Topic: Some quality/important posts you may have missed

[mercury]

Great post by Juan

[kavah]

One of my responses in the "It's finally here" thread..... fucking embarrassment to supporters some of this lot....

Can I buy a paragraph sometime?? That was struggle street just to get through the first three sentences.

Ok, you mentioned a hell of a lot of things there so I will have a crack at responding.

Psyche - I personally think some of the players may have switched off in the league and have one eye on the cup games because they are close and no one wants to get injured. I saw this in our squad during the 2009/10 season when the World Cup was coming up and some players just went through the motions. If they do they need a severe reprimand and possibly fine them and donate their wages to one of the many Liverpool charities and hospitals or HJC.

However, no one and I mean no one within Liverpool Football Club will be at Melwood applauding the latest performances in the league. You mention you "suspect" there are certain identities within the club who have said "job done" and I personally think if you have no names or proof, you are just creating unecessary controversy for the sake of it. Either name people and provide evidence or keep that sort of opinion to yourself as it does no good mentioning it.

Comparing Rafa's 2008/9 team to Kenny's now is not comparable at all. You mention Rafa nearly won the league. Kenny has won the league. Numerous times and with more than the one club, playing some of the most breathtaking football I have ever seen produced in England.

If Kenny had Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano, Fernando Torres and Alvaro Arbeloa to select week in, week out, I think we may have been a little further up the league than the current position suggests and we would definitely be stronger as a squad. A settled team, a team with a multitude of world class players who were all wanting to fight for their manager but lost faith in the club owners. Owners who placed a considerable debt on to the club to the point where players were being sold to service debt. Straw man argument and counter productive.

Just what did you expect this season? We brought in 7-8 players who are in the first team/squad and sold/loaned out countless others who were not in the plans for the future.

The issue for the club is that it had to clean up the mess that the previous owners had made as well as try to advance the aims of the football club and reach European competition. This is a task which I believe has proven to have a lot more time, money and energy spent on it than first anticipated. Do not underestimate the enormity of the challenge that Liverpool Football Club faced prior to 2011 as well as the added challenges it now faces from new investments being made in other clubs.

Still we have won more than Manchester City has. Just wanted to point that out.

Valid point regarding the "Moneyball" approach to some of our transfers however I do not believe that you can directly translate the baseball model for football and then complain about it. We seem to just want to use whatever approach we can to beat people up with. Baseball pays no transfer fees. It is purely a wage based system that is played on supply and demand and performance over previous seasons. It is a static game with definitive statistics. Eg - You can bat against left or right handed pitchers, you can bat left or right handed, you field in one or more positions, you pitch left or right handed, you pitch particular balls best against particular players blah blah blah.

Football has no such luxury as there are too many invariable tangibles that need to be considered which lead to a transfer fee also being involved based on potential, age, position, international appearances etc. I don't think Moneyball really promoted going out and bringing guys in on huge wages etc, my understanding was it was the complete opposite which in some ways actually proves that someone like a Charlie Adam is a fantastic "moneyball" type signing.

Just because Charlie Adam hasn't lived up to your particular expectations does not make him a bad signing. He was signed to compliment Steven Gerrard and Lucas Leiva who have not played over half a season each. He was bought to supply corners, free kicks and give a differing angle of attack because he was left footed.

He was brilliant at times for Blackpool and to say otherwise, frankly is revisionist and counter-productive. He made us look second rate twice last season and he never stop trying to get Blackpool out of the relegation zone, took a lot of responsibility on his shoulders and I think he showed great leadership qualities which we could utilise. Scottish international, has played some decent games for his country also so for 8 Million pounds, he is a Moneyball signing to a tee.

Coates, absolutely, Jose Enrique and to a lesser extent Craig Bellamy, I agree with you are considered Moneyball signings.

Andy Carroll and Jordan Henderson prove / disprove the Moneyball argument whichever way you want to look at it. As I highlighted for you before, transfer fees are highly subjective where the "original" dare I say it, moneyball principles are highly objective.

Damien Comolli was brought into the football club for this very reason. He is a supposed Moneyball disciple and had FSGs faith to utlisie this approach. However, in saying that we don't know what the guiding principles of the football business model are so to make any assumptions is fool hardy. There would be parameters in place and I would expect that these parameters will be utilised more in the upcoming transfer window.

Why weren't they utilised to their zenith over the last 12 months? Again because we were a long way behind the other clubs, we needed to make some statements of intent to supporters as well as other clubs and we needed to qualify for Europe.

We may have made some mistakes but they will be rectified in due course and some may even work in our favour later.

Andy Carroll has a 5 year contract and I think he will come good. Personal opinion but I think he has the ability to make it once he understands his role and we have a definitive style of football in which he needs to contribute. His confidence is shot. The lad has played some great games this season and then been benched. Wolves had me jumping up and down and nearly in tears for him because you can see the effort.

Everyone slags him off for lack of football intelligence but watch the run he made for Charlie Adam in that game where he took 3 defenders right so Adam could fuck it up on his preferred foot. Watch his involvement in some games. I would in fact argue he is a much more intelligent footballer than some of his team mates give him credit for. Just because he is a big, strong brute doesn't mean he needs to have the ball pinged 50 yards at his head all the fucking time.

He has some good touches, likes being involved in the interplay and because of his size, he attracts attention. Everyone can pick out individual moments to suit their argument, all I am saying is that the lad deserves support and he deserves it because he is wearing the fucking shirt and I think he is really trying. Championship - Premier League - England International - LFC - big jumps in a limited space of time.

