OVER the last week myself and loads of the lads I go to the match with have been in Spain. There was an option to fly back on the Saturday and go to the match against Stoke, but not many took it. Why bother? The season had finished at Wembley against Villa, and the league campaign before even that. With a Bank Holiday Monday on offer, another day in sunny Spain was far more appealing. The morning of the game my Twitter feed was full of people who were going, moaning about it. So you imagine my surprise when I checked after the game to discover that it was suddenly the most important game of football ever.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand why Neil and Gareth are more annoyed than me (although they really should have just come to Benidorm instead). They had to stand there and watch us go 5-0 down before half time, whilst I just got to shake my head and order another Pina Colada. But it is still ridiculous to suggest a manager should get the sack based on one result. If you want to then the games against Basel, Manchester United and Aston Villa are much more significant. Not a game that mattered less than some Sunday League fixtures taking place in Liverpool over the weekend.
The manager made some strange decisions at the weekend and rightly took his share of the blame for the loss. But there isn’t much you can do when all your players can’t be bothered, which looks to me like what happened. You can shout and try to motivate all you want, but if eleven lads just didn’t want to go to work that day, then they’ll always make you look a poor manager. And I can’t even blame them that they couldn’t be bothered going to Stoke. Because I couldn’t be bothered going to Stoke either.
Ah, but “they are paid loads of money to care!” I hear you say. So what? If someone tripled you salary tomorrow how long would that extra money motivate you for? A week? A day? An hour? You’d still moan when your alarm went off in the morning. You’d still moan about having to go in on a Monday. You’d still moan if you had to go to Stoke and work in front of 25,000 bellends.
“But footballers have a great job! They should feel lucky!” Yeah they do have a great job, but it quickly becomes work, with ups and downs. All of us have it better than someone, even the fella who mops up the peep show booths in Amsterdam, but you quickly forget it. Your reality becomes the norm. Today my ‘work’ is writing two football articles and then going to do a podcast where I get to talk to my mates on the phone. If someone told me that would be part of my job when I was 16 I’d have been made up. Instead I’m moaning about it because its sunny outside and I want to go and watch the cricket in Southport. We are all ungrateful bastards. No more so than young males.
An unmotivated gang of sulky lads couldn’t be bothered going to Stoke on Sunday and got embarrassed by a group of lads who ran more, because that is all they can do. Neil said “there needs to be consequences” and he is right. The club needs to ensure a result like this doesn’t happen again for a generation at least. But that doesn’t mean the manager goes. That is a separate, albeit valid, argument.
The way you ensure it never happens again is by ensuring you always have something to play for. By ensuring that footballers aren’t on their “holiday wind down” a month before the end. By being much much better at winning games between August and April. I want to see Liverpool going for silverware at the end of next season, even if it proves just out of reach. I want games in May to matter, not to fizzle out into nothing. I want all my lads on that early flight back from Spain.
That’s the way Stoke never happens again. Liverpool have a big summer ahead of them to ensure it doesn’t.
Literally couldn’t disagree more with this article.
I’m not sure the point of this article. Is it just to say “sure that match meant fuck all anyway”?? If so it doesn’t help.
It’s not just one loss. It’s ANOTHER loss. Another loss against shit opposition. Another loss against shit opposition with a dire performance. Probably the direst of performances but as we seen against Villa in the cup semi final we’re not totally immune to these types of performances when there’s something actually on the line.
Now we have to wait for an end of season review by some nobody who knows nothing about football or running a football club to give the go ahead to keep it fire the manager. What’s the hold up on this review??
Why has there not been some sort of statement from the club/FSG??
Meanwhile managers of the calibre of Ancelotti, Benitez and Klopp are hanging about looking for a job.
What the fuck are we doing?!!
I’m not sure the point of this comment. Is it just to say “we need a new manager?”. If so it doesn’t help
Very grown up Gibbo.
It’s like your wee bro repeating what ya say.
The difference being I’m not writing articles to be read by the public.
If you cant take criticism just say so.
The comments section is to comment on the article, like I’ve done.
And I can respond to. Or am I not allowed? The critic can’t take criticism?
But you arnt criticising are you??
You’re just on repeat again.
I’ve pointed out this was far from a meaningless match.
It was Gerrards last match.
It’s cost us a few mil.
It means our season starts earlier than wanted.
It interferes with our pre season
It interferes with the renovation of the main stand
It put massive pressure on the manager
It was the culmination of a run of bad results and poor performances, not just a one off.
It’s very much a meaningFUL match.
If you don’t want criticism then scrap the comments section.
Not everyone’s gonna agree with your assessment but when they don’t, don’t act like a child.
