THIS has become, perhaps too quickly, perhaps unfairly, the biggest challenge of Brendan Rodgers’s Liverpool career. Liverpool have for the second time lost consecutive games under Brendan Rodgers. The previous two were against the sides that finished 1st and 3rd. These two? With the greatest respect I’d estimate 13th and 11th. Further, in a climate where a maximum of six defeats will allow a title challenge, Liverpool have already lost three.
Title challenges are important. In that: There is no point trying to come fourth. There is no point. We pursue first because it is the only thing now worth pursuing for the rest of our days. I’ve done all the seconds. The scraped second under Houllier. The better than first second under Benitez. The glorious second under Rodgers. I’ve done all the thirds. I’ve done all the fourths. The fourth that leads to the European Cup. That one is in the bag. Be about first. Be always about first. We’ve completed second. It was in being about first we worked some of it out.
And now. There are too many question marks. Who doesn’t have question marks? Henderson. Moreno. Allen. ALLEN! HA! Where has that come from? Sterling. Everyone else has question marks. You’ll hear of them.
That said, Balotelli probably shouldn’t have them. That was a good game from the big man. My Balotelli question marks are just that. The big man. The big man. We haven’t had a big man under Rodgers. Is Balotelli a good big man? Yes. He’s a cracking big man. He looks better or equal to loads of splendid big men. But is this side about big men? Does that work?
The remainder. A combination of role and application makes Gerrard seem like playing with ten currently. I’m sure he’ll make a tit of me, Steven. A tit of me in no time. He’s done it to lads like me a billion times. A tit of me in Berlin. He’s stratospheric. I’m in a hutch in Burnley. What they do there don’t concern me. That is him and me. So. He’ll make a tit of me but at the minute it hurts to watch. Hurts to see. He’s struggling, he’s bypassed and he has a knock on effect.
We appear to have degraded another centre half. We do that. I’m ok with doing that if we commit to it but Lovren’s turned up to lead. To talk. To be sane in the leading and the talking. And perhaps he is but there is a ton of insanity in his doing. It may not be wise to bring a lad in and tell him not just is he responsible for his game but for everybody’s. That’s a load of stress.
It spreads around. Manquillo a young man unsure. Skrtel insecure. Sakho strong for 40 and then weak as a kitten. Leiva twice as anonymous as Gerrard. Lallana has a price tag and can’t get going in this environment. Borini more movement than presence. Desire not enough but desire is something.
The goals make me want to go out and commit mass murder.
Listen, a word. West Ham United had an excellent first half. They have good players and a good manager. They knew their business and decided how they’d get about Liverpool. Sakho’s goal was lovely. A proper dink. I love a dink. It is quite the dink. They are and were good. Loads of admirable performances and decisions on the pitch and from the touchline. Well in.
The second half was better. A load of smart choices led to a good first fifteen there. Intensity and focus was there. Exuberance wasn’t but who can blame them by that point. Then the game ebbed into nothingness and there wasn’t what creates urgency there as an option.
And so we are here. Rodgers is here. Rodgers’s job has never been harder than this. That isn’t to say he is or should be under pressure. The pressure he should be under is that he puts himself under. To improve his players week on week. To get results. To play and play. To die for the shirt. To make that what Liverpool are about. This Liverpool doesn’t look like his. His change this evening was bold and was his. Rodgers has balls. He’ll be bold and strong. His team needs to look like his team. Last season they did. They were young, focussed, headstrong and a bit mad. Brendan Rodgers. A bit mad. Make it mad and Liverpool win. Liverpool have been too sane this campaign.
The Derby next in the league, the only competition that matters. The Derby next and Liverpool need to look a side. They need to look serious. The last time I doubted them seriously came before a home derby. They won 4-0.
That might be too much to ask. What isn’t is that they look like themselves. They looked, not so long ago, like wild abandon. They looked like a sundrenched, windswept Ingrid Bergman kiss. Not in the next life. I wanted it in this.
Because what makes me sad. What gets my goat. Isn’t losing. I’ve lost loads. It’s losing when not looking like yourself. Only one side can win the league. It can still be Liverpool. Only one side can look like Liverpool. That can only be Liverpool. Now is the time to look like Liverpool. Because that is all I ask. Be the great love of our lives. The great fuck of our lives. Be the side that abolished question marks. I’ll neck you even if you lose, darling. You should always be mine. Ours. Just don’t change.
