signal to them that they are "the man", and as such are basically complete. In the good old days, Bill shankly or bob paisley would have taken a good hard look at steven gerrard, and would have seen a player that was too impatient, a player with a tendency to do the spectacular too often, a tendency to always try for the throughball, or go for the long range shot. Basically he saw being a midfielder as a series of big events or battles, rather than a long list of jobs that have to be laboriously ticked off, while using your talents on the ball to retain possession, and build the best attacking situation possible. He would have been protected from expectation, and been slowly given more responsibility as he adapted to the liverpool pass and move way of playing, and only become "the man" when he was the complete player.

If you watch any old match of the seventies or match of the eighties, just look to see how patient we are in possession. We're hardly ever trying to force play. The pass and move football is very controlled. everything looks very smooth, very simple. somewhere along the line we seem to have forgotten how to play pass and move football. we seem to have forgotten perhaps the most essential part of the liverpool way. I think it is best summed up by this shankly quote, "Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple." (this is tika taka in a sentance by the way)

Now it was very easy to see that this message was burned into the mind of xabi alonso from his earliest days. You could see it in the way he played. Everything was smooth, everything was simple, picking up the ball in space, moving it on to another player, moving into position to get it back. Keeping possession, controlling play, and when a long pass to change play, or put in an attacker was the right one, he'd put the ball on a sixpence. Bill shankly would have adored xabi alonso. Imagine the player you would have had if Stevie G had received the footballing education of Xabi alonso. You would have a player who could control a game, and then moving forward to rampage into the box when the opportunity arose. A less psychopathic lothar mattheus.

I think that it is quite telling that Rafa Benitez was very slow to pick Stevie G in central midfield, where he wanted to play. Our best football under rafa came when we had a central midfield pairing, that could basically be best described as an angry, but less stylish ronnie whelan, and a skinny jan molby. Two world class midfield specialists, who did all the jobs a midfield was supposed to do. Stevie G was allowed rampage freely, like the english rivaldo, as the most physically aggressive and powerful free role player the world has ever seen. But injuries mean he can't do that any more. and we sure as hell don't have alonso and mascherano to pick up the slack. What the hell are we going to do now?

I'm afraid that for many fans, the answer has been to make luis suarez the new messiah. I've read some pretty enthusiastic things about luis suarez on this forum. But when I hold him up for comparison alongside Ian rush, I see a very talented player, who is enthusiastic but indisciplined in his efforts to get the ball back, who frustratingly scores an alarmingly low proportion of his shots on goal, and who behaves badly on the pitch, and gets distracted by nonsense. The job of the liverpool manager is not to accept more of the same from suarez, but improve him by making him more like Ian rush. There is so much more to come from luis suarez, and becoming more like ian rush is the way to unlock it. by making him a brilliant, tactically aware striker, who was part of a successful system. 

I think this is where Brendan rodgers is going to make his mark. His swansea team was all about pass and move football. They kept it simple and let the ball do the work. we have been crying out for a coach who would bring us back to Pass and move football, and if we are patient, Rodgers can do this. When KD came back, we played some fantastic pass and move football, and rampaged up the table. It seemed that this maxi rodriguez chap was pretty handy. But instead we went the stewart downing route, and that didn't work out so well.

We need to shift the focus from the individual star player who can change everything, to the team, that consistently plays good football, and creates good chances that way. We need to develop a disciplined pressing, pass and move game. The reason barcelona are so brilliant, is that they work so hard to make the other player look good, by moving to give the man on the ball passing options. When they get the ball, they have  four or five options, so that player looks like a genius by smoothly executing a simple pass, and so it moves on. This is what brendan rodgers had the swansea players doing. They weren't great players individually, but because they were always doing the same simple things, they looked like a cut price barcelona. It's the bill shankly quote above.

Under Houllier and Rafa, we were very well organized when we didn't have the ball, but we didn't really have as much of a plan, or a system of play. Even in 2008-9 it was pretty much get the ball, and give it to torres and gerrard as quickly as possible and let them run wild. but we need to learn the lessons of the Spanish revolution. Football is now all about possession of the ball in midfield. Barcelona and spain have been dominant playing pass and move football. Look at the premiership. Man city play patient pass and move football. Man utd play attacking pass and move football with two strikers, and two wingers and a 40 year old pulling the strings. These two teams finished 37 points ahead of us. Luka modric gave us the mother and father of lessons in pass and move football last september. Swansea glided to mid table respectability and took four points off us and gave us a bit of a lesson, with a wagebill about a seventh of ours. Spain just destroyed italy playing with a team with no strikers and six playmakers. The writing is on the wall.

The question is how quickly can brendan rodgers beat pass and move football, and high tempo pressing into our squad? Even if it goes quite well, it's going to take time before the players can execute it properly. But every step they take towards executing it properly makes them that bit better in possession. That bit closer to having a coherent plan, that bit nearer to always knowing what to do next. 

But right now our squad is an awful mess. Unless they are able to perform aggressive surgery on it in the summer, he is going to be forced to get radically improved performances from players who to varying degrees largely let us, and their manager down this season. In a lot of games last season I became very angry because regardless of what decisions he may have made, Kenny Dalglish did not deserve some of the performances that the team produced last season. He put faith in a lot of players, and A lot of people let him down. if the current squad is capable of doing that to a legend like Kenny Dalglish, we have to understand that they can do that to Brendan Rodgers as well, and we have to be very patient. To be honest, I don't really care too much where we finish next season, as long as there are clear signs that we are moving towards a more coherent pass and move system. The players can be changed, as long as the system is in place.

And I suppose that while it is important to recognize all that steven gerrard has achieved for the club over the years, and all of the immense performances he has produced, you have to wonder about what role he can play in this new pass and move revolution? I'm actually a little worried that he won't adapt all that well. he's going to have to completely change his game, and I wonder can he do it? It's in this context that people are questioning whether or not he's going to be useful. It's not a personal attack on a club legend, It's not an act of treachery, it's just looking at things after three fairly unimpressive seasons, which suggest that all is not well.

[Geppvindh's]

RedHopper again, this time in the Glazers thread.

I'm not talking about being fair to man utd. I'm talking about being fair to ourselves. This thread is a quite depressing mixture of hopeless wishful thinking, and mindless personal abuse. I mean I know that we're in the shit, and I know that we finished 37 points behind not just one manchester club, but both of them, but gleefully gathering around a half rumour, desperately wanting to believe that the evil ogre is an alcoholic, and that he drank so much that he shat himself is just sad. desperately desperately sad.  I mean how fucking desperate are we for some sign of weakness that we'll desperately clutch onto any old bullshit. How far have we fallen?

And making it so personalized and about one man is really not such a good idea, particularly when so many of the things we throw at ferguson, could be so easily be thrown at kenny dalglish, and what is worse, they could be made stick, whether you like it or not, so we should make it less about the individual, and see what it is exactly that he does, and see what we can learn from that. 