Good article from somebody on the beach enjoying the sunshine. One of the things I like about the Wrap is that there is a wide selection of views and context is everything. Gibbo being on holiday is like FSG watching a game in Boston, it doesn’t really touch them, it’s not like they go to the match and scrape together the money to build their life around LFC like so many fans do. Eventually this attitude filters down to the players and having played all season with no striker and most players in a new position or system each week they have given what they could and come up short. How many times does Coutinho have to look up and play a ball to the ghosts of seasons past? The season was over the moment Gerrard was sent off at Anfield against the Mancs. Garry Monk worked out the 3-4-2-1 system and that was the end of that
Rafa Benitez: good enough for the reigning CL champion but not good enough for a team 6th in the EPL and falling…
It makes me spew.
I sure Rafa will do a fabulous job there and will their manager for years to come.
Manager @ Real Madrid for years to come?
You’re out after one trophyless season there.
Or winning a treble !!
I couldn’t agree more, Gibbo.
FSG’s management strategy is the problem. We’re going to turn into Newcastle at this rate. What is FSG’s vision for the club and what is their timeline? 10 years before it comes to fruition? At least be honest and be straight. What is the model for their strategy? They need to speak to the fans right now to assure us the club is in good hands and we’re moving in the right direction otherwise there will definitely be a void between their expectations and the ours.
This would be an okay article to write if we lost 1-0 to Stoke. It goes beyond farce when we’re down 5-0 at half-time. There was something to play for, in case you forgot. Finishing 5th so we don’t have to worry about starting the season in early July. Are we still in danger of possibly having to play Europa League qualifiers in July now?
We will have to play in the third qualifying round of the Europa League in July if Aston Villa go on to win the F.A. Cup. If Arsenal win it, we don’t enter the competition until the group stages of the Europa Leage commence in September.
I’m with Gibbo. Although the result was shocking and embarrassing it shouldn’t be the sole justification for sacking Rodgers. There are other reasons to justify his sacking: poor signings; a seemingly stubborn refusal to use other signings; the tinkering; and of course, the general results apart from the period when 343 worked and we looked invincible. But he’s also got us playing some great football and took us within touching distance of the league last year. We sacked Rafa after a bad season and got Hodgson in return so be careful what you wish for.
One win (against a now-relegated team) in seven matches, a run demonstrating all the weaknesses we have seen this season. Pretty poor and no demonstrable improvement in ANY area of the pitch…
Wondering what it will take to push the ejector seat? Bottom half? Relegation?
My frustration with him reached breaking point vs Palace, Stoke just backed me up …
We have had nothing to play for for most of the last 25 years, but never have we seen a 1.3 home defeat against Palace followed up with a 1.6 defeat to Stoke. To glibly say we need to have something to play for simply ingnores the scale of the proble. We have been absolutely sh*te for weeks including an FA cup semi final which was worth playing for. The malaise is much deeper than the players going into holiday mode, it smacks of lack of belief in the club’s management and direction.
I know that with these articles it is your duty to comment from a unique and enlightening angle but there’s no way to cut it: that result was a long time coming and there’s no excuse, no writing it off.
It exposed a myriad of problems that many don’t believe that this guy can solve or even alleviate. That’s the story, not shrugged shoulders. If a chef in your restaurant makes a shit meal you admonish him. If he makes shit meals all year and then pisses on it you sack him.
Horse shit.. If it didn’t matter that we get thrashed 6-1 @ Stoke then we seriously need to rethink our standing in football.. This is the same guy who will be demanding we sign big players in the summer..go watch your cricket..
i don’t like the phrase ‘a group of lads who ran more because that’s all they can do’. Is that good enough for 5-0 at half time; Just running more? Sounds like very effective tactics. I thought Stoke were very good in that first half.
I’ve got news for you mate – everyone in Stoke saw that one coming. Maybe not 6 but we saw a hiding. We saw you against Palace the game before and to be quite honest we expect to do you at the Brit now anyway.
This isn’t about 1 game at the end of the season. It’s about the decline of a once big club like Liverpool.
For what it’s worth, Stoke had nothing to play for either. We couldn’t go any higher in the table or or any lower.
The same chef was knocking out some nice stuff the previous year when he had decent ingredients though ?
If all we do is sack the manager and everything else stays the same is that gonna sort it?
I’m no expert and obviously in the Brendan camp but from where I sit there seems to be a lot of work needed behind the scenes at the club and if the manager throws a hissy fit about a DOF then it’s cheerio and its also a little disconcerting to see him turn to the bench and be faced with just Pascoe/Marsh ?