Damn I feel like crying, I feel weak – dont even know when the next time would be, when I see our beloved Reds so close to first
Glad the next game is the derby, that’s the game we need and bring out the best in Gerrard. We’ll be good as gold, they’ll be stupid as mud.
If Rodgers had balls Neil he would handling the gerrard situation. If he doesn’t we finish 6th. And before anyone says gerrard argument has been brought up before , Steven is a year older and looking leggy. When you need an extra body further up pitch like today and at the same time need to protect the counter, he does neither anymore
No words can express how glad I am that I missed this match. From the sound of it, the podcast should be very entertaining this week.
Said it a few times already this season, but please, please get Stevie Clarke back in as defensive coach. It’s not too much to ask, is it?
And Victor Valdes while The Committee are at it.
Big Sam a good manager?
Your ‘Big Sam’ team wouldn’t have tried half as hard against a Fergie Man Utd team. The man is a cheat. Just like old purple nose.
But it’s up to us to combat that. But we didn’t. I don’t know why. Do we actually practice defending?
I agree Gerrard looked out of it. But who picked the team? You mention Houllier. His best signing according to Geggsie (as I call him) was Gary Mc. So there’s still room for him just not 3 games a week! !
So feckoff glasses and you’re masonic agenda.
It’s all feeling a bit like Benitez’ final season. We’ve changed what works to adopt a new strategy.
BUT – Our best performance was against Spurs, where we had the fewest of the new recruits starting. I do worry that the new defenders are not great defenders and I worry about the confidence of the team being eroded and becoming damaging. You can’t underestimate that this is effectively 11 lads who have spent a couple of weeks playing together however. So actually the best analogy is that this is like the first couple of weeks of the Big Brother House (when we all used to watch it). Everyone’s behaving irrationally. Brendan’s a great manager and has a great track record. I would also suggest that the players he has bought all look like they can play.
This is not the season we’ll be going for the title though, that’s for sure.
Spur were poor. they’re a weak side mentally. We played on the counter because it’s all we know how to do.
Eriksen isn’t interested in defensive duties or person-ing up in a physical battle. So that left Bentaleb and Capoue. Too defensive and not front footed. We just out battled them with numbers and effort. Much like Sam did to us.
Spurs are not a benchmark. MOst sides have to work harder than them to survive and we don’t handle that at all well. We’re being found out, brutally so.
Rodgers has been found out. Suarez got us to 2nd last year, not Rodgers. At best he is inept, at worst a liability. He’s bought horrendously again in the summer. Lallana is rubbish, so are balotelli, Lovren, sakho and mignolet.
The season’s over I’m afraid- no chance of 4th, forget the cups and champions league. This going to be a disastrous season. I only hope that Rodgers has the decency to resign
Blimey
Haha. You bored because your team don’t play till tomorrow? Odd behaviour mate.
Neil, Gerrard plays because Rodgers thinks he’s the heart of the team, when he is in fact its collapsed lung. Our whole midfield, no matter who plays is shaped to include Gerrard no matter how ineffective he is. The defence lacks protection from him and the centre backs defer to him when he stands two yards off them looking for the ball, only to play it sideways a few time before it moves 10 yards forward to Henderson, who plays it back. Meanwhile any movement up front is wasted, the forwards move back 10 yards before we inevitably give the ball away. Gerrard isn’t our only problem, a dodgy keeper is another, but let face it, ice cool penalty notwithstanding, if he had a different name I doubt if he’d get a start outside of the League Cup.
Rodgers has spent £130m to make us as good a team without Luis, but all he’s done is to create a team that lacks cohesion and self-belief. His track record of signings is shocking, Sturridge, Coutinho and the new full backs excepted. I look at Lovern and Sakho, £38 million between them and wonder if Illori and Coates might have offered something else? His team selections are becoming as daft some of Kenny’s at the end of his first spell – remember the 4 full backs in one team? Today he was insane to play Lucas on the right of a diamond and Henderson on the left. It was summed up when he replaced Borrini, who he bought for £10m but who he now wants out, and replaced him with an immobile 32 year old who love him would get nowhere near the bench of a top side.
There’s a lot for Rodgers to ponder, not least his own performance.
Spot on there, frankie
Luis Suarez was a mad player but we worked out a way to get the best out of him, Sturridge, Sterling and Gerrard to a point.