Steven Gerrard and Luis Suarez are the types of players who would benefit from this and I just look back at the Everton game for proof that this is what this season has missed. These three with Henderson/Adam with Lucas Leiva would have given us a lot more attacking impetus. It is the sum of all parts and we never got to the play this season with all of our parts I think for any of it.

No Agger, no Lucas, no Gerrard, no Suarez, no Johnson for varying parts of the season has impacted this club enormously. The depth wasn't there and I know you have used Meireles and Aquilani but the decision had been made, the club felt they were not part of our plans and they left.

We are bemoaning Meireles leaving but in reality where was he going to play if Lucas was fit? We had Spearing
We are bemoaning Aquilani leaving but in reality where was he going to play if Gerrard was fit? We had Adam, Henderson, Shelvey, Suarez

Ok, you will counter with but they got injured but if I recall correctly, everyone was bemoaning so many centre midfielders being brought into the club not out.

The other important aspect you overlook is Torres and Meireles both handed in transfer requests. Javier Mascherano actually refused to play for us. Refused to play for Liverpool Football Club. I guarantee you now, if they had have put out a radio request for a centre midfielder for one night to play for Liverpool Football Club that night, there would have been every fucker from 12 - 65 in the Liverpool area scurrying for the boots believing that they could do it.

We had no other option but to sell them from that point on. No one is bigger than Liverpool Football Club. Not Shanks, not Steven Gerrard, not Kenny Dalglish, no one. Our hand was played and that was that.

This season has highlighted plenty of things to Kenny believe me. He is nobody's fool and he has always had this clubs best interests at heart.

He is the man to lead this club forward because he fucking bleeds for this club just like we do.
Do you think he is putting on an act everytime we score?
Do you think he is putting on an act when he looks so inconsolable when we lose?

Do I fuck.

There will come a time when something at Anfield is named after Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish. I hope it is for bringing us home Number 20.

You'll Never Walk Alone - listen to it sometime. Funnily enough, it actually means something to some of us....

[Reds4Life]

There was a response after that one ^^^^

Can't really believe I Did this and Apologies for the length no? but Redline ?

Ok, I think you are taking things a LITTLE personally? No? but I Will Try to answer you with reason and Logic? no?

Firstly, you did indeed imply that there were people at Liverpool Football Club who were happy with the performances, Here is Your Quote no?

“I don't know if anyone's already said "job done" to some extent re those factors behind the scenes but given the shambolic mess right now it wouldn't surprise me nor would their identity if my suspicions are correct.”

You then suggest it is Damien Comolli and try and pin a quote on him to suit your argument which I am sorry is bullshit and I will call you out on it. You want to write Shit then get called on it You Have to Deal with it no? All I did was to politely inform you that we don’t need hearsay and implications because it is detrimental and unnecessary.
You are enraged by the performances. We all are mate. But to just pan the entire strategy of the football club after less than 18 months with the points I made about where we have come from and where we needed to get to in that short space of time, I think you need to be a bit more of a realist than playing Football Manager and the like expecting overnight success.

It is a huge task, monumental even and I feared for Kenny when he stepped in to replace Hodgson because the manager’s job at LFC at the moment stretches a lot further than merely just selecting players and doing some interviews.

I agreed with you regarding some of the transfer strategy but let’s be honest Andy Carroll and Jordan Henderson do have the potential and I believe the ability to make it as footballers with this club. As well I again referenced the transfer activity as a statement of intent by the new owners to the fans as well as to other clubs that this football club is going to find its feet again and be a major force in world football. Agree So Far no?

This transfer window I believe you will see a more definitive “Moneyball” strategy but the problem has been over the last 18 months trying to catch up ground to even get to the point we were at 18 months ago. The train has moved on from there and we need to continue to play catch up faster than the clubs in front of us progress.
Ok, you say you don’t compare Rafa’s team to Kenny’s but then you slate LFC for not picking “Rafa” type players and then have the temerity to turn it all around and tell me you have seen Kenny win all of these league titles and act all indignant. You question whose model was right and then question Kenny’s ability to find these players (football brains, overriding fight for the cause, coolness and ability to think under pressure). Sorry but just about every scout is charged with looking for these four facets of player ability, Rafa is not alone there.

It was You who questioned Kenny not Me no? If you saw Kenny’s Team Play at All, which you say you Did no? You would see that there was no hard and fast Formation no? We played numerous systems and formations. I remember 5-3-2 was used a few times when it suited.

Mental aspect? You think that Kenny Dalglish does not know the mental aspect to win league titles for this club? You think that Kenny doesn’t have the ability to find players who he believes will walk through walls for this club? By the Way that wasn’t Rafa that used that statement, that was Shanks and that was 30 years before Rafa even came to Liverpool no?

You think that he hasn’t already worked out who are bottlers and who has it to take their game to the next level. You have a lot of baseless Accusations flying around and then you get all defensive when people say it’s bullshit. Well I’m Sorry it’s Bullshit no? You talk so dearly of mental aspect, where is Mascherano now? Where is Torres now? Did they leave because they had the right mental aspect??!! See mate it is easy to pick and choose arguments to have Isn’t It no?