We need experienced football people in positions at the club,
And finally if we do change manager can someone please advise him to wreck his teeth, stay outta the sun and for heavens sake do boy separate.
No. This is the chef that had one trick: Luis Suarez paprika. Once he ran out of that he had nothing. And when he ran out of nothing he pissed on the food.
Well there is no arguing with that so is there as you are entrenched in the it was all Suarez mindset which I find baffling,
No doubt it was largely him but to not recognise the manager also played his part is utter rubbish.
*not
I’ve just put Rodgers name in google and its came up with him getting the sack on the 3rd of June ? An its from 4 US sites linked with FSG ? Hope its true
I agree with the sentiment of this. One game is not enough to base sacking a manager on and especially one as meaningless as that one. That said, I think it’s entered my psyche and played a part in shaping my views. The Villa game was the turning point for me. It was another big game we didn’t turn up in. It’s funny but I’ve spent the last 3 seasons defending Rodgers but after Villa a few cracks appeared in the dam. What we saw after Villa and the realisation the league wasn’t actually finished at that point despite my belief that it was, meant I couldn’t hold it back any longer and the whole fuckin thing burst.
In saying that, it was only last night I realised the extent of it. My mate was on Twitter on his phone and read out ‘Rodgers job safe’. It was odd but my heart sank. I was shocked but realised where I stood once all loyalties had been swept aside. I think the final straw was reading these sourceless stories, the night before the Stoke game, that some of the players weren’t paying for Rodgers. In some ways, Stoke made me believe it, although I thought the things I’d read rang true prior to that, I suppose. It sounds like Gareth’s views have changed a bit but I’m firmly in the camp he was in a couple of weeks ago when he said if someone better is available then try and get them. So, if Rodgers is manager next season as I believe he will be then I’ll put this behind me and support him. I hope he’s not though. I think there’s definitely better out there and I want a change.
Losing that one match has cost us a few mil, means our pre season prep is cut short, means our season starts weeks earlier, was Gerrards last ever match as a red and means the main stand renovation has to be rearranged. It’s also put massive pressure on the manager. So it is very much meaningFUL.
But that match wasn’t a one off, was it??? It was the culmination of a run of bad results and performances. It was the ultimate in bad performances.
Christ mate. And there was me thinking if was meaningless.
You do realize that every finishing place gets a bonus of just over a million pounds right? It’s not huge in this football climate but I wouldn’t call over a million pounds to be worth less than a Sunday league match. Fact is we ended up finishing lower than spurs which can’t help the confidence of the lads. That’s a huge deal if you ask me. We need confidence going into next year and that’s why finishing the season on a high is always important.
The phrase that comes to my mind is “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
After a shit season of underachievement, constantly changing tactics between and within games, strange team selections and even stranger substitutions, being told the players were outstanding when they blatantly weren’t……and I could go on. To then get beaten so badly by Stoke (for God’s sake) to round it all off then it’s no surprise that a lot of Reds call for the manager’s head.
It meant that much for Stoke then, did it?
And it wasn’t just ‘one game’ but the culmination of an absolute shower. I was done with Rodgers after Besiktas so in that sense this ‘one game’ really did mean fuck all
Finally some eloquently expressed balance to what has become a huge over-reaction to one result on the last day of the season. If people got this worked up after Villa the players may have reacted differently. Well done John, pour your another Pina Colada
Do people think that there is a long list of world class managers queueing up for the LFC job?!?
I just don’t understand people who are saying sack Rodgers with no proposal of a plan B. LFC won’t manage itself.
These fickle people are the same people who were kissing Brendan’s balls last year and naming their new borns after him. Yes he’s made mistakes, bad signings and made me cringe a number of times but so what! What about the good things he has done. Have people forgotten last year already? LFC fans need to get in the real world, to finish 2nd last year was a remarkable effort and we weren’t that far off 4th this season. I’m backing him to finish 3rd next season. He’s a good young coach with lots of passion and some great ideas. If he gets two world class strikers, we could be looking at another title challenge. I sincerely believe it.
All that said and done. Would I trade up for Klopp or Ancelotti? In a heartbeat but it’s not going to happen.
“These fickle people are the same people who were kissing Brendan’s balls last year and naming their new borns after him.”
This shite has to stop. Just give it a rest. Enough.
‘An unmotivated gang of sulky lads’ sounds like there is a problem either with man management or simply buying players with the wrong character. When is there ever a meaningless game when you play for LFC? Go tell that to Jamie Carragher. Either way you boil that down, the blame rests on the manager.
Even if, for a moment, we can argue that the manager didn’t personally hand pick all of these players he certainly was responsible for the creation of the transfer committee that did.