If I had a penny for every time I've heard another liverpool fan eagerly telling me that man utd are going down then I'd have enough for a couple of pints. If man utd are going down the tubes they have a bloody funny way of showing it. They came within a second of winning the league last season. They got 89 bloody points. They scored 89 bloody goals. I mean lets be honest here. This happens every season. Other clubs are spending far more money than man utd. The fans get unhappy. Ferguson defends the glazers, at the end of the summer man utd have generally spent more than enough to win the league, and do well in europe.  They've spend about £16 milion quid on two players. They've raised at least £10 million so far from selling academy players and park. They'll sell berbatov and maybe anderson and buy a fairly cheap midfielder and a left back, and they'll be ready for the new season. The fans will grumble, but it will all be forgotten about come may. Then it will start again.

Also their debt problem is sadly under control, and if they sell these shares, it will pay off half their debt, and slash their interest payments. The thing to remember is that they do have to pay this pointless and expensive debt every year but ...... they can still afford to pay more in wages and transfer fees than us every year, and as the debt is paid back, they can gradually spend even more than us. We can wish and hope that it's going to drag them under, but they seem to be managing just fine, and it's going to have less and less effect on them as time goes by.

Man utd are usually at best only ever the second highest spending club in the league, and frequently as low as the third or fourth. Between 1980 and 2000, for every three pounds they spent on wages and net transfers, we spent four. That was pretty constant for that 20 years. You have to remember that they had a wage cap of £26,000k a week  up until roy keane got a new contract in Dec 1999. we were lashing out a lot more than that. We made john barnes the most highly paid player in the league and the first £10K a week player in 1991, days before he destroyed his achilles.  We were consistently spending more than them on wages all throughout the 1990's. and the other thing you have to remember is that though they bought the odd rather expensive player, they bought very few players compared to us. Ferguson buys on average 3.5 players a season throughout his career. We generally bought 6 players over the age of 18,  rising to 7.5 players a season under rafa, and carrying on under hodgson and kenny. The reason that they were able to spend so much money on ruud van nistelrooy, is because they didn't buy a single player in 2000-1. Yes they paid a huge fee for roy keane, but he was the only player they bought that season, and they still spent considerably less than us, on er, clough, ruddock and dicks (3 substantial wage bills). yes they spent a lot of money on andy cole, but they sold £15 million on players that summer. we spend £8 million net, making phil babb the most expensive defender in the world, and mark kennedy the most expensive teenager in the world. (these records didn't last long)

Basically we spent a hell of a lot more money than them in the 80's, and we won everything, because we were doing everything right off the pitch, and we had good systems in place. However That stopped very abruptly, and while it can be in part blamed on hilllsborough, we basically just had no idea how to face into the nineties, so we kept spending way more than man utd, and they won everything, because they had passed us out off the pitch Then in the last decade, they were so far ahead of us in terms of a new stadium, and regular CL football, that they were able to spend even more than us, and we struggled to keep up.

This is why I struggle to get angry about ferguson any more. Getting angry with him is like being angry with the rain.  they don't beat us because he's got magical powers, or because he's evil, or even because he has loads of money. He's just really really good at being a football manager, and really good at managing a team on a budget, and he's built a series of really good systems at the club so it basically runs itself in a lot of ways. We can sit here talking about the glazers, and man utd's terminal decline, but the truth is that the last six years for them have been the most wildly successful in their history. A point and goal difference from winning 6 consecutive titles, and three CL finals. If that is a senile manager, a team in decline, and a club on the verge of financial collapse, then by jesus they're hiding it well.

And that's why I find all of this sitting around and fondly imagining that ferguson shat himself, and hoping that something is going to magically make man utd collapse, to be just desperately desperately sad and futile, and strangely impotent, and not a little bit depressing. 

[Something Awful]

Macca straightens it out for everyone.

I'm not sure I want to get into the whole debate over FSG just yet. My thoughts on them are wait and watch carefully. Once bitten twice shy is how I feel, but I'm not fully prepared to tar and feather them as villains at the moment. The previous twats taught us to be ultra vigilant, but I honestly think the whole charade of them two fucking robbers has given too unhealthy a perspective. It's given us seemingly a zero tolerance for mistakes and an even lower sense of trust. Regardless of what you might think, we could well have been Rangers or Portsmouth but for the grace of God and a few quid from FSG. Or even worse. Does that make them our lord and saviours? Not in a million years. But I think it buys them a little bit more trust and grace than they've been given. Put it like this, if your last girlfriend had fucked around on you and took you to the cleaners, you might have a good reason to be watchful and cynical. But if  you got a new girl and then you watched her like a hawk all day every day to the point of obsession, and never gave her one ounce of trust or respect, just because you'd been fucked around on before, I can pretty much guaranteed that before long the only action you'd be getting would be off Rosie Palmer and her five sisters.

But the players situation is something altogether different. Three out of the four who have gone or look as though they will be shipped out were on huge wages that let's be honest, for the amount they contributed, didn't deserve and were awarded by the previous management team. Yes, if Carroll turns out to be a fuck up, they can take all the blame for that, because regardless of whether that stupid twat Comolli arranged it, they obviously approved it. But Aquilani, Kuyt and Maxi? Their massive wages were authorised by Mr Football Manager himself, Purslow. Now regardless of whether we wanted them to stay or not, you cannot deny that Kuyt and Maxi fucked off due in part at least to the disillusionment they felt last season. I love Kenny as much as any man, but he did not give them the game time everyone felt they deserved. Maybe if he had, he'd still be here. But maybe he'd have gone sooner. No crystal ball on that one because we'll never know how it would have turned out. Aquilani has been done to death so I won't go there only to say that for whatever reason, clearly nobody bar Rafa has ever wanted him here. Same with Carragher. Purslow authorised that massive wage rise and extra two year deal the day before they took over, which virtually everyone said smelt as fishy as a brass's fanny at the time. So to use these as evidence that FSG are trying to fuck us over are about as flimsy and full of holes as Evra's accusations. That's not to say they aren't; it's merely saying that there are other areas we need to look at for proof.

Now look at transfers out rumours. Well I'm sorry but I just don't believe any single journalist. No smoke without fire I hear you cry. Well actually there is. I remember a newspaper transfer rumour league table from last year. I'm sure the figure that the most successful paper had a strike rate of 1 in 10. 1 in 10. I've got a better strike rate guessing which fucking raindrop on the windowsill will hit the deck first. Think about Pepe for a second. He was linked with every team in Europe at one stage and he confirmed himself that only one club, Arsenal, ever came in for him. That was a couple of seasons ago. And we refused them flat out. Yet every year since, we've had nothing but Pepe to Juve, Pepe to Milan, Pepe to United, Pepe to every fucker. So anyone getting concerned about rumours should at least just hold their water, not because they trust FSG, but because football journalists in England almost to a man would win the Olmypic Mud Slinging gold if such an event existed. Not only that, but do you really give any credence to a gang of c*nts like Holt, Maddocks, Barclay and Samuel who to a man have criticised everything about us for years, crucified Rafa, got their man Owl face the job, slaughtered Kenny from the get go and tried to hound Luis out of the country while all the time brandishing us all as racists? Fuck that. Again, I'm not using this as evidence to trust FSG. I'm using it to say I trust these bastards less than I'd trust Len Fairclough to give my kids swimming lessons.