I’ll discuss the mental aspect as a former professional footballer myself. Here goes. Confidence. It gets knocked around a bit here and there when you are sweating your fucking nuts off to get a chance to play first team footie. You finally get a chance and you play pretty well and think you probably have deserved to play the next game. But you get benched and you don’t play. And then you don’t play the next game. You try and hang in there as much as you can for the next opportunity but you are struggling to understand why you got dropped. You don’t want to throw the toys out of the pram so you work harder. But it takes a toll on your belief and it actually starts to eat away at you. You start playing more conservatively, you are so focused on not making mistakes that the part of your game which benefits from you playing naturally really starts to suffer. It is a steep decline for some from there on in.

We have played some players and I am going to defend Andy Carroll again here so Get Ready no? He to me is a player who thrives on confidence and a manager who just lets the leash off and lets him rip right in. He joined us with an injury. I think a more serious injury then what the club let on because you can tell these things when you have played at that level when someone is coming back. He was tentative to throw himself around, get stuck into challenges and I think he was severely lacking match fitness because he was a yard or two off the pace. His effort against Man City last season though reminded me exactly of his cavalier performance against us earlier that season at St James’ Park where he tore us a new one.

He has shown that form a few times this season. Everton away and home, Wolves away, Mancs at home in the FA Cup and just when I think his confidence is slowly coming back and starting to really flow, he is benched or dropped. Now I don’t necessarily know if it is performance or if it could be because they are managing an injury which could threaten his long-term career. But he has the intelligence, he has the size, he has the potential and I think he has the capability.

Andy has suffered from being one man out up front while Gerrard and Suarez have been in and out of the team and his performance against Everton when they were both in shows that it can and will work.

Jordan Henderson is similar but without the injury. He is being played out of position and has not had the benefit of playing alongside Gerrard and Lucas. He doesn’t seem suited to the flanks but has been thrown out there and is trying his hardest to do a job. It’s a big step up for these lads, keeping in mind their age as well as leaving the comfort zone of their home town clubs. Expectations have changed significantly. Newcastle and Sunderland may want to win all games but realistically I think their fans hope for a good cup run and a decent league position.

Don’t really follow your argument or what your point is regarding 2009/10 or 2010/11. Completely different seasons with completely different issues for the club.
We nearly went to the wall in 2009/10 and we got rid of one of our most successful managers.

In 2010/11 we install a dipshit, fuckwitted cocksucker who nearly fucking ruins us, blames the playing squad he inherited and then starts slagging the fans for not giving him the “Famous Kop Support”. He was on a one way ticket to Fuckoffsville right there, had us playing some of the worst football I have ever seen and then declares it “bwilliant”. Anyway moot argument and deflects away from the body of what you have Written no?

I will give you the limited budget that Rafa had to work with and he did an amazing job, no a Fucking incredible job, not just with the transfers but with the restructuring of the entire club. He brought Kenny back into the fold, he deserves a lot of credit for his shrewd investments and I will always defend the man because to me he was the Spanish Shanks.

Sorry you are wrong on the investment call from way back when. Liverpool Football Club broke many British transfer records the first time around for Kenny. I Think You need to go back and Check your facts no?

Where this club lost it was at the advent of the Premier League. We lost a lot of opportunities on marketing, investment and stadium attendance long before the Johnny come lately’s you refer to. We had the upper hand and we threw the advantage away. Ferguson and United thrived on this, utilised our own model against us to a degree and got very wise in the corporatization of their football club.

Not really sure what the rest of your point is because I can not for the life of me decipher it but I agree with you that it Pisses Me Off when people just throw the hands up and declare such and such is always going to be ahead of us. But my friend isn’t this what the “Moneyball” strategy is all about??!!

Mate, people are always going to hate us. And you know what? I fucking love it. I wish more people hated us. In fact I wish for the good old days when we were absolutely fucking despised by everyone. But we were respected. Somewhat begrudgingly but the respect was there.

We just have to be comfortable in our own skin because you are never going to have everyone liking you. Part of life unfortunately. We are our own worst enemies at times because of the infighting. Sometimes passion can get a little overblown and spills over. I would rather than though than meekly laying down and saying fuck it. But I have written elsewhere that there is only one Liverpool Football Club supporter and they all believe you play for the shirt.

Show me any other side in the world (Real Madrid might be a case with Felipe Scolari) where a manager has won 2 trophies in his first season back and been sacked?? What the fuck is going on here??!! Do people realise just who this wee man in the freezer room jacket who celebrates goals we score like a 5 year old (and me) really is? Do they understand his Mentality? Do they understand his Psyche? Do they understand what this man Has gone through in his life with Liverpool Football Club? It’s ok to stick your head above the parapet and have a dig anonymously at Kenny on your fucking talkback radio stations and 606 or whatever the fuck it is you call it, but he puts his fucking face on tele all the time taking the brunt for everything that goes on at this club. I personally think he shouldn’t do it because it is having a terrible effect on him but he is highly visible, he soaks it all up and he gets on with it.

Already went through the Moneyball policy, wasn’t have a go at you but wanted to temper what you are saying with some realism. Let’s just say for Shits and Giggles no? If we knew the parameters of what the club are using for their Moneyball strategy to transfers and it has the potential to cost us European football for the next 6 seasons, would you do it? If it meant in year 7 that we would qualify for Europe with a fantastic team, would you sit back humbly accepting that we are in good hands, the manager is the right man for the job, the owners are saving shitloads of money and we will eventually get back into Europe?

Again you beat Charlie Adam with the mental stick again. What I am trying to point out to you, and I will use the Blackpool situation again, he busted his absolute bollocks off for that team. He was no “big fish in a small pond”. That’s bullshit. He got to that position by himself through hard work, application, dedication and dare I say it But Yes I will fucking Mentality no? He could have just thought fuck it, United and Liverpool are in for me in the summer, I’ll just sit back and let these fuckers rot on the vine, don’t get injured and sign up for mega bucks.

Again you compare Charlie Adam to Xabi Alonso and Jay Spearing when preparing mentally. Are you for fucking real??!! What has Jay Spearing achieved in this game that Charlie Adam hasn’t??

He showed the fighting spirit at Blackpool, he was seen as a player to complement Lucas and Gerrard in midfield, he gives us an extra dimension in free kicks and corners with delivery and different angles. He was bought because these qualities added with the two players I mentioned cover all the bases for an effective and productive centre midfield.

He covers more ground than nearly any other player in the squad so I am not sure what you are getting at mate. Maybe I have the rose coloured specs on here but he has been the least of our problems this season. Huge turnover in players, disruption to a formation I think Kenny was looking at playing (4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3) this season which included the major players who have been out for long periods of the season, Suarez issue and the fallout from that have all played much greater roles in this season than Charlie Adam’s mental attitude.

No your “big fish in a small pond” comment was belittling and did not do him justice. Were you talking about how fucking great Charlie Adam had done when he won them promotion? It didn’t show how well he did at Blackpool at all, it showed a lot of disrespect to the player for him working so fucking hard.
You see, this build the team around them nonsense time and fucking time again. It’s bullshit mate. You don’t build teams around one player. That is a recipe for disaster, always has been, always will be.

You build a team based around the sum of all parts. You look for players who have the ability to complement each other, you look for a team that has a strong spine which comprises of your goalkeeper, 2 strong but differing centre backs, 2 decent centre midfielders, 1 combatative, 1 with a bit of flair and attack mindedness and a striker. Then you look for the wider players who fit the style of football you want to play (overlapping fullbacks, wide wingers etc)

I was agreeing with you wholeheartedly about Enrique, Coates and to a lesser extent Bellamy.

I already mentioned to you that the Carroll and Henderson signings were statements of intent as much as they were “Moneyball” signings. Both young, English, bags of potential and a host of other clubs sniffing around them. They never put the price tags on their heads but clubs knew they could force our hand because we were playing catch up, had a bit of coin from the Torres transfer and knew we were a bit desperate in certain areas of the pitch.

Judge FSG on the next two transfer windows to see if Moneyball has any place in football but I am telling you now, this ideal of what “Moneyball” is was being utilised by Sir Bob and the gang in the boot room for many a year before Billy Beane came along.

You mention Rafa and he had plenty of fuck ups that go along with the good as all managers do. Rafa utilised some of these players as stepping stones to eventually get the players he wanted to suit his system. This was like you mentioned a 5 year process so why be so quick to shoot down the current regime after less than 18 months? We needed to plug plenty of holes in that time so let’s be a bit more forgiving and be a bit more like respectful Liverpool Football Club Supporters Should be no?

That 2008/9 season, we did get a lot of draws and late wins because of the belief I agree with you. I actually think we over achieved in that season personally and it set the die in motion for the end of Rafa’s reign. The owners stopped spending, the interest mounted, we as fans expected the league sooner rather than later and Rafa bore the brunt of the xenophobic English media who racially vilified the man out of the English game.

However I did also see some fucking horrendous performances under Rafa as well which just goes to show it really is a game of confidence and belief no? Same players rolled over at Portsmouth. The game against Reading away are prime examples.

I didn’t say getting into Europe was a target mate, FSG stated that before the season began.

I feel that this potentially had an effect on the players before a ball was even kicked as it placed undue pressure on a squad, whom half had just joined, to gel instantly, play the same footie as the end of the season before and make the top 4.

I would have preferred to not talk up our chances, state that we are rebuilding but rebuilding fast to get Liverpool Football Club back where it belongs and that is amongst the elite teams of world football. We are not kidding ourselves, it will be a long and arduous task but we have unswerving belief in the management and the players to ensure that this club achieves that aim.

No mention of league position. No mention of expectations. No one needs to know that apart from the management and the players. Fuck everyone else and the soundbytes they want. We are Liverpool Football Club. All that did was create an unrealistic expectation which then created unrealistic behaviours which we are seeing now.
I never said parameters have been ignored so don’t twist my words to suit your argument.

This is actually what I said:

"Damien Comolli was brought into the football club for this very reason. He is a supposed Moneyball disciple and had FSGs faith to utlisie this approach. However, in saying that we don't know what the guiding principles of the football business model are so to make any assumptions is fool hardy. There would be parameters in place and I would expect that these parameters will be utilised more in the upcoming transfer window.

Why weren't they utilised to their zenith over the last 12 months? Again because we were a long way behind the other clubs, we needed to make some statements of intent to supporters as well as other clubs and we needed to qualify for Europe.

We may have made some mistakes but they will be rectified in due course and some may even work in our favour later."

Where did I mention parameters ignored? We don’t even know the parameters! I think I have already covered why perhaps “Moneyball” principles were not adopted all and sundry initially because we were playing catch up.

Again, please. We looked at signing Mario Gomez and Llorente but Torres fucked us over whether you care to see it that way or not. He put in a transfer request at the last minute, we tried to find suitable replacements from the list that Damien Comolli had put together with his scouts and Kenny and we couldn’t get them. We did sign Andy Carroll as a statement of intent, rightly or wrongly time will tell. Andy Carroll was a target of ours anyway, I don’t think we anticipated having to pay so much but our hand was forced by Torres whether you care to see it that way or not.

How do you know that Rafa’s reign has been disowned?? What a Fucking Stupid thing to say no?. Really? Why then has Liverpool Football Club been buying up some of the best young talent around? Why are there still coaches that Rafa put into the academy and youth set up still here?

Again you talk up Rafa and downplay Kenny but act all indignant when people call you out on it saying I have seen every title Kenny won with us blah blah blah. Really? What did you learn from those formative years then? Anything about Kenny? Anything about Mentality? Anything about Psyche?

He is how tough Kenny is. He fucked himself off. That’s right. He ended his own playing career for Liverpool Football Club.

Then after attending all 96 funerals for the victims of Hillsborough, he ended his own managerial career for Liverpool Football Club.

Why did Kenny do that? Because he is a pussy?? Do me a favour.

He put Liverpool Football Club first, always does, always will.

You agree with Andy Carroll coming good but have a quick fucking stab at him in the same sentence. You could not make this shit up.

You also say that Kenny is the right man for the job but then implore to everyone that we have got it all wrong and should follow the Rafa system.

We lost key personnel this season. A lot of key personnel if you go back to the ideal I mentioned about a strong spine. Nearly everyone you mention, except Johnson fits into that spine. Not just small losses to a squad, huge holes mate which we tried to plug but we haven’t. Pure and simple. But don’t tell me in the same breath that you felt defensive midfielder was one area we needed to fix immediately. There were a lot more areas of our squad that needed immediate fixing.

I never singled you out at all for bemoaning Meireles leaving, I said “we”. You see to me Raul Meireles can be used in an argument exactly the same way you use Charlie Adam.
Now I liked Meireles. I thought his interplay with Maxi and Suarez was great at times but I felt he was a liability in defence. He disappeared for a lot of games and there were parts where I thought he was an out and out shithouse but that detracts from what I am getting at.

There was one purple patch for Raul Meireles over about 5-6 games in the season. But it suddenly seems in revisionist land that he was indispensable to this club and was a regular first team player. He wasn’t. He was a squad player, did a job now and again, scored some very nice goals but I felt we could do better.

He handed in a transfer request, dare I say it, he didn’t have the right Mentality or Psyche no? and fucked off with his stupid haircut to Chelsea. Good luck to him, hope it works out for him. But seriously now, what makes you think that Raul Meireles has those fighting qualities that you so desperately keep recycling? Crunching tackles? Spilling blood for his team? Making those desperate, lung busting runs when the game is lost?? Finished article as a player? Really?!

If we can use the money we spent on Meireles and spend it on someone like Javi Martinez, would you approve of it? If we could replace someone like Meireles with a Charlie Adam and then get a Javi Martinez would you be happy? Would this not seem like the Rafa system to you? Why do you not think we are potentially doing this?
Aquilani. Don’t really know so won’t speculate on what did or didn’t happen with Alberto. Seemed a decent prospect, played well in Italy before we got him. Unlucky he was injured and never got a chance but that horse has bolted mate. He wasn’t brought in to replace Alonso, he was brought in to be the midfielder than can undo tight defences with smart 1-2 football with the strikers and attacking midfielders. 

I don’t think that your comments about Jay Spearing are fair at all. The lad has applied himself, he gives his all and he has played some supposed “World Class” players off the park and barely given them a touch. He is young, he is going to make mistakes but he will find consistency eventually and be an extremely good squad choice for us for Lucas Leiva. To say that he is behind a lot of our problems is a long, tenuous bow you draw and I think it’s bullshit. You see you argue on one hand for players with will to fight and then pan Jay Spearing. Fuck me, the lad is a fighter through and through. I would actually pick Spearing over Meireles any day of the week for a defensive midfield role – partly because the lad can fucking tackle for a start! I think you should stop there because you are embarrassing yourself and possibly getting sentimental for the Portuguese. 
Like I said, go back to the boards during this transfer window and see what the reaction was to our purchasing centre midfielders. It wasn’t crying out that we had none, in fact completely the opposite. People saw the reason and logic behind the strategy being to send out some youngsters on loan, blood Henderson, have Adam complement Gerrard and Lucas… fuck do you even watch us mate? Seriously beginning to wonder now. 

Ok. Let’s go through This ? section slowly for you.

Why should Liverpool Football Club ever, ever, EVER try to hold on to players who hand in transfer requests and try and hold this club to ransom??!!! Do you support Liverpool Football Club??!! Really?? Are you happy to have players trying to butt fuck this club at any opportunity and then you pay your hard earned on a weekend to cheer them??!! Really??!!

Mate, I really couldn’t give a fuck about Luca Modric or Wayne fucking Rooney. They don’t play for Liverpool Football Club and if they did and pulled that fucking stunt here I would expect them to be fucked off as well. You See no one is Bigger than Liverpool Football Club. NO ONE. No?

Javier Mascherano. I never twisted your words at all. Who were we going to replace Javier Mascherano with with the owners that we had, the fact that the club was about to fucking implode and we didn’t have 2p to rub together mate? I think we bought Christian Poulsen and Raul Meireles if memory serves me correct. Fuck me.

Number 20 was more a reference to a long-term Kenny Dalglish as manager of Liverpool Football Club quote rather than any infantile mistake on mathematics but thank you for pointing that out and actually proving my point.

No one is lecturing you about Kenny mate but you can see that some of your comments may lead some to believe you don’t know really what you want. You say Kenny is the man and you believe in him great. End of. No need to then trawl Rafael Benitez back into the argument and claim Liverpool Football Club have wiped him from our history, he is right about transfers, he is right about the system. You can see how it is contradictory right?