I may be wrong but having our pants pulled down in front of the world happened more than just away at Stoke this season. I believe when we were thumped 4-1 at Arsenal in April we had plenty to play for.
What’s that? We didn’t have a world class striker most of the season? The club sold one for 75 mil and the manager and his committee bought three.
Real just sacked a far more superior coach, he finished 2nd this season and won the European Cup last term. Our manager has won nothing and spent a ridiculous amount of money(we’ll, his ‘committee’ did).
Let the heads roll.
Agreed re. straws and camels James Edey. It’s not just a response to the Stoke game for me. Not least because I lack the ability to block out everything else I’ve seen this season and react to Stoke in isolation. It’s a culmination of all the disappointments of this season – the poor European campaign, the embarrassing semi-final showing and a dreadful league run in when CL qualification was still within our grasp.
Psychologists talk of the ‘recency effect’; the notion that the last thing you see in a series of items / events has the most enduring impact. Well that was the final note of our season for everyone to take away with them. For our players to take to the beaches of Dubai, as a prism for players we may be approaching to look at the club through, for the fans to suffer a miserable summer of piss-taking and pessimism and as a sorry bookend to one of Anfield’s finest careers.
Carra said if our players have any professional pride they’ll stew on that result all summer. How do our players have confidence in / respect for Rodgers after that finale and how do we inspire transfer targets to come and play for him? ‘Honestly Mr Benzema, he got Swansea promoted.’
I’ve been increasingly waivering in my faith in Rodgers for a short while and Stoke was the point of no return. Things only go one way from here and I don’t want to watch another dismal season of regression to confirm that.
Quite possibly the worst football related article I’ve ever had the disastrous luck to read. Wrong on so many counts. It is disrespectful, idiotic, contradictory drivel, written without a shred of wit or self awareness and is clearly the output of someone who thinks football was invented in 1992.
I was there on Sunday and it mattered to a hell a lot of people, even one fella wearing black, Number 8 I think he was. I think you have currently got exactly the football club you deserve, John.
Goodness me. John is essentially saying that you don’t sack a manager on the spot because he lost an end-of-season game 6-1, however annoying that is. He then outlined why the players might not have been fully motivated – just because that is not acceptable, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Of course, it doesn’t normally happen to us – and it hurts. But the article is hardly worth doing the pogo over (if you want to read bad football journalism go back and read the crap written about the Suarez ‘racism’ witch-hunt).
For me, I feel this result is the probably tipping point for BR. But I would take a few days to think about it and I thought the comments by Neil and co. on the Podcast that FSG should come our and say something straight away were completely wrong (just as they were completely right on the fact they should have come to Stevie’s last home game).
OK, so a few things i need to say. First of all is all of the crap that FSG is getting form some of the fans. That they’re absentee landlords and they only care about money and sponsorships. Yes, they don’t come to every game, they’re not in the forefront every week but how many owners of the top clubs are like that. The Glazers are rarely at OT, not sure when Stan Kroenke was last at the Emirates. These owners leave a management structure in place to run the club so they don’t have to. That’s one criticism I do have of FSG is that they can’t decide on a structure, there’s no one man in charge but I expect that to change on the summer.
Why are people pissed that FSG are getting so many sponsorships? How do you think Utd or Arsenal have so much money. It’s critically important that LFC get money from commercial ventures.
From where LFC was when FSG bought us to where we are now is a huge improvement. We were going into administration, we were fucked. Now I hear, ‘you bought us 4 years ago and no improvement’. I have seen improvement, the problem is every other top team has improved as well and didn’t have to deal with tyhe shit that Hicks & Gillet left behind.
On the Rodgers issue, if Klopp was available I’d take him but since he’s come out and said he’s taking the next 6 months off, that’s a non-starter. There’s no-one else besides that. I keep hearing Ancellotti but his record on winning leagues is not stellar. Rafa is going to manage his home town club in Madrid, which is probably a better job that managing LFC right now.
I would suggest that while he’s still jobless (Dortmunds season very nearly over I know) that we should go all out and try to convince him to join us and less this team.
He seems to be an unconventional, charasmatic, inspirational leader who’s used to working on a budget, getting the most out of his players and playing a high tempo, high pressing game. Does that sound like someone that would suit us? Fuck yea!!
Let’s not wait until he decides to come back into management, let’s make up his mind for him. Let’s be proactive, you know the opposite of what we normally do recently!
It would appear you may have been lying a little too long in that Spanish sun Mr Gibbons. Just an end of season game then. Beat 1-6 by Stoke you say? Whatevs. *YAWN*
Or…
Quick couple of copied and pasted BBC match facts:
The last time Liverpool conceded six or more goals in a top flight game was in 1963, 7-2 against Spurs.
