NEIL ATKINSON was joined by Karl Coppack, Mike Girling and Gareth Roberts the day after Liverpool rounded off their season with a 2-1 victory over Newcastle United.
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DIRECT LINK TO PODCAST: STEAMING
Great show fellas. It’s been a roller-coaster ride. I’ve been following the Reds since 1977 (maybe before but the Cup Final’s the first game I remember watching). and this has to go down as the most fun season of the lot. We used to win, but we got used to winning, it wasn’t so exciting, so nerve-wracking, so unexpected, so unpredictable, so entertaining and ultimately heartbreaking. But we’re already overt it because like you say, we do have everything in place and I wouldn’t swap our manager or the majority of our squad for anyone else.
Ta for everything, we are a community! The show’s a lifeline to this Bootle-born lad living out his middle-age in a remote corner of Eastern Finland.
This is interesting
What great show! Gareth Roberts, should be on this show more. YNWA!
The rival fans reaction to us not winning the league tells us all we need to know about them. They were absolutely shitting it at the prospect of us winning the league.
Same again next year lads. Laxatives will be at an all time low in Manchester and London…
*Steaming Streaming*
Cheers to all concerned for the podcasts throughout the year.
They made a great season even better.
You can say what you want about Lucas Leiva, but to claim, with a straight face and with an air of delivering the most obvious truth in the world, that he can no longer play the role/position that Gerrard played for the second half of the season (not always perfectly, btw) strains credulity.
In simpler terms, that’s just bullshit. Have a review of the actual matches in which Lucas featured, even after coming back from injury and while being used where Jordan Henderson would be used. Be honest with yourself and try to see if your description of him matches what you said about him.
If it’s too much to ask, pick ONE game and do the same thing. I am almost certain you’d find that your characterization was excessive at best, downright wrong and unfair at worst.
Or not! He may be moved on anyway, so who cares? After all, you/we all “love the guy” so that excuses any and all inaccuracies being spoken about him.
great podcast guys, thought they were done for the season – except for Neil chickening out on the prediction at the end that is.
Listen Atkinson. Next year’s CL places are even more important than this one cos the CL money doubles the
following season. That could be the point where the top 4 really do break away, possibly for good. The nailed on top 2 or 3 could become nailed on top 4 with little to no chance of breaking into those already competing there. 84 pts gets us into that club that is going to have a whole chunk of change more than the other clubs from the 2016/17 season.
Absolutely right about next years goals. We won’t get 101, Newcastle did the chelsea 6-3-1 and while we can break some of them down (eg Palace) we won’t get all of them.
So while Migs might not flap at that ball for Villa’s second goal giving us all 3 pts, and Toure may not make that defensive faux pas at WBA (giving us 4 more points in all) we won’t break them all down as the Newcastle game showed. Citeh do it by slipping balls to the touch line inside the area and cutting them back to onrushing attackers. We will have to learn to do that.
Currently Rodgers plays near all our football in front of opposition defences and relies on some great pace and play from SaSaS but he’s going to have to work out how to get behind defences and we can’t give away too many points before he works it out. Other teams like Utd and Arsenal may benefit if teams park the bus against us but not for them. Squeaky bum time as we’re competing with those 2 for a top 4 place.
As far as the signings go, it isn’t so much about getting players better than Sterling or Coutinho or Suarez (we can’t), we have to beable to take them off.
Next season, Saturday – Wednesday – Saturday games: that 3rd game at least needs fresh legs on the pitch and some need to be taken off early in the 1st 2 games of any set of 3 to save them. Gerrard especially will not beable to play Sat / Wednesday without being taken off early and others doing a stack of work for him. I’m gonna give Rodgers the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t rotate because he didn’t have the options on the bench.
We have to get another set piece taker as we’ve scored so many set piece goals (and stopped conceding from them too!). Everyone else looks poor at it which is kind of weird.
Hence the KonoUplonka and even the Lallana signing would make sense so our front 4 at least can be rested and rotated, and at least one midfielder is needed too. The DM discussion sort of misses the point really. Rodgers doesn’t believe in a DM. His ethos is pressing everywhere on the pitch ie by everyone and rapid transition to attack. DM’s don’t do that so we won’t buy one even if his choice doesn’t go forwards much.
He will go for a midfielder that has a sharp distribution from a deeper role. It will be interesting to see who he chooses given that he might just stick with Henderson for that role and possibly Allen though he likes to push Allen forwards [though Allen still has a stark ceiling on his effectiveness in games]. BR’s philosophy is so much about attacking that he might just decide that Suso plus one other is enough or just Suso and Lucas.
This is going to be the worst summer possible for transfers. The WC really screws things up for us.