ANDY HEATON was joined by John Gibbons. Chris Maguire and Mike Girling as they reflect on a derby day draw with Everton and look towards Basel away in The Champions League
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Re the handball – players are allowed to protect their face so that wouldn’t lead to a pen. But it’s the fact his hands were above his head and in an unnatural position was the issue I thought so should have been given. And Barry sent off.
I thought the love in over Gerrard’s improved performance was well over the top. Yes he played better than of late and scored a superb free kick. His removal from standing on the toes of which ever central defenders are playing was long over due, and the improved use of Henderson to cover himwhen he went forward was also welcome, but hardly difficult for any coach to implement. Would this decent performance have been so singularly lauded if it wasn’t Gerrard? Hardly. He was not dominant, he was just another midfielder who performed quite well. I still think that we need a dynamic and strong centre mid to see off the likes of Chelsea’s Matic. Shame Can got injured as he looks to have the physique, mobility and drive to become that player.
This is the line up I want post Basel:
Chair : Glasses.
1) sexy husky voice (I never actually agree with him but he’s not too bad when Glasses is there to control him)
2) Big boy boring Boardman (tells it like it is, if a tad boring)
3) Trans agenda Roberts (This slippery fella likes a barny with heaton)
4) Forrester (doesn’t mention the footy much but brings ‘other qualities’)
On the bench:
1) Trumpet face (don’t mind him but he’s on every week)
2) Drunken Gutman (purely to piss other listeners off)
3) Crazybob (handsome, well travelled, intelligent fella who knows his shit)
For the record I’ve never knowingly met any of these people. Just going by what I here/read.
Why the obsession with the contributors? It strikes me that you’re getting a sexual buzz off it.
Surely, what draws people to the site is the content. It’s fine by me if you’re some kind of sexual deviant but I’m intrigued to know why.
*hear
And you’re welcome..
Deffo sexual!
I’d like to know what you class as deviant ?
It’s self explanatory. I wouldn’t wanna say anyway. You’d probably get off on it.
yer dirty get !
well, Everton weren’t up to much. We’re fine when teams don’t have a go at us, not the same story when they do however and Rodgers hasn’t dealt with that. He also seems to have no clue about what rotation he should be doing. Sterling was desperate for a rest, take him off at 60 and put Suso in there.
BR seems determined to lose Suso no matter what.
The legs are returning, Lallana getting a lot fitter so the midfield is looking better but the goals are not there which is serious – and we even created chances, just couldn’t finish them. Utd have the means to be flat track bullies just like Arsenal, they won’t be a joke for ever and could easily run away with a top 4 place come the turn of the new year.
Meanwhile we don’t look like we can score a goal from open play. Balotelli just doesn’t seem to be a great finisher at all even with clear chances. That’s a real concern, you have to hope he will improve markedly. Markovic, hmmm, a looooong way from contributing signficantly.
Formation change to 4231 seems to have taken threat away. Because we’ve lost suarez, rogders has decided a new formation is required. Why not just put someone up in that position and keep playing the way we know we force teams onto the back foot? Why change it, we can only be less dangerous. We can’t be MORE dangerous than last season.
Lallana is industrious and tidy-ish but is too deep to be dangerous. Currently our forward players aren’t linking with him in the box and there’s a reluctance to shoot – normally that’s good, but we’re not as good as Arsenal in creating chances so shooting is all we’ve got.
Rodgers has the serious job of making us dangerous and so far he’s not managed to do it. He’s not managing the rotation at all – there are players available but like Suso he’d rather run players into the ground in an attempt to get a result. And Sterling looks burnt out already.
This is very bad for Rodgers. He’s not rotating / subbing which will be disastrous. And we’re now pinning all our hopes on sturridge – but why aren’t the others supporting the striker ? Markovic, Sterling, even Lallana, we’re just not doing it.
The season could go either way from here. But if results were appalling next weekend we could be 7 pts behind Arsenal, 5 behind Utd and 4 behind Spurs.
Oh and Lovren. Again. Clearing header out to the centre of the pitch – the last place to clear a ball. Lovren basically guarantees goals conceded. Every game. Can’t believe Rodgers thought he was the answer and Agger was expendable.
Sakho might have been out of order but if he gets close to his France form he’s going to be up there with the best in the league. Rodgers seems to be not interested in developing him. Seems to prefer Lovren as an out of control jack in the box who seems to have no defensive discipline and causes us to concede EVERY GAME.
I always thought Rodgers was a lucky manager – you do need to be good to have luck but you can also be lucky because you have good tools around you – which he did.
Look at his transfer decisions, we’ve been lucky we didn’t lose the likes of Henderson and we’ve spent heavily but had Suarez to dictate our threatening setup. But now, it really feels like BRs luck is running out on him.
Lovren has been a terrible buy on any level, we’ve failed to add any major goal threats in £116m of spending, instead plumping for Balotelli who has always had issues scoring from open inter linking play, and doesn’t know how to play the lone striker role. So we concede very badly all the time – including vs Everton – and don’t score barely at all.
You can’t rely on being lucky and I think BR is going to struggle to get us scoring again. despite the kindly results/points situation I think we have a lot to prove if we’re going to challenge for top 4 because lets be honest we’re not doing it right now.
I thought on Saturday there were some glimpses of last season. I don’t think you can expect new players to come in and hit the ground running, especially at Liverpool. The pressure’s too great. I thought on Saturday we were only missing Sturridge. I know it’s if’s and but’s but there was only one piece of the jigsaw missing. For me, our biggest problem is it’s become apparent we’re over reliant on Sturridge. Origi. seems to be doing well. Clearly, there are other issues but I’m in the camp of the ‘patience’ crowd. It’s too early to be putting all this on Rodgers. Less than 10 league matches ago we thought this was possibly the best Liverpool team of the last 2 decades. Now all of a sudden we’re not playing that well (as a result of having a new team and missing key players) and people have turned on him. It’s fine to question him but I’ve seen people completely writing him off. What do we do? Look for a new manager. How about AVB? I won’t be judging him till next May at least in regards to whether he’s the man for the job. Regardless, if we come in the top 4 then he 100% is whatever happens throughout the season. I appreciate you’re only questioning some of his decisions. Playing Sterling in the Capital One was ridiculous but surely we should wait until he has the tools at hand. He does isolate players but he has his way and he seems to get the best out players. We all said it last season. Mario seems to have settled quite well. In this league, 4 wins on the bounce can transform your league position and season.
the rotation is very serious though. the league cup shows we have some options even with lots of injuries yet we had key players all playing 3 games in a week including 120mins in the cup.
What was the result? a lack lustre defeat to WHU with no energy, no legs and fitter players left out – surprise we were out played. Those give me serious misgivings about squad management and that is on Rodgers and I have no expectations from Raheem in Basle due to fatigue and over playing.
Southampton and WHU seem to have settled their multitudinous signings in very well indeed. Hell, Soton have a new manager and Big Sam isn’t able to play his hoof ball game for lack of the key player for that!!
They don’t need time, yet Balotelli, a potentially world class striker (?) needs god knows how many chances/how much time?
Perhaps the front guys will start to combine and become more dangerous because they’re not doing it right now but the ppg required for top 4 is climbing each week we drop points.
But I’m concerned that Lovren’s game is essentially what we’re seeing, a liability that costs us points every time he goes out there. And that’s Rodgers’ key defensive signing which is just crazy.
Even if you ignore Soton’s poor defensive record last season when they conceded almost as many as we did and that’s while they had the defensive shield of Wanyama and Schneiderlin in front of them, then just watching the world cup would have shown anyone who dubious Lovren’s positioning is. And it looks like he’s got worse since then with the manager blaming Moreno an Sakho for goals where he was key in conceding.
Sakho looks imperious playing for France. He’s demonstrated his potential at the highest level. Lovren has proven the opposite, that he can’t perform at the highest level and has considerable issues at PL level and did so in France too. Who is Rodgers hanging is hat on? With Wisdom and iLori coming back I can see Sakho leaving next summer.
That’s massive alarm bells on the manager’s ability to find the right players for us. And it doesn’t help when the striker doesn’t seem to be a natural scorer – again, something his stats demonstrate too once you strip out the pens and long distance hit and hopes.
And as you recognise he seems to alienate or have problems with others. We look certain to lose Suso who to me looks like a future David Silva and already shows goal scoring ability, looks ready to easily match Coutinho’s output.
Yet he won’t be played even when Sterling looks totally burnt and Markovic is still at the 25mins cameo stage and likely will remain there for a good few months at what seems a couple of levels below Suso.
BR started his career here with big question marks over his transfer targets and at this rate he might end it with the same questions. The next 6 games are just massive for the season. If we win 20 games from the remaining 31 we will have 67 points plus any draws (which we don’t seem to get many of). That’s a total of 23 wins when we won 26 last season.
Playing as we are that’s a very tall order, to move from a ppg from about 1.17 to basically 2 ppg minimum (win 2 out of 3 games). And you know what? That doesn’t guarantee us top 4 – it wouldn’t have the last 2 seasons even with 6 draws added in.
The alarm bells are certainly ringing loudly to me.
It’s hard to disagree outright with any of your points. All I want to say though is – let’s see where we are in 4 games time. I really think we’ll know a lot more by then with the run of fixtures we have.