Now onto transfers in. Again, the papers are as trustworthy as a Barclays chief executive looking after your piggy bank. How about all the various ITK's all over the shop? Well some of them seem to know bits and bobs, but only end up with strike rates slightly above journalists. The reason for that is because of fucking money grubbing blabber mouth agents and players letting things slip. Look at Aquilani's agent. He'd be able to lick two birds out at the same time, he's got that much of a fucking forked tongue. But what about people with connections inside the club? Well the thing is, we're working on potential deals all the time, only a small portion of which ever come off. Without going into all the details, a couple of seasons back, I was 100% certain a certain player was signing for us. 100% certain that it was going to be announced the next day. 100% certain that fees and wages had been agreed and the medical was taking place the next morning. Roy will back me up on that as well if he remembers. Imagine how much of a gobshite I felt the next morning when I got a text to say the medical had been called off! So even if someone says that a certain player is being looked at, there's still only a small possibility that he'll come. Look at Sigurddson for evidence that even when it's nailed on, things can change. This season, radio silence is even worse than ever, or if you prefer, better. But again, people twist it as an agenda to slate FSG. They're not being transparent and open with the fans. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Fucks sake, if we so much as look at a player on a Panini sticker these days, Spurs make a bid for him. Silence might just help us get some of our targets but blabbing all over the shop increases the likelihood of missing out on them.

The thing is though even when there is a solid link with a player, we've become such disillusioned and spoilt c*nts as fans that we moan to fuck before they've signed on the dotted line and before they've even had a chance to kick a ball in anger for us. Borini, Joe Allen, Dempsey. Fuck me, the vitriol they've taken on that transfer forum is unbelievable. Not quoting verbatim here, but there was a comment about Dempsey possibly being swapped for Adam that said something like "What a fucking joke. Getting rid of an international for a shit journeyman!" Now I'm not playing Judge Judy and executioner here, but according to some, Dempsey is a 29 year old shit mongrel journeyman (who has spent his entire career at two clubs with 71 international caps and a career total of roughly 1 goal in three) versus a seasoned thouroughbred international (with 16 caps, currently on his fifth club with a strike rate of about 1 in 5). Now again, it seemed to me that RAWK had given up on Charlie almost to a man. He was the proverbial overweight donkey according to a large majority of people last season. For all the pisstaking he gets, Fordy at times seemed like the biblical lone voice crying in the wilderness for Charlie. So what happens when Brendan Rodgers decides he wants shut? He suddenly becomes a seasoned international, a one club man, a play maker par excellence with a left foot deadlier than a basket of rattle snakes. We cried out for some bastard just to hit the net last year. So when we make a move for a player with a decent strike rate, he suddenly becomes a gobshite, a journeyman, a one season wonder. You know that saying you can please some of the people some of the time? Well apparently people who keep their eye on more foreigners than a fucking cowboy builder don't know it. Juan can back me up on this one if he read this because he pulled the soft c*nt on it. Someone on a player thread in the general sports, within a few hours came up with what can only be described as the wisdom of the modern day fan. He went from "Never heard of this player, never seen him" to "just watched a youtube video, looks like a decent player." He then topped of his all encompassing football knowledge and prowess, sorry, his supreme fucking idiocy, by saying "for fucks sake, we always miss out on all the best players" when a couple of hours later the lad signed for someone else. Unfuckingbelievable but true.

Do I trust FSG? About as far as I could fucking throw that fat twat Yakubu into a force 9 gale. Have they made a few fuck ups along the way? Most definitely, like appointing Comolli in the first place, not getting shut of Owl Face quicker and allowing us to make deals that made not a lot of sense to both seasoned reds and neutral observers. They've certainly helped to put us back two steps trying to help us move forward one. But do I blame them for everything? Not yet, not until they start proving my, what I think to be, healthy scepticism to be justified.

[ChaChaMooMoo]

From the liverpool way thread, geoff puts it straight.

There is a simple answer pass and move the Liverpool groove, seriously i am a little older than Andy but maybe not wiser, so this will maybe be a bit rambling.
 There is a myth that takes place in here sometimes, the Shankly years are remembered yes for the results and the players but certainly it is because of the man himself more than the football. His teams where effective rather than stylish at times compared to the Dalglish era, but he was the foundation for what followed. It is also a fact that it was not all success for Shanks far from it, but backing him by nearly 100% of the fans who adored and respected him was never in doubt, (i often wonder if he would have been here as long in the modern era).
The foundation on the pitch and within the club structure was put in place then with the bootroom, with the all red kit, with the socialist with a big S ideals and with the fact that we were the 12th man on the pitch then, something sadly lacking these days, we didn't expect to be entertained if we were it was a bonus, we were there to help the team win! Results then and now are more important than the way you win.
To me though the connection between the Liverpool Way and the style of play is a bogus one, the Liverpool way was the connection between the supporters and the club working as one and that was in place during many different styles of play seeing as the bootroom philosophy was in place but it could be argued the Shanks, Bob, Joe, Kenny all put their own stamp on the style of football we played during these years before Souness ripped the bootroom philosophy apart physically and mentally.
Now to jump a few era's our last link to the boot room was Evans, but by the time he took over football had changed from the days when he sat in it.
When Rafa arrived i said to a mate that he reminds me of a Spanish Shanks i have never lost this opinion about him, he got the fans and the city, his teams were at times far more effective than stylish certainly compared to Kenny's. However during his era (and as i said this has nothing to do with the football) TLW died.  It didn't die with Souness I believe because we remembered what a great player he was for us so with him it was regret tinged with respect rather than anger towards him. Sadly with the turmoil with the owners and the media spin with Rafa some fans (far too many) forgot they were part of the team and with that the holy trinity was cast aside for success at all costs. the recent years have only underlined this fact to the point that we now have fans in here who think they can use TLW as a derisory insult to aim at a poster! Our fanbase is shot to hell in my opinion full of factions that put their own opinions and agendas before the club.
Now Brendan i hope he is as strong as he appears, he will need to be, because we are sadly so far removed from TLW and the Bootroom philosophy that i fear for his chances and for the club's future to ever be as good and as (for want of a better word) united as the Shanks/ Bootroom era.

[kavah]

For me this is a rebuilding process in some respects, with a bit of remodeling. It's probably something that had there not been almost half a decade of turmoil (in-fighting, backstabbing and political maneuvering from players, staff and administrative figures alike) would have taken place much earlier and in a much smoother transitory phase. On one side, you've got a youth system that is ready to be tapped, on the other you've got a squad that has had several players who are either past their prime or don't provide good vaIlue. Letting go of some of these players has been a difficult task on many levels. But in a sense, I'm glad Rodgers is making many of those difficult decisions that are probably being done in and around right time.

The likes of Kuyt and Maxi have delivered well down the years, but both are either at their peak or past it. It's not that they aren't good footballers, or can't still play, but they're not good enough for Liverpool anymore. Or at least where Liverpool wants to be in a few years time. Aquilani is a very good player, but it was probably the right time to move him on after how the past few years had gone for him. Shedding those wages enables Rodgers to bring in players who fit better in with his ideas, which in turn assist when he looks to shuffle his pack in a congested season. In less rocky times with a greater degree of stability, we might have even seen the likes of Cole never signed and players like Carragher and perhaps even Gerrard sold off at this point.

I think what we're trying to do this summer is the cut the waste. It's a difficult, painful and arduous process.  It will likely mean we have to take a step backward to move forwards, but it has to be done. When you go back into the club history books Watford in the FA Cup during 1969/1970 is the fixture that changed everything. The previous year, Shankly's Reds had finished second. It was their third consecutive trophyless season, but the runner-up spot to Revie's Leeds was in reality somewhat of a lie. The squad was still packed with legendary players (Yeats, St. John, Thompson etc), but they'd achieved little or nothing in recent times. After winning the league in 1965/1966, the club finished 5th, 3rd and 2nd. The deepest they had gone in any cup competition during that time was the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in 1967/68 in which they lost to eventual winners West Bromwich Albion.

Losing to Watford, who had been newly promoted into the second division and would later be hammered 5-1 in the following round by Chelsea, was the straw that broke the camel's back. It let the largely sentimental Shankly realize that many of most loyal players could no longer be counted on with a degree of regularity and that the squad needed massive strengthening. The 31 year old Roger Hunt, who had scored 25 goals two seasons prior, was shipped off to Bolton a few months prior to the Watford debacle, but he was the first of many big names to go out the door. Within a year, stalwarts Ian St. John (32 at the time of Watford), Ron Yeats (33) , Tommy Lawrence (30) and Geoff Strong (33 during that game), who had all played in the Watford fixture, were all let go. Those four players, who featured in a combined 122 league games that year, would play collectively only 48 league games the following season (34 of which were by Strong). Alec Lindsay and Larry Lloyd, two 22 year old defenders bought at the beginning of the season, who played a combined 14 games that year, would go on to feature in 61 league games the next, as youth were given a chance and the older crowd were quickly phased out.

But like all rebuilds, it wasn't smooth sailing. Realizing he needed something two years prior, Shankly had bought Chelsea forward Tony Hateley, a sort of Peter Crouch of his era (big man, who joined lots of teams for very high fees) for £96,000. He scored 27 goals in all competitions, including 16 in the league, but was sold at a £16,000 loss as he didn't fit the team's style of play. His replacement Alun Evans was the most expensive teenager of all-time, costing over £100,000. Unfortunately for Evans, injuries and bad luck meant that he'd never fulfill his potential and he was eventually sold off for 3/4's of his original cost four years later having only played 79 league games.  At the tail-end of 1969/70 season, he bought Jack Whitham, a 23 year old forward from Sheffield Wednesday. Unfortunately for Whitham, he proved to be so injury-prone that Shankly essentially exiled him during training.

There are lessons that can be learned from reflecting on that experience in the early Seventies. One thing that will be telling with the current Liverpool rebuild is to what extent the younger players do get a chance. People have been complaining about the lack of squad depth, but with the reputedly teeming youth system ready to burst, at some point Rodgers has to look at taking a gamble and giving them a chance. Utilizing them at first to pad the 2nd and third back-up slots and then moving forward from there. Additionally, Rodgers also will be looking to send the message that this isn't a retirement home or a place where you can come and pick-up a hefty wage packet without contributing to the system when called upon.

One of the great tricks of the great Liverpool sides, particularly under Paisley, was knowing when a player was finished. Paisley was aided by his experience working as a physio to know when a player had peaked, but could still provide good value. And thus it's noticeable that despite the long careers of players like Ian Callaghan and Tommy Smith (at 33) at Liverpool, both were let go of, rather than allowed the opportunity to retire gracefully here.  Ray Clemence,  sold to Spurs at 33, went on to play 240 more games before calling it quits.  Additionally, players were sold in their prime to allow a younger player to breakthrough or saw dramatic reductions in playing time before they were shifted on. Phil Thompson was gone by age 31, but didn't play any league games during 1983/84 due to the emergence of Hansen and Lawrenson; Steve Heighway, played only 15 more league games for Liverpool after the year he turned 32); and Terry McDermott, at age 31, was sold back to Newcastle only two years after winning both the PFA and FWA Player of the Year awards.

Now granted with modern contracts and the glare of the media, Rodgers can't easily ship Carragher off to Bolton or bury Joe Cole in the reserves. But what he will need is a great deal of patience and time to rectify some of the haphazardness of the past few seasons. Ideally, he needs to use this season to lay down the philosophical foundations of his methodology, start bringing in younger players and shipping out less useful and older ones in order to ensure long-term, we are annually in the hit for more than just CL berths.

[The 5th Benitle]

Macca nails it again:

To be absolutely honest, I'm astounded and sick to fucking death in equal measures of the negativity towards the new manager. Jesus fucking Christ, He's been in the job five minutes and I keep hearing ad nauseum how he hasn't achieved anything, how he's only been in the EPL (get ter fuck with this pitiful fucking excuse of an acronym), and how anyone who has any sort of faith or belief in him is delusional. Well what the fuck do you actually want? Do you really want him to succeed or is the truth more that you actually do you want him to fail so you can wheel out your arrogant "I told you so's" at the end of the season? Honestly, it's more depressing than Hodgson's style of football.

I'm not making a direct comparison of ability, just before any of the doom mongers see the names and jump in feet first, but every manager has to start somewhere on their managerial career. At least having bags of experience as a youth coach and a decent Swansea team in the league for one season was better experience than King Kenny taking over the job for the first time as an absolute novice or Guardiola taking over a Barcelona team after a solitary season as a reserve coach. And both these teams were chock full of stars and winners, not a team who had finished 8th in the league the season before they took over. And that doesn't mean that Rodgers will go on to be anywhere near as successful as them. But as far as sticks go for beating him with, you might want to at least give him a full season to see whether his lack of experience is telling in where we finish.

Brendan Rodgers just cannot win with some people. They say he's inexperienced, and yet won't even give him a chance to learn as he goes along. I suppose it was his sacking at Reading that led to Halsey fucking up at least six decisions? Or maybe it was his constantly espousing his footballing philosophy that caused Skrtel to pass the ball to Tevez for an easy goal? How about the fact that he was never a proper professional footballer that meant Pepe fumbled around like a 15 year old trying to unfasten a bra against Hearts and Arsenal? For fucks sake, I've lost count of the times that I've read it really wasn't his methods at Swansea that got them playing so well. You know how far down the barrel you must be scraping when you're crediting Paolo Souza with taking four points off us last year.

Kristian's OP was excellent, balanced and never had any hyperbole in it as far as I could see. In a nutshell, he said he's done some good things, some not so good, but he can at least sense things going in the right direction as long as it continues in the next few games. But an agenda is an agenda. So if people want to criticise him, they'll keep on doing so. If we'd have won on Sunday, it would have been "but how fucking inconsistent are we?" "We only raise it for the big games" blah fucking blah. If we win tomorrow with a bunch of kids it'll be "but they were Rafa's kids" or "why can't he get the first 11 playing like that" blah fucking blah. Win against Norwich and it'll be "I need to see it regularly before I'm convinced" or "It's only a shit Norwich team" blah fucking blah. He might not win anything at all with everyone on his side but equally he might win everything even if every man and his dog doesn't like him. But not giving him a chance at all is wrong on every level.

[royhendo]

In appreciation of anticipation

There are few better things than anticipation. Be it the feeling of getting in to bed on Christmas eve as a child, the tension that precedes a penalty or the moment before engaging in a first kiss. Anticipation is a wonderful thing.
   
And it makes for wonderful football.

Having watched the 2011 Copa America I was full of anticipation when I learned we’d signed the young player of the tournament. I wasn’t left disappointed.

Seb Coates has an uncanny knack of knowing when and where trouble will raise its head. He’s someone that just ‘knows’. You can tell those defenders a mile off. Because they just seem to be one step ahead of the game. Call it what you want, recognising patterns, instinct, reading of the game. Coates has it.

It’s hard to quantify. Its not an ability that lends itself to stats. But that doesn’t mean its not apparent.

The amount of times the lad steps across his attacker and gets a toe on the ball or takes it away completely makes it hard to miss. One specific example from the game last night was when Udinese broke from our left, bypassed Carragher and a shot was fired at goal. It didn’t get that far, as Coates had stepped across and thrown himself in front of it.

You could argue that anticipating that Carra wouldn’t be able to stop his man is no great feat these days, but I wont here. It needed to be ‘seen’ and Coates saw it.

In a team currently littered with young players making their first inroads in the game it’s worth remembering that the Uruguayan only turns 22 on Sunday. He doesn’t play like it but he’s just a pup in ‘centre back years’.

To have such a maturity to his play at this stage in his development is really quite special. Body on the line, brutish strength and marauding upfield defending can often be apparent in young defenders. Knowing when to go for the ball, when to give a yard and when to take one generally takes experience.

Defending is an art that needs to be learnt. Through experiences good and bad. Rarely do you see such an old head on young, lofty, shoulders.

When have you ever seen him rattled? We’ve seen him make the odd mistake, but I'm struggling to think of an occasion when he’s been totally unable to deal with an attack or gone to pot in the face of one.

It appears to me as if its incredibly hard to phase him. Even when he’s made a mistake (Stoke away in the League Cup last season) he’s shrugged it off and gone on to put in a very good performance overall. He’s as mellow as his likeness to a certain cartoon character might suggest.

And if we’re talking about instinct here, it would be wrong of me to ignore the lads threat in the opposite box. We saw last night how he can put the ball in the back of the net. But OGs  aside, Coates is a very real goal threat.

It’s refreshing to see a physical presence who knows how to make the most of it. Coates doesn’t just go through the motions when he ventures forwards for a set piece. He gets up there wanting to get a goal. He attacks the ball rather than just making a move for it. The QPR goal last season showed he has ability in his feet as well as his head when it comes to trying to put the ball in the net. But to sell him sort, it’s his willingness and aptitude to put his head on the ball which is most enjoyable.

I could continue to wax lyrical about his underrated ability to put his foot on the ball. His decision making and knowing when to keep it simple as well as other things but I’ll not.

I’ll just anticipate the time when Coates will hopefully become a mainstay in our defence.

I personally don’t think he’s far off.

[royhendo]

Our fanbase is forever fucked.

The auld, auld arses are still caught up in the glory days and sit there nodding along at Ian St John's antiquated views on the game.

The new auld arses can't get over the injustice behind Rafa's sacking.

Then there's the people who have have become obsessed with soccernomics.

The other ones who've read a couple of Jonathan Wilson books and think they're the next Arrigo fucking Sacchi.

If we exerted all this energy in actually getting behind the manager and players we'd rule the fucking world.

[Veinticinco de Mayo]

Amen Brian.  Amen.

[The 5th Benitle]

Amen Brian.  Amen.

Amen? Brian is not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!

[Red_Isle_Chap]

To be honest, I think this deserves to be in here.

Because we're bored of being told everything is shit? The manager is shit. The players are shit. The owners are shit. The fans are shit. The TV program is shit. The refs are shit. The last owners were shit. We should never have sacked Kenny. We should never have sacked Benitez. We should never have appointed Hodgson. We need to be patient. We need to change things ASAP. We're not passing very well. We're passing too much. We only score from long balls. Why don't we ever use long balls? Staying at Anfield's a con. A new Stadium loses our history. We exist to win cups. Champions League is everything. We should rest players. We should play players. The kids are great. the kids can't cut it...

A few months ago a club legend left the club in a series of events I had no control over. A man replaced him and he basically said 'give me time and we will play good football'. I thought 'you know what, fuck it!' Why don't I just try and enjoy football like I used to? Is the sky really falling? We're not going bankrupt; we're not gonna get relegated; we're hard work away from really competing. Why not look on the bright side and enjoy one of the cornerstones of my life, rather than carry it round my neck? Hodgson and Hicks and Gillett ruined football for me. I want it back. In the end I think I've found a happy medium of playing Devil's Advocate and being overly positive, because by the time I'm worn down by a tide of negativity, I've settled somewhere in the middle with realistic contentedness. It won't satiate me forever of course, maybe not even beyond this season, but we'll know better by the summer whether the optimism was misplaced. Either way it doesn't matter whether I get my 2 cents in now that Rodgers is the wrong guy, because everyone will know that by the summer anyway. We're too hung up on the 'I told you so' rather than enjoying the 'journey' (X-factor wank speak).

My humble opinion.

[royhendo]

From the TAW thread.

Nor do I. That would be a desperate state of affairs if they did. But nor do I know of anyone who believes Rodgers shouldn't be responsible for the results of the team - the plane - he builds. What many supporters are saying instead is that Rodgers should be given a decent amount of time to build that plane before we start damning his piloting skills.

For let's not overestimate the amount of continuity between what Kenny built and what Rodgers is building. Rodgers isn't applying the finishing touches to something Kenny left behind. He's starting again. When he applied for the job I don't think he was interested in delivering 61 points (or whatever) with the squad that Kenny constructed - even though, as you say, that was a perfectly reasonable ambition with the players who existed at Anfield after Kenny left (they are not bad players). Moreover I don't think he was chosen by FSG for that reason either. I like to think that Rodgers was aiming higher and indicated to his suitors that he'd like to try and build a team that could win the Title.

If the conversation turned to that during his interview then it's a safe bet that it turned to two other things as well.

1. The first would have been "what do you think of the players that Kenny has assembled, particularly the prestige buys of the last 18 months?" Suarez aside, I can only imagine - given what's happened since - that Rodgers said "not much". It probably wasn't quite this blunt. More likely he would have said "Carroll, Downing, Adam, Enrique and Henderson are all good players but they're probably not the type I'd have chosen for myself (either at Liverpool or Swansea)." He might also have said that it would be time wasted trying to make them play the way he would want Liverpool to play. It would be better to look at their re-sale value and - if high enough - find them new clubs.

2. Once it was established that FSG might countenance selling off Kenny's family silver - at a hypothetically huge cost to themselves - the conversation would surely have turned to an alternative and pretty quickly that discussion would have become one about TIME. How long before we are in contention? Not contending 6th but for 1st. One hopes at this point that FSG did what the Liverpool board of directors did when Bill Shankly was appointed. Because I'm pretty sure that Rodgers might have said 4 or 5 years. He would have made a case that - in league position and trophies won - we might even see a step backwards this season. Champions League football at the end of it? A possibility, but the odds are stacked against it. Not heavily, but enough to give a new manager with new ideas some wriggle room.

I've no doubt that FSG would be attracted by this kind of realism and this kind of ambition. They also wanted a manager who didn't stake everything on the size of the club's wallet - and Rodgers, being clearly a massive egotist (I like that), would have made a strong case that expensive players are not necessarily the best players and that what matters is how they are valued by a perceptive eye (not the market) and how they are coached. 

So I think Rodgers was chosen because he offered a plausible and attractive long-term plan. And one that wasn't going to break the bank every 24 months.

That doesn't mean that in the short-term he wouldn't be judged. He'd be judged every week. That's footy. But the judgement wouldn't just be about points collected or dropped. It would also be about our mastery of the ball and pitch. I know one or two supporters who, at this point, will spill their tea and say 'ah aesthetic football' - as if that's what the Rodgers' revolution is all about. As if possession is an end in itself. Of course it isn't. It's the means. Most Reds know that because we've seen what can be achieved if we keep the ball and dictate the play instead of run after it all the time. By the end of this season Rodgers, I'm sure, would have promised his bosses that Liverpool would be dominating games and winning them more regularly than at any time since Rafa left.

And on this score Rodgers has started reasonably well. We haven't won enough but we're playing a type of football that in the long run is likely to bring in the points. Our failings this season are well documented but for me, at least, they pale, when compared to our successes. The new plane is still in prototype stage but it looks better equipped than the old one.   

I was amazed last night, for example, watching Liverpool in Moscow. This wasn't even Liverpool's second XI. It was  a combination of debutants, youth players, flotsam and jetsam from the Kenny and Hodgson eras, and a real ol' war-horse one neigh away from the glue factory. And yet against one of the most expensively assembled teams in the world, managed by a tactical supremo in Hiddink, and on a shocker of a pitch, we actually dominated play for the lion's share of the match. It was almost the perfect 1980s Euro away day. For the last three seasons, with those players, that simply could not have happened. We would have constantly given the ball away. We'd have been in almost perpetual defence. We'd have been under the cosh for almost 90 minutes. We might even have been turned over in the way that the Souness's kids turned over by Genoa and Spartak Moscow. 

[royhendo]

It's about understanding the game.

In order to play a possession game, you have to have players who can maintain possession in 1v1 situations. Not players who can take on the fullback 1v1, but players who can be put under pressure by an opposition player and come out of the confrontation with the ball still at their feet (a la Joe Allen). Barcelona practice this meticulously from the u8's upwards. Ajax too. KNVB coaching curriculum too.

Next, you have to have players who can pass efficiently, and players who understand how to get into support positions, which support positions to get into, why those are the best, and when they should move to support and when standing still is the best option. this requires insight. Barcelona practice this meticulously from the u8's upwards. Ajax too. KNVB coaching curriculum too.

Then you have to have players who understand when, how and why to break their lines, when to raise or drop the tempo of possession, when to go direct and when to play laterally to relieve physical pressure and rest on the ball. They also must know how to play into and back out of pressure with sharp passes into checking runs, with a 3rd attacker run into the space created. Barcelona practice this meticulously from the u8's upwards. Ajax too. KNVB coaching curriculum too.

So it's the highest form of football. It's certainly idealist, without a doubt. But it's also achievable with patience and recruitment. Joe Allen is the template midfielder for BR. Agger is probably the template defender, and Reina the template GK. We don't have the template forward yet though, and we lack the quality in certain key positions to play this style.

You seem to think that Barca started playing this style in 2007 or slightly before. The Barca style began with Cruyff and Michels in the 70's, and more importantly with Cruyff and the Dream Team in the late 80's to early 90's. They have built every team under the same guiding principles, starting at La Masia and continuing into the first team. They weren't instantly successful either. From 2001 to 2004 they weren't even in the top three. But they didn't once change to a direct style just to get the results, because their club is "Mas Que un Club". The possession and high pressing style borne of Total Voetbal is ingrained into their club culture from the days of Cruyff and Michels. The possession-dominance and extreme circulation developed by Van Gaal and refined by Guardiola. Rodgers is following this path because it is a high ideal and he is clearly an idealist. If people like yourself microanalyze sections and sub-sections of seasons then they will always be able to find fault and failure. If they understand what is trying to be implemented, then they will see a bright future that needs some additions to go with the coaching

As for this bit -

In our heyday we mixed it up, passed it, crossed it, long ball, short ball. We pressured teams with relentless attacking. Similar unfortunately to the Mancs now and over the last 15 years or so.

I don't recall this at all in our heyday. I recall us using Grobelaar to great effect. I recall us passing the other team into the ground by passing among the back four and back to Grobelaar's hands, and then rinse and repeat. We were, in fact, crushingly "boring" at times if you were a neutral. There is a reason why the 88 team is so celebrated - it was exciting and different to what people were used to a Liverpool team were. Panache rather than power were the order of the day. But we also had the superior budget to make it happen. A lot of people forget that. We could compete and outspend most teams from at least the mid-70's onwards, if not earlier. Wages weren't an issue, and revenue from prize money inevitably flowed in Liverpool's direction. Rodgers doesn't enjoy that luxury, and he also has a transfer window to contend with that Bill, Bob, Joe and Kenny didn't have to worry about. So for now, he has to rely on coaching ability to build the foundation he wants. If after January and into April results are bottom-end and the system is not working, people will have a more legitimate cause to gripe. But it isn't even Christmas yet.

[Mutton Geoff]

One point I am an Auld Arse and have never agreed with St John, but you are right we had better days, and remember them fondly!

[Harinder]

Simply brilliant and deserves to be here

At the game against Young boys last night me and my 7 year old son held the 'we climbed the hill' banner and on our way home Daniel asked me could i send a photo of it into his school so he could show his teacher... i emailed it when we got home.....,  here is the pic ( there is a thread about this banner here...http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=298338.0.



Daniel is in year 3 and when he was in school today his headmistress must have told his teacher and his teacher showed his class the pic and asked him to stand up and tell the class about the banner and Hillsborough.

When my other half picked him up from school today the teacher told her that Daniel had told the class ( obviously this is a kids version of the tragedy ) that, the police opened the gates at Hillsborough and let all the Liverpool fans in at once and let them all go down the tunnel to watch the match and lots of them got crushed, he told them that 96 had died and it had taken years and years for the families to tell everyone the truth about the police.

His teacher then got all the class to say a prayer for the 96.

Needless to say he made me proud.

[leivapool]

Top top post this:

The post was a bit dramatic for my taste. It was like opening your mates wardrobe only to find a load of birds clothes an a strap on.

That being said the point was definitely made.

Lucas to me is the important player of the last 10-15 years. Not because of his ability and what he does but for what he represents.

We are a club drunk on success who have masses of fans who think because they have witnessed some great sides and seen untold victories in years gone by that they automatically know a good player from a bad player when they see one, virtually straight away. And they automatically KNOW better than the manager because they are scousers and Liverpool fans and they kick a ball around on a Sunday or a Saturday or play five a side during the week.

I myself am what you would probably call a scouser. Lived here all my life, grew up on scotty then Nogsy. However, it doesnt embarrass me to openly admit I have been ashamed to be a scouser and a Liverpool fan on many occasions over the past 10-15 years with some of the things I see and hear regularly. I work in town so I'm surrounded by normal scouse reds. A lot of them season ticket holders in their mid-late 30's.

These same reds openly destroyed Lucas, amonsgt other players constantly. The same reds, after seeing Liverpool nearly win the league and win the European Cup and FA Cup on a budget nowhere near Chelseas or Man U's, after half a bad season, wanted Rafa out and were openly shouting the same. These people and these types of people just want to make me physically vomit. Quite often, you just sit there and disagree or even at times agree that performances and decisions may have been poor. However, the simple idea that this gives you the automatic right or knowledge to say to someone who has given their lives to this club and their fans and give 100% every day that they should leave just simply baffles me.

Lucas is more of a scouser than most of the so called 'scousers' that ever come on this site or support Liverpool and live in the City. He would never slag his club openly. He would never give less than 100% ever for the club. He would always help out a colleague or a team mate or whoever. Thats a damn site more than most of the gobshites I speak to every day and I see on these boards. To be a Liverpool fan means you a loyal to the end, rain, hail or shine. Like it or simply fuck off. We dont want you. Your not one of US.

Lucas is already a Reds legend in my eyes and I am praying these injuries were just a minor blip on his road to greatness. On watching him in the Under 21's the other day, I'd say we have absolutely fuck all to worry about. He seemed to be moving fine and was confident in his movement and his actions. Way below Premier level admittedly but the point is he seemed fine and well.

Now lets get the three points at Spurs and support the lads. C'mon you redmen.

YNWA

[Malaysian Kopite]

Seriously away from having a laugh perspective is:
Not sacking a CL winning manager
Not hiring a feckless fool of a man who talked liked the cowardly lion from OZ, (film not country)
Not sacking a legend for winning trophies
Not leaving a new manager high and dry with one striker because the communication link between Boston and Harleyboy was crap and he could not be arsed to go the extra three hours even.
Not moaning after every defeat or draw and then not posting after a win.

However perspective should be the realisation that you have a manager in place who although does not play yet the type of football i enjoy is still trying to get a foothold into this club, despite losing as Kenny did the main player for this clubs prospects of success, and having to juggle what is really a small squad with not enough on form senior players in it to help the kids. Mind you we will reap the rewards in the future for all this game time Wisdom has had for example.

You should also consider two things one he was let down by the club badly and he is supposed to be their man, and if he said fuck it and walked does that help us or make things 100 times worse, given no top coach will touch this club with our track record of wonderful fan support for the managers, which incidently before we got rid of Rafa was folklore in Football, oh how the fans of this club have fallen in their panic for instant success.

Of course you could look at other fans like maybe Norwich and Southampton who have no problem just accepting where they are right now but still want to improve or you can go on a rant because perhaps you chose to support a winning team and club and now they are not winning you feel cheated and like you need a refund for supporting us now.

 That is certainly the image far too many in here are giving me. Nobody has a god given right to win all the time, we did at one point we are not now so either suck up the tricky seasons and wait for better days or go find your next winning club and latch on to them instead.

[Malaysian Kopite]

Can't believe people are coming out and saying that our manager is wrong to publicly state that Liverpool FC are aiming for the minimum achievement of fourth place this season. Have some fucking pride. Even if we finish mid-table, at least he has his eyes set in the right place, and he's not scared of the pressure. Of course, these are the same people who were also saying that he's been lowering expectations so I guess that shows us more about the support than the manager.

Also, how the fuck is he supposed to avoid interviews? Kenny Dalgish did the exact same amount of press releases and talks, as does every other manager in this league, but Rodgers is supposed to just shut up and get results? How many of you would have told Kenny the same thing towards the tail end of last season? Fucking moronic. Even if you (understandably) don't give Rodgers the same respect allotted to Kenny, as manager of Liverpool FC, he deserves better than being told to shut the fuck up when he hasn't said anything wrong.

[royhendo]

This is for RAWK posts.

[royhendo]

Chops on Souness.

The man - the player, was never more epitomised than the Dinamo Bucharest games in 84'. Broke the jaw of one of their players in the first leg at Anfield, at the away leg bossed the game under loads of pressure...*Phil Neal tells a great story that goes briefly along the lines off...the team coach is surrounded by the Romanian army and Dinamo fans before the game, they all wanted Souness, the whole coach is flapping, Souness just sits there, staring straight ahead and pipes up "Don't worry lads, they're all here for me" He never even batted an eye lid. Went out onto the pitch and they all wanted him, Souness gave one of his most complete performances that night(possibly only second to the final in Rome)*

Think it was Neal who also said that, that team you just knew could go anywhere and get any result they wanted and Souness was the leader.

"Oh why were we so gooood!" we used to sing on the Kop, was it because we were Liverpool, or was it because we had Graeme Souness?.... Debatable, but Souness' class wasn't.


An extract I found about him......

Although Liverpool fans remember Souness's generosity when he ushered Bob Paisley up the Wembley steps to collect the 1983 League Cup, he was also their favourite hard man. Souness's tackling was a thing of terrible beauty, though probably less so if you were a direct opponent. In a European tie in Romania against Dinamo Bucharest, the home captain offered a display of intimidation against Souness which ended with the Romanian going off with a broken jaw. Souness's autobiography was aptly titled No Half Measures.

But the physical aspect of Souness's play was always offset by the accuracy of his passing. Dalglish, his room-mate, said of him: "There's no one I'd put in front of him when it comes to accurate and dangerous passing. He wins the ball, then distributes it and dictates the pace of the game."

Later, as captain, Souness displayed the kind of leadership which marked him out as a future manager. Ian Rush, who came into the Liverpool team in the early 1980s, remembers him in the dressing-room. "Graeme used to go round every player at half time, fist clenched, geeing us up, telling us the game was ours for the taking. He pumped adrenalin into you. I can't explain the feeling to this day, but you used to go out thinking you couldn't lose. That was the Souness psychology."


I don't know what it is but I love it
I don't know what it is but I want it to stay.....



Bagzy Ray Kennedy, My hero.

[royhendo]

Nobody needs reminding of what a big 3 points those were, but as ever, they're only cemented by how we follow it up against Villa, which again is another big 3 points to go and get. It was a game where we needed three, but one where we'd probably, and reluctantly, accept just the one again. I probably would anyway. We could have rested our dissapointment on the fact we had no Suarez - accepted it and moved on to building up for the 'get back on tracks' match v Villa. But we managed to bag it.

Didn't look at all likely at half time, after we were outmustled in the middle for long periods in the first half. In the last month or two, I keep wondering where the pressing has gone - where the 7 seconds thing has gone, because many other teams have outdone us in this department, and they rushed us about quite successfully. For once tho, we came out better after the break.

I thought we'd go with Cole on the left before the game, as I thought he might help out Shelvey a bit more than Downing with something a bit more intricate, but thought Downing did well, pre and post Enrique's injury, but particularly when he was more up front.

I met a mate of a mate in the pub for the game, who's a constant moaner - his negativity has become a pivot of comedy for a few of us - I mean this fella takes it to ends I didn't think possible. I'm not a great talker during a game, but he's sat behind me muttering away. He decides to leave after 62 mins, and I just thought it was going to be the turnaround. I think he was waiting for me to give him a 'you're leaving?!' type comment but I waved him away and wished him well. He's a lovely fella but I was glad to be alone. And then we score the third and I'm all over the pub punching the air. I went to the bar and and two arl Irish fellas were there and one said, 'Very lucky,' - said with a bitter look in his eye which was meant to be picked up on and I was 'Oh thankyou!... thankyou very much!'. I was de-lighted to have a bit of luck and wore a big fuck off smile. I too wished him well after. I came home and there was my home made chicken, mushroom and leek pie waiting for me. Lovely.

Really need to stick it to Villa.

Quick comment about Henderson. I posted something on here a while back that my hope for Henderson was that the difficult time he had being played out wide, and not in his best position (as one of a pair of false 10's), could do him, and us, some good in the future - he's done quite well recently. I just want him to put his foot thru the ball and lash one in. Really smash the fucker home.

[Zeb]

Hayzell on appreciation of Messi.

Was reading Sid Lowe's piece about Messi, posted this past Monday after he scored his 86th goal of the year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/dec/10/lionel-messi-86-goals-record) and he's linked various pieces of his from the past. One in particular stands out (at around the time this thread was started) after his destruction of Zaragoza and Arsenal where he scored a combined seven goals.

Prior to the Zaragoza game, where he scored a hat trick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrhEEvywEdY), I remember Patrick Barclay and Gabrielle Marcotti in The Times discussing who was better, Messi or Rooney and Barclay went for Rooney 'because he's stronger'. It was nonsensical anyway and illustrated Barclay's mentality but around a week later, Messi scored that hat trick and his second goal perfectly displayed Messi's strength. Not that it matters of course Messi was playing well before that but it was still very amusing (Don't bother searching for the Marcotti/Barclay piece, it's not there anymore, presumably deleted from the Recycle Bin out of embarrassment). Anyway, I came across this from around the same time:

Quote from: Patrick Barclay

    The very greatest players were all team players. Messi is one and it is also the special quality about Wayne Rooney -- and the reason England could win the World Cup. If they do, Rooney will be universally recognized as great. If, at the same time, Argentina flop (though Maradona’s team were impressive in winning a friendly match in Germany last month), the Englishman will have eclipsed Messi.

http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/soccerblog/maradona_messi_the_greatest_of_all_JeOGRP4kTtZuOF8yloeE1I#axzz2ExNVp2sZ

(Also, Messi had two European Cups at the time of that piece, not one as Barclay suggested.)

Which, two years on, is a world away from where we are now. Both England and Argentina disappointedly exited the World Cup in 2010, England got humiliated by Germany in the second round and Argentina progressed a round further before suffering the same fate. From memory though, whilst neither scored in that World Cup, Messi played well and did everything but score (I remember him hitting the post) along with the rest of the Argentina side in the Group Stages, from which they qualified comfortably. Rooney on the other hand, along with the rest of his compatriots, struggled completely, only sealing qualification in the last game and finishing runners up to the USA.

Of course, this isn't just to have a dig a Barclay, as easy as that is, but what prompted me to search for this was Sid Lowe's piece from 2010 after the Arsenal game (http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/apr/07/lionel-messi-spanish-press-reaction) and how behind this country were in England to give Messi the credit he deserved, giving various reasons, such as never doing it against an English side (like, Ibrahimovic of course) or playing in an inferior league which doesn't include trips to the Britannia. And Lowe quotes our own Phil Thompson:

Quote from: Side Lowe

    So was the reaction from England, the unanimous acclaim. "Messi," said Wenger, "is the best player in the world - by a distance." At last everyone seemed to agree; 90 minutes against Arsenal had done the trick. Even Phil Thompson must have given in, despite recently declaring: "Wayne Rooney is streets ahead of Messi." (Which streets, Phil, which bloody streets?!)

Thompson's remarks are typical (someone on the first few pages quoted Jeff Stelling saying something similar) but it was clear in 2010 that Messi was a special talent (from that Lowe piece, Xavi: "A player like this only comes along every 30 years or so.") and plenty of time before that as well. But it's incredible what he's done since then, he's added another European Cup and a couple of league titles and scored 166 goals in the process whilst not simply being a penalty box player (many of those goals for anyone else would be their greatest ever, for Messi, they're par for the course) and generally performed consistently well.

It's clear now that he's universally regarded as one of the greatest of all time, he's been performing consistently well for a number of years now, outperforming anyone else objectively (goals + assists + trophies) and in general awesomeness. And it's amazing to think how much better he's gotten since 2010, when he was performing well above anybody else in the world. And there's still more to come, which is so exciting.