This was the first time Liverpool have ever conceded five first half goals in a Premier League game.
Couple of other important points:
This was Steve Gerrard’s last game for the team.
This was a game that supporters were looking at to see what sort of response there would be after the shameful 1-3 defeat to Palace at Anfield.
The main reason people are so pissed off is that this is simply the most recent and calamitous result in a string of embarrassing games. It takes a short memory to forget that the game before this was a 1-3 defeat to Crystal Palace. At Anfield. Why you cite the other matches as seemingly separate, unrelated games I’ve seriously no idea. Sunstroke?
Brendan Rodgers spouted the same milksop nonsense after the Palace game as he did after the Stoke match. Supporters are just meant to accept that? The players were on holiday were they? That might do that for Newcastle, QPR etc but I’m not having that from a Liverpool team and neither should our Manager. The clue is in his job title.
“embarrassed by a group of lads who ran more, because that is all they can do”
Oh if only that WAS all they could do. In case it escaped your attention they scored 6 (six) goals against us. What does that tell you about our ‘performance’?
“An unmotivated gang of sulky lads…”
Really? This is how you describe a team of Premiership players wearing Liverpool shirts?
“But that doesn’t mean the manager goes. That is a separate, albeit valid, argument.”
Ha-ha, priceless. FFS.
In all seriousness this is the sloppiest excuse for a piece of writing I’ve read in a long time. You might want to have a word with yourself.
Is it not at all conceivable that Stoke actually played well?
All the attention seems to be focused on “Liverpool couldn’t be arsed” “Liverpool didn’t show up”
I think it’s extremely unfair and disrespectful to Stoke city after what was an excellent team performance. It takes a little bit more than “running more, as that’s as they can do” as you so arrogantly claim.
Stoke did play well, but the way Liverpool conceded those 5 in the 1st half was abject from them. 3 goals are definitely the result of a lack of focus by individuals. I had a funny feeling Stoke would win 3-1 before the game, too. So yeah they deserve credit for capitalising, for hunger and for winning and you will have got that result but not that scoreline without our help.
John, I see what you mean.Sometimes you go into work and you just can’t be arsed! So, you turn out something like this.Is it supposed to be tongue in cheek? I think it is.Ironic? Is that the word I’m looking for?Parody?
One thing I can tell you is that any sportsman worth his salt plays to win.Whatever the circumstances!
In my own case I’ve come away from a contest winning and not slept because I kept going over the things I should have done better! And don’t get me started on things that happened when I lost!
No, whatever your motives,I think you should respect the feelings of people on here.We can’t accept half-arsed journalists no more than we can accept half-arsed professional footballers.
Hi Brian. I’m not a journalist. Half arsed or otherwise. But thanks for your kind words
Being totally honest, I think it matters more who we sign as a striker than who is manager. The group we have is really only geared for one type of football, and that requires a certain profile of striker.
Either FSG are willing to pay through the nose for a truly top shelf striker that fits the profile (as opposed to Balotelli on all counts), or we sink into the mire.
I’m still convinced that Rodgers can succeed with the right tools. Since the arrival of Sturridge, Rodgers did not require Suarez to play brilliant football. The 10 game ban and the early part of this season are evidence enough. But he does need at least one quality striker that fits the aggressive philosophy that worked so well from January 2013 to the moment Hodgson was in charge of Sturridge’s recovery schedule.
Nothing but a craven apology for Rodgers masquerading as an article. All too frequent on here these days unfortunately. Might you want to rebrand – AnfieldCrap seems more appropriate lately. The more you come up with this sort of incredulous drivel the more you undermine your own credibility. Not the best business plan when you’re hoping to persuade people to pay to hear your opinions.
Anfield Crap. Such wit.
It’s one thing to have been wrong about Rodgers all along and to have defended him up to a point (“he’s the real deal” – Gareth Roberts, now saying something very different), but it’s another thing entirely to continue to back him the way John Gibbons is doing.
It doesn’t smack of someone genuinely deluded with the ability of the manager, nor does it smack of those few sanctimonious idiots who believe supporting the manager regardless is what makes Liverpool fans different from all others. (Hodgson?)
No. What this smacks of is John Gibbons simply being unable to admit he is and has always been wrong about Brendan Rodgers. Not all of Rodgers’ biggest supporters, like Paul Machin, Graeme Kelly and Dan Kennett, have went full circle and called for his removal (give it time), but they at least have the decency to be embarrassed about their support for Rodgers for so long. They’re now at the position of they “aren’t arsed” if he stays or goes. