Following the Europa League tie against Udinese, our roving reporter Jim Boardman caught up with Brendan Rodgers, Jack Robinson, Stewart Downing and Joe Allen to get their thoughts on the game.
Direct link to POST MATCH: RODGERS
Direct link to POST MATCH: ROBINSON, DOWNING AND ALLEN
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Isn’t it funny how we now regard passing a football to each other as some kind of great insight and innovation?
That’s what we did when we were successful!
I begin to wonder about players and Managers.We’ve had “long ball” “short ball” high ball” “keep ball” Every manager for the past 20 odd years has introduced a new philosophy.
But the game is very simple.You need to pass to each other for sure. But there has to be a means to an end.
I think that Rodgers,for all his after-match frustration will understand that and start working on encouraging players to realise that the whole point is to win the game!
There were too many players on Thursday just happy to play a simple pass and retain possession.But that’s not what it’s all about.Otherwise you finish up playing like formation dancers!And everybody knows what you are going to do next!
I just sometimes wonder if some players think more about their £80k a week and just follow the Manager’s instructions to the letter.In some kind of comfort zone.
One who springs to mind is Joe Allen,as was Jay Spearing.Pass to the nearest man and do that over and over again.
At the moment it seems as though we’ve only got Gerrard and Suarez who’ll bust a gut to win a game!
And Gerrard’s very wasteful these days trying to play quick balls but not having the accuracy.
Goals are a massive problem for us, and so is the defence still.
Infact I’d say we’re in a crisis with the deficiencies. I can’t see more than a dozen or so goals between Borini, Assaidi, Suso, Sterling, Cole, Shelvey.
Gerrard is going to get maybe 6-8 but is so far off his best with 1 good game in 7.
With the defensive brain farts, we’re not going to have the defence we had last year that limited our losses to 14.
Together that means we’ll struggle for 8th this term – unless Luis somehow finds 35 goals, which aint gonna happen.
This is season defining, as it was last season and each summer we make the wrong player calls, while last January the owners refused to cough up for Jelavic having clearly decided things were going to change.
After Hodgson’s debacle summer txfers, repeated by Dalglish and Comolli, it is of GREAT CONCERN that Rodgers thought that Borini and Assaidi were the answer.
12th place here we come.