Without Luis we are not sure yet who should be playing the piano and who should be carrying it.
We play like a bunch of strangers because they are a bunch of strangers, and those from last year Mingolet, Gerrard and Henderson are off key. Unfortunately it will take a bit of time for everything to settle down and we have to go backwards to go forwards.
Balotelli is looking better but we are not used to playing with a big lad up top, we looked better second half but we need to pick an 11 and stick with them so they can learn each others game.
Mingolet lacks leadership and Skirtle tangles with his man and often comes off second instead of attacking the ball.
International break did us no favours and we have no rythem, but with time, hopefully it will come.
Raheem, Sturridge and Lallana should be playing, the rest carrying.
Brendan’s got ahead of himself. It may be the case that the best performers in the CL rotate, but we’re not going to win the CL and consolidation is more important this season. We have too many new players to play the rotation game at this stage of the season, to imagine otherwise is hopelessly naive: we’re not giving ourselves a chance.
I’m begging all Liverpool fans – pleeeease don’t start getting too depressed and irrational calling for Rodgers to step aside. I can’t believe I just wrote that. He’s a great young manager who’s going to have poor seasons on his way to greatness! YNWA.
No-one’s calling for Rodgers to step aside are they? Good Lord! Ingrates.
well, some fans are warning of it already, but they can be rather stupid as we know.
His record on our defence is poor and that is one strike. He has to get it sorted over the next 3 months otherwise you can’t see what will change that. He’s had money and time and it’s worse than ever.
It’s one of the 3 strikes that any manager would get if he doesn’t sort it out.
We’re hamstrung by injuries in midfield but you have to wonder if Suso really can’t play ? Has he burned his bridges? Cos the root of our problems right now is no energetic midfield that allows us to be over run with ease, and we don’t have players coming back into the side anytime soon.
Everton is going to be an awful game without those extra bodies – legs specifically. Gerrard and Lucas will get annihilated. Henderson will be running in circles cos when the midfield doesn’t work, that’s what he does. He gets much too much praise. Everton are running twice as hard this season. They’re a bit kamikaze but it’ll work more often than not for them.
We’re losing because we deserve to lose. No midfield. No game. Sort that out and the back 4 immediately get less pressure and make less mistakes, despite Lovren who was an appalling signing that anyone would have noticed had they watched the world cup.
Makes me wonder which of these is correct. Do a large proportion of knobheads become football fans or does football turn people into being a knobhead. I’m not talking about the comments on here, just in general, although there is one massive bellend on this thread and it’s not Crazy Bob for once.
Put Suarez in that team and we don’t concede all season. The defence becomes solid. Right?
We have to start with a higher tempo. If teams press us we don’t seem comfortable.
I’d sacrifice the League Cup on Tuesday. On the one hand we need momentum for the Derby but on the other, the league, the League Cup, the FA Cup and regular CL games will prove too much. I think we need to prioritise. Put out a second string 11 and see how they get on. Is it time to play Brad Jones in the league? Never thought I’d hear myself say that.
I said before the game on our fb thread – I’m gonna put my neck on the line and say we’ll be poor today and especially Gerrard. It was a reaction to seeing Lucas on the team sheet. We can’t play those two together. In no game have they looked good together in the last 2 years. We need Joe Allen available. The Internationals have fucked us up. But, despite the high points tally, we started fairly averagely last season. The start of the season before was awful. We’ll get there. I’ve absolute confidence this is just a bad patch. I’m not gonna make a prediction for next week but after that game I think we’ll go on a 4 game run of wins and things will look a lot better.
Eh!
A reaction to the fact that until today you haven’t made a comment based on the content of an article – only the author.
To be fair to me, until recently, there has been no content to comment on, only vacuous dark matter – with a masonic/illuminati hidden agenda which I am determined to expose !
Ok
^^^This^^^
I don’t think Gerard has lost his skill, his head’s dropped, confidence lost, it’s apparent from his body language. Mentally he hasn’t overcome the incident against Chelsea. Well Steven, wake up, grow some balls and stop sulking, it happened. We have a massive season ahead, if you’re struggling to deal with last season’s mishap then move aside, don’t drag the team down.
Gerrard needs time and space to pick his passes, and they force the opponents onto the back 4. Without high energy midfielders pressing in front of him he doesn’t get that right now. But that’s the only way he can work. He hasn’t had legs for 4 years ffs!