This is actually what I said:

This season has highlighted plenty of things to Kenny believe me. He is nobody's fool and he has always had this clubs best interests at heart.

He is the man to lead this club forward because he fucking bleeds for this club just like we do.
Do you think he is putting on an act everytime we score?
Do you think he is putting on an act when he looks so inconsolable when we lose?

Do I fuck.

is that a lecture? Amazed if it is. How thick is your skin mate??

You seem to want to write pages and pages but then can’t handle any criticism, even it is reasoned and has some logic applied to it when people disagree with you. You seem to wander all over the place with your arguments, there is ridiculous punctuation throughout which seems to all and sundry as a cry for attention and trying to be different for the sake of being different but then when you get the attention you so desperately crave you turn to water.

Mate, judging by what you are saying we are the same age. Really? We are both 34/35 year olds?

Lecturing you about our song??!! Fuck me I’ve heard it all.

Do you really understand what our “anthem” means mate? What does it mean just out of interest?

No one was questioning you in the slightest, least of all me. I just wanted you to perhaps go back to the song and listen carefully to the words and then perhaps apply it with liberal thought, reason and logic to what you are writing and really think about it.

Where would you say Liverpool Football Club is at at the moment? The storm or the golden sky? How do you see us getting there and what will it take?

I guess what I really wanted mate was that you stand there with your eyes closed, feel your spine fucking tingle with raw emotion as you hear the words that your forefathers sang, you feel the history, the tradition, the tears starting to roll down your face, your heart beat accelerates, the blood pumps harder and you fill up with such intense pride for the fact that we are Liverpool Football Club and we are not fucking no marks who back down on players when they hand in transfer requests etc etc.

I think you looked way too far into what I have said and taken it as abuse, it wasn’t. It was really just a simple request, not a question of your integrity, your level of fanhood, whatever. Merely just trying to bring you back to what this is all about and has always been about.

Where was the insults? Who said I didn’t think you know what it meant?

Mate, if you are going to come onto forums and spout your opinion On and On and put yourself out there, you must understand that people have just as much write to take Umbrage ? with what you right. I have been fair and reasoned in my conversation with You no? I have not resorted to insults or called you a fucking idiot so why get so defensive?

Do you accept that sometimes you can be wrong or people disagree with you?

If you can’t then you shouldn’t put yourself in a position where people can and will.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion just like you are but when you question things and people answer because they disagree but are prepared to take the time and patience to respond, sometimes just sit back, think about what people are really saying and then respond if you need to.

All the best

YNWA – listen to it

[royhendo]

Right, firstly going to apologise to Yorky, Dilks and FG if they thought I was telling them why they don’t rate players. Obviously they know why they don’t, and it’s just me getting frustrated at the Coady backlash that we’ve had this season (since the Sporting game). I know Yorky in particular has been unsure about him for a while. Really though, it’s more my frustration that people who never had these ‘doubts’ previously have now decided that Coady isn’t up to much.

Personally, I disagree with Yorky about how quickly Coady circulates possession. If he gets movement he does it quickly. If we’re countering he’ll get the ball into Adorjan quickly. If we’re building pressure and an opposition defence sits deep I still think it’s Coady, rather than Adorjan, who switches the play. I think Coady more than anyone encourages McLaughlin to get forward, which in turn gives Suso the space to move in to. I think the favoured pass from Coady is to take the ball from the left, one touch to open the body, and then play it into space for McLaughlin to move into. I think he facilitates a lot of the runs from McLaughlin and previously Flanagan (and I also think this is part of the reason he was more ponderous in possession on Thursday, along with the fact that our front 4 were very poor first half). If the right back is on the way forward already then he’ll play the pass to Suso (or Silva) and they can move in field immediately because you’ve got McLaughlin taking the player away down the line.

What I don’t think Coady offers enough of at this moment is the ability to “Play between the lines”. I don’t mean that in the Rafa sense, because I think when we’re building pressure on a team rather than utilizing quick attacking transitions (urgh) – which is clearly our favoured way of playing because it was Rafa’s favoured way of playing – What I mean is that when a team gets organised in it’s shape after they’ve got players back behind the ball after our initial break, Coady can only go sideways. He lacks the ability to play through a packed midfield. He can’t disguise the pass Alonso style, and he certainly can’t play it with the pace that Alonso did. He can’t use pace to beat a man and get behind the midfield line like Gerrard. He hasn’t got the quickest moving feet, and we don’t have the sort of midfield movement, that Barcelona do to allow him to do that. So yeah, I can see the frustration people have with Coady when teams sit in on us, because against a packed midfield and defence he can only move the play sideways. I don’t think he gets caught on the ball, or he’s ponderous in possession. Personally, I think he’s a lot more away in possession of the ball than he is when being asked to defend in midfield.

What is important to remember though is that Conor Coady is 19. Now I know people can list an arms length of players who’ve broken through by then or looked better at that age, but it ignores the circumstances.

The relative success of Rodolfo Borrell’s team over the last 3 seasons I think has tricked people into believe that this is the first lot of players to be trained in the new “Liverpool Way” at Academy level. It’s not. Rodolfo is trying to get a team to play in the image of how we want our academy to play, but he’s doing it with players who haven’t been taught that way. Conor Coady’s ‘contact hours’ growing up weren’t coming under Segura’s technical program. When Coady was coming through the U14s, U15s, U16s it was using Piet Hamburg’s technical program. This isn’t true of just Coady, but every player who player who came through the ranks before making Rodolfo’s U18 team. See, the NextGen team we had this year is a manufactured team, not one that’s been developed from a young age. Neither goalkeeper is a Liverpool goalkeeper, McLaughlin, Sama, Suso, Sterling, Ngoo, Silva, Adorjan – all these players we parachuted into the U18s from other clubs and have been taught from there. This is Rodolfo Borrell’s finishing school, rather than a team formed of organic progression and development through the ranks.