Teams just man mark him and Coutinho and forget the others, and there goes our distribution.
Injuries really hurt right now. When we lost him last December, we had Lucas/Allen/Hendo and the sheer hard work of the latter 2 and intelligence of Lucas gave us the platform to take down Spurs at WHL. Now others are doing that to us.
Without an energetic midfield we’re just QPR with more expensive players.
It’s true. Anyone who has played the game, at any level, knows that’s what happens. You get to your mid 30s and you can’t beat a man anymore. The mind’s willing but the body…..All you have to do is put a younger player on Stevie and he’s fucked. Happens to us all.
The defensive spine of this team is poor, beginning with Stevie. Without the clear and present danger that was Suarez, and shorn of Sturridge, teams can and will press Stevie into mistakes, and play around him. No one worth their footballing jobs can have missed this lesson from very average sides. BR got this midfield badly wrong–not the first time this young season. But the crux of the problem is at the deep center of the midfield–and I honestly believe we won’t finish top 4 if BR doesn’t sort this out and start using Stevie differently.
Reading these comments ,it’s hard to tell if they’re from genuine Liverpool fans or oppo fans on the wind up. Emotions are a part of football , I get that but some of the shite on here is reactionary bollox that belongs on twitter( don’t use it) not this site. Have always felt , since it’s inception , that TAW was a safe haven from this sort of frustrating warbling but it’s inevitably found it’s way here . SUPPORT THE TEAM ITS ONLY SEPTEMBER ! Great , now look what you’ve made me go and do. YNWA
Depressing doesn’t come close. Abject a fair assessment.
When it all goes wrong in business, politics, sport, people look at leaders for direction. In football, I always looked at the leader on the pitch and the leader off it. Down the years we’ve had some great examples of it. Shanks and Yeats. Paisley and Souness / Thompson. Dalglish and Hansen.
However, there comes a time when that partnership has to end. When Yeats, Thompson and Hansen got to the end of their respective times at Anfield, Shankly, Paisley and Dalglish were smart enough, courageous enough, to manage their game time. Now it’s time for Rodgers and Gerrard to really earn their corn. It’s time to start the moving on…….
I want the lasting memories of Steven Gerrard to be glorious, rampaging, with groin defying sliding tackles and 95 yard screamers. Not getting brushed aside by Stewart fucking Downing.
There’s lots more to address in this Liverpool side than just this. But this has to be the start. One step at a time. Has to be.
Gerrard has been such a phenomenal part of this club for the last 16 years that the decision to leave him out will take a massive leap of faith. And it will take the team time to adjust. But now is the time to start the healing.
Take the leap of faith Brendan. Smart thinking. Courageous decision making. That’s your job. Start the healing.
Good post. We do look leaderless this season. Stevie’s great when we’re doing well but his head does go down and he hasn’t been the same since the Chelsea game. I’m with you re the memories. Drop him back to CB or rotate him, make him club captain and let Lovren or Henderson take over leadership on the field. Could be the making of Lovren because he hasn’t the authority to boss his skipper about at the moment.
Bit depressed after losing 3 of our first 5 league games – bevvied with Katy Song by Red House Painters on repeat. Different circumstances off the pitch to the start of 09/10 though. As I think Neil’s alluded to we should be a better team all over the pitch (the signings that have settled the quickest are the fullbacks – Suarez’s Liverpool of 13/14 but with Manquillo and Moreno at full win #19, no?) but it’s just not quite gelling. They’re all good enough players to be in with a shout to win the title in 2015/16 at least as opposed to saying a few years ago “give Adam and Downing time”.
I’ll say it because I always say it, Lucas, regardless of the injury and form, is being hung out to dry in the position he is being played in. His role, the one he was head and shoulders above everyone just last year, was as our Defensive Midfielder. Our Shield. Our man who played the short pass, who linked the back 4 and our midfield. The safety net.
Now we have SG there and lets be fair, he isnt a DM. The quarterback role. A phrase made up by the media and hung onto for dear life. Go an watch American Football, the quarterback is the game manager, he doesnt spray 30/40/50 yard passes all day, he finds the short ball, he gets the team up that field, 10 yards at a time.