That’s not a criticism by the way. That was essential. I’m sure everyone remember reading Borrell’s interview not long after he arrived where he complained there was no striker in the U18s. Segura has a philosophy, the end goal of which was dictated to him by Rafa, of developing players to fit a certain system. The aim is to develop players for a “4-2-3-1” that’s suited for the Premiership, hence the fast-attacking transitions that Rafa became obsessed with over his time in England. Footballing Krav Maga. The goal is to get players to fit Rafa’s vision, but the responsibility for which route they take on the journey falls down to Segura. That’s his job. I mean, we know Segura wanted to train the players to play a 4-3-3 system, like at Barcelona, but that he was told that 4-2-3-1 would be how the academy plays.

When they arrived we didn’t have the players to do that, so they brought them in.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it’s gone some way to convincing some people that this is how we’ll play. It ignores that by the time these players have reached the U18s, most of them are pretty settled in the style of player they are. And that leads us back to Coady. Coady I think came through the ranks initially as a central defender. For the England U17 team that won the European Championships I think he was used as a defensive midfielder next to Josh McEachran. When Rodolfo came in we decided to start using him as, to use RAWK’s adopted phrase, a ‘medio-volante’. Let’s not pretend we haven’t had success with it at a domestic level as well. If you can find a team that dominated our U18s in midfield last season (when we weren’t missing internationals), I’d be surprised. Even the United game it was clear who had the stranglehold on the game. The key difference, I feel, between someone like Coady playing that role and Jordan Lussey who is doing it now for the U18s, is that we started asking Coady to do that at 16/17. We’re basically asking Coady to learn the position on the job. Lussey has been being taught that position since he was U14/U15 – he has been being bred for it, Coady is being asked to adapt to it and learn on the job. This is going to be true of all the younger players coming through the youth ranks – they’re now being bred for the roles they’re going to play at a very early age. Coady hasn’t had that and at times it shows. He may be 19, but he’s still only got as much education in a pretty specific role as a 16 year old might have. That’s what makes Coady a reasonably unique case in our academy I feel. I think, in a way, it speaks quite highly of how he’s rated. Wisdom aside you look at the players who’ve made the step up to the reserves this season, and all of the players that were brought through the ranks at Liverpool – McGiveron, Roddan – they’ve not been used. They’re brought out in the NextGen games out of necessity. The other players that came last years U18s are ones that were brought in, and as Segura hints at in one of his interviews, the transfer policy at youth level is very much geared toward bringing in players to fill a specific gap in the dynamic of the team. I’d use Jordan Ibe in this years U18s as a stand out example of that. Segura says we like to bring in two players (domestically and in Europe) at U18 level to fill out the gaps in the team (this year it would be Ibe and Nacho I’d suggest). The initial transfer policy for Rodolfo’s U18s was just a more intensive version of that, where we were required to bring in two wingers, a playmaker and a striker. They basically had to shape that entire front 4, and in doing so set out the pattern for how we play going forward (which incidentally, unpopular as it may be, reminds me greatly of what I think the best United team to watch was – the 93/94 one where you had Giggs and Kanchelskis causing absolute mayhem).

So you’ve got Coady learning his role “on the job”, and then this season alongside him, as if to muddy the waters further about what he’s meant to be doing, you’ve got Michael Roberts alongside him, who I think does a very similar job (but is trying to learn his role a year further down the line than Coady). Neither are really holding players in midfield. Both want to be the one that’s backing up play at the edge of box for a pull back. Is Coady now meant to be back to playing the holding role for another player? The signing of Joao Carlos Teixeira indicates it could be a possibility, given he JCT has been schooled to play as the more attacking of the ‘2’ and showed it to great affect against us. Coady has played as a holding player for England, but it showed against Sporting Lisbon in the home leg, where he was parachuted into the role and was uncomfortable playing there that he hasn’t really experienced playing the role against teams who look to play behind the final midfielder. I think Coady has good awareness for receiving possession, I think the lad knows what he wants to do with the ball before he gets it. But for regaining possession? It’s a steep learning curve to ask him to be able to read where those continental #10s are going to move. Coady’s schooling as a centrehalf further complicates the situation, because his experience of defending is of moves occurring infront of him. I think this shows massively when he plays in the centre of midfield, he wants to move forward to nick possession but unless he has a covering midfielder behind him then he’s leaving a space.

For me he’s still to be treated, even at 19, as a player who is very much developing. He wasn’t signed like Adorjan or Sterling, because he played a specific way that we needed in our system. He’s being coached to play that role. At times it really shows. Search for the victory over Chelsea at the academy last autumn and Coady had a terrific game. He scored a great goal at the end of the game showing what he offers from that position at the back of the ‘2’. He has plenty, and I think a lot of him training with the first team must be his willingness to learn and maturity, but also – and I think this is something people miss when they’re lamenting the English lad training with the firsts instead of Suso – that Coady probably has more he can learn from playing against players like Maxi, Gerrard and Suarez in training. Even Kuyt. It’s the players who run off the back of him, like they did against Sporting and Ajax. If we’re using him training with the firsts to develop that then that’s the right thing, because you won’t see much of it in at ressies level, and I’m not sure a loan to a lower league club would introduce him to many players who play like that, so why not use the firsts to educate the boy? And you know what, for all people bemoaned the lack of invention going forward on Thursday (didn’t think it was that myself. Once the front 4 came to life 2nd half we played well. Not sure you can blame Coady or Roberts for that – they provided the platform throughout) – how often did you see Petrucci for the Mancs? He wanted to run the game in the space between midfield and the defence, and did he get a sniff? Not really. United were clinical in the first half, but did they ever run the game and get at our back four in that area?

Maybe at 19 the lad is still learning and getting better.

*applause*

[muffin the mule]

HJC Leaflets


getting just 10.000 this time as we ended up with a few left over from Everton

 it will be around the pubs and on wembley way

i know its a pain in the arse but the pictures we end up getting are great

the problem is the people who normally help end up missing out on a bevy and meeting up with mates so i was hoping we could once again get people to take a few in ( hopefully 20-30 each )

i will be parked outside the Wimpy at Wembley Park with all the posters and was hoping people would takes some as they go the ground

we will also be in and around Wembley Park station so make sure you get as many as you can and just hand them oout when you get in the ground


again , i know its a pain in the arse carrying them but the whole world will be watching on telly


so take a handfull


much love


JUSTICE

[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.

[One of these]

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.

[Rhi]

Another gem from Fat Scouser. Couldn't have put it any better myself.

A lot of us feared this scenario, when Kenny was given the job. That's not being a smart arsed, "I told you so," after the event. It's checkable fact. It can be seen in the aul arse thread. I remember it clear as day. We all agreed, Kenny was the only man we could bring in after Hodge Podge. And that was right. Kenny was the only man that could have stopped the civil war that was going on between the fans. But we were all worried about what would happen if things didn't go well. And despite the ship being steadied and the great results Kenny got, we weren't convinced he should stay on, not all of us anyway.

We were worried about all the new generation of football manager experts supporters and how they'd react if things didn't go well. We were worried for Kenny, his health and his legend. We were also used to him making some bizzare looking selections, but we trusted him because of what he'd done. I can remember talking about how younger fans would react to his ways, how he dealt with the supporters and the press. I think pretty much every aul arse was made up to hear Kenny saying, the club wouldn't be doing anymore of it's business in public. After years of shite in the media we were all chuffed about that, but wondered how people brought up in this age of media hype would take to Kenny's ways of handling the media.

This isn't some go at younger fans. I'm trying to explain something. Why I'm bothering I don't know, but I suppose it's because of how much I love Kenny and what he meant to me. I can only speak for meself, but I think most of us who were around at the time felt the same way, and we all loved him from the moment he arrived at Anfield.

Younger fans who didn't see him play know the legend, but it's impossible for them to know what he really meant to us and the club at the time. Ask anyone over 50 about his debut and first goal. They'll probably go on for a fortnight, but the best way I can describe it... think Steven Gerrard leaving us after Istanbul, but it was Kevin Keegan after our first ever European Cup win.
I can't describe how choka and downhearted we were. Kenny put an end to that immeadiately. Try it, ask some aul one about his debut. But, the point is, from that moment on, we never looked back.

I don't know if we would have became the force we were without Kenny. Yes. We were European champions when he arrived. We'd had huge success before he came to the club, and we surrounded him with great players. But, make no mistake, bringing in Kenny was like sticking a match to the blue touch paper. They were fantastic years, and it was only when Kenny eventually left us that things started to go to fuck.
In fairness, some people say the rot started before Kenny left. I'll go as far as to say, some reckon Kenny started the beginning of the end. But that's opinion. I'm talking fact and the fact is, the man was incredible for us from start to finish.
Personally, I put him in that tier of footballers just under Maradonna and Pele, right up there with fellas like Zidane. So we all loved him from the very start, but it was probably what he done during and after Hillsborough that meant most to us. And I wish people would take these things into consideration before speaking about him. I mean that in general, not just kids on keyboards. But there again... anyone on here who's fed up of getting bollocked for disrespecting Kenny by some stupid aul arse duffer, would do well to stop and think why he's held in such high regard by so many people.

Having said all that, I understand people being unhappy with the season. Despite the cups and some really good football, it has been a disaster. There's no hiding it. I don't think anyone tries to. But I've seen what fans calling for our manager's head has resulted in. People should remember they asked for this. Why haven't they learnt, it's not our job to pick and choose managers. It's not Sky's or Talkshites, either. We went down that route. It got us Bodgeson. It cost us god only knows how many millions and set the club back years. Remember, Kenny's still trying to sort that mess out.

In all honesty, I don't know why he's bothering. If I could have a word with him, I'd tell him to get his golf clubs and grandkids and go enjoy himself. He doesn't deserve this shit and he could do without it. As for the job he's done, what I think of it and what I think should happen from here, I'll probably post it some other time. But it's immaterial anyway... I'm only a supporter. My job is to support. In fact, I'm not even a supporter nowadays. I'm an armchair fan. I have no right to dictate what happens at the club. None of us do, but me saying that on here means fuck all nor will it change fuck all. So, I'm off for a nice bacon butty and a cup of tea. That's what I do well, meddling in the running of football clubs... nah. That's not our business.

[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 Luís André de Pina Cabral e Villas-Boas. 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.

[isildurrr]

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.

[Gerrvindh]

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.

[geoffstrong 1937-2013 RIP]

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