Lucas in the role he is given, which I have yet to fathom what exactly it is, is just a body on the pitch. It would have been fine if that’s what we asked him to do when he arrived from Gremio as that was what he was. Instead we spent a lot of time and effort turning him into a Premier DM. And he suffered the shit for that too. He is a nice little whipping boy for a lot of supporters. Get Stevie in there, Get Can in there, anyone but Lucas, I mean he is proper shite isn’t he. Maybe you’d be too in his situation.
You’re right, to a point. He is playing out of position and he was our best defensive midfielder. He’s an underrated passer when on form. But, like Stevie, he’s lost his legs and has gone back to repeating those infuriating fouls outside the box. He is being played out of position and as everyone but Brendan seems to have worked out, you can’t play both he and Gerrad in the same team. If we played them both and Lambert we’d have officially the slowest team in the league!
We bought Lucas as a goal scoring midfielder. The stick he took in his early days was when he was played on the right. Benitez had absolute faith in him. It didn’t work and he was used as more of a box to box midfielder. It didn’t work so we pushed him back to a holding role. It didn’t really work and he kept costing us due to fouls. Then Poulsen joined and Lucas realised he wasn’t the worst DM in the world and had his best spell for the club until his injury. He’s now 27 and should be in his prime. This isn’t school where you try to find a position in the team for the fat kid by continuously moving him back into defence or in goal until you find somewhere he’s not a liability. I hate to say it because I like him but there’s no place for Lucas. What’s worse is we know that. In the summer shake up he was earmarked for release. So was Borini. Why are these players starting before the likes of Lallana or Lambert even? Lucas wasn’t our rock last season mate. He was wank. Our fortunes changed when we dropped him and the same was true at half time yesterday.
Fair assessment. I remember the young box-to-box player we allegedly signed from Gremio. Important to acknowledge that he had a couple of excellent seasons in which he was one of our best players. Poor seasons for the club, mind.
No, you’re right mate. He was excellent for 12/18 months before his injury. I don’t think we have time to wait around to see if it returns though. You never know, we could drop Gerrard and he may find that form again. Personally, I’ve lost hope for him. Lacks the mobility.
pauloffinland Absolutely agree Lucas looks slower than he did (and that’s no mean feat) but this box to box role he gets dumped into is exacerbating the problem . Lucas game is about sitting there, reading the play and being there to cover the full backs when they are getting an overload. A lot of people seem to think its about 40 yrd balls out to the sidelines.
All I’d like to see is BR swap Lucas and SG – but he won’t, or at least he wouldnt until yesterday when SG did go into that role and we put Henderson deep! – I mean Jeebus, that really is a square peg in a hectagonal hole!.
I’d agree, to a point. But he’s getting slower and slower. I don’t think either Gerrard or Lucas are the answer anymore. His best position is Gerrard’s current position, no doubt about that. But they’re both too slow now.
At least Lucas could (in theory) read the game better from the DM position, SG in the main, cannot, so I’d hope Lucas’s speed issues wouldnt be as cataclysmically apparent as they are in the wider position.
Ahh look I just don’t like to see Lucas kop all the flak, I don’t think it’s fair
yes, he can do a job, generally not for 90, but if you have 2 high energy midfielders with him then he can play a role. share the role with Gerrard, 45 each.
Ideally Can takes the role of course and Hendo + Allen give you the legs to make it really work. That’s what will change our game but Can/Allen are 4 weeks away from returning. That’s going to kill our season before November. this is serious because of the injuries.
Minimum requirement is 2 of the 3 midfielders are high energy. Anything else and we get over run and we’ll be lucky to win another game. 9th-11th isn’t out of the question for us if injuries keep going against us. You don’t win games without legs in the middle of the pitch.
Elephant in the room (not Can, though he’s a big lad): Can looks more like a box to box player than a holder. I hope he proves me wrong.
Please. Stop writing like. David peace
It seems that 5 games in for the past few seasons the words “Gerrard looking leggy” are banded about like “unseasonably warm for September”. If history is to repeat itself, (as Neil rightly points out) Stevie will prove us all wrong like the inevitability of a true British weather cold front as we step closer to October.
Allen to the rescue in the derby?
Well, Neil, if those last 2 games haven’t been mad enough for you, I don’t know what to say.
You can’t re-invent the past. It happened it’s gone. Recruitment day is always fun, the next day is back to the grind. BR’s game is based on high energy. Hell the league is based on high energy. The best players leave. The mercenaries return (or stay).
His game is about high energy and you start with the middle of the pitch. Lucas and Gerrard? No energy. Hendo? Runs in circles if the midfield isn’t working. He doesn’t know what to do, he’s been passing sideways his entire life bar 3 recent games. Captain my arse.
What BR has to do for the next month until injured players return is work out what to do without that energy. How do we play without legs. Can’t he play Suso? Has he burned his bridges? What about the youth players? Everton isn’t the game for them I guess.
He has to pack the midfield. Use the 451 we had at Citeh. Stop us getting over run, until we get more agile players back. It’s a new style of play but it’s what we need to do. 2 AMs need to come back and press in front of the MFs whose job it is to press. Balo has to be the lone striker. But it’s the only hope we have of saving our midfield from repeated annihilation.
4 weeks to survive. 4 weeks until bodies return into the fold. If we don’t salvage a midfield during those 4 weeks our season will be over this time next month. Mark my words.
Yesterday and the Villa game were lost in midfield due to the absence of energy. We lacked energy in part because of Gerrard and the need to cover for him with Lucas.
When Rodgers landed at LFC, he’d learned the lessons of Villas Boas who’d walked into Chelsea and alienated Terry & Lampard, with unhappy consequences. Rodgers bent over backwards to compliment and talk up Gerrard and Carra. I’m hoping that two years on, with his feet firmly under the table, Rodgers can bite the bullet and deal with the Gerrard situation. We all remember everything Stevie’s done for us but this current situation isn’t sustainable. And with Balotelli, Lallana, Coutinho and even Moreno in the team, the set-piece argument isn’t compelling either (even though none of them is quite as good as him).
So, Rodgers has two tough decisions. The first is gently removing Gerrard from the firing line. The second is sorting out Mignolet. Great shot-stopper, but the rest of his game isn’t up to scratch for the way we play.
Perhaps in a couple of months’ time, we’ll be looking at Valdez in goal and Emre Can as the defensive midfielder?
What is most concerning is not Mignolet (awful, needs replacing at first available opportunity), not Gerrard (needs used much much less), not Lucas (gone at the game unfortunately, needs offloaded) and not Lovren/Sakho/Skrtle (who have been beyond abysmal).
Its the direction of the team. Its Balotelli. Let me explain.
Last season was all about pace and movement and precision and chaos and madness. Say what you want about Mario but on the pitch, he isn’t mad. Nor is he pacey. And his movement is pretty deplorable. Still a very good footballer, although not one who will fulfil his potential and become world class.
For the first time in a while, we have an identity crisis. Even when we were really shit, like in Kenny’s last year in charge, we had an ID – get it wide and get it in the box.
Now we’ve gone from winning 6-3 away from home to barely look like scoring at home. And its because of Balotelli’s addition. He’s a big man. A good big man. And like a good big man he wants the ball into feet and bring others into play. But he slows us down dreadfully. He holds it up, waits for us to move up the pitch then rolls it to the full back and gets in the box looking a cross or ball into feet again. Its very Italian.
But while this process is happening the opposition have flooded all their men behind the ball. Its the complete opposite of what made us such a terrifying prospect last year. Balo’s presence, despite what goals he may score and the different type of goal we may score this season as opposed to last, is hurting our attacking potential.
It’s not his fault. He’s doing what he can. He’s started well. But as long as he’s on the field the glory of last year’s attack will never be recaptured. And if we can’t score plenty of goals we won’t win games – because we sure as fuck will concede plenty with the likes of Lovren playing at CB. Still can’t believe we’ve spunked £20m on him.
You overstate your case but I’m broadly in agreement Mario isn’t responsible for our calamitous defending or the lack of energy in midfield, but he does slow everything down and his movement is erratic at best, laboured at worst. I just don’t think he has a great deal of game intelligence nor is he suited to our style, as you say. Sturridge, Sterling and Suarez bamboozled defences with a flurry of movement last season. This season we’re static, passing in front of defences or crossing aimlessly from wide areas.
When I came back from jive uts, Iwasnt the same player I used to be. For the next few years everybody said how great my movement was, how I made space for other players and how I had improved my game. What they avoided like the elephant in the room was the fact that I scored a significantly lower amount of goals. Managers need to grow a pair and put plYers out to pasture when they are no longer capable of constant quality performances. Steves swan song was last year. He’s too old and leggy now but nobody wants to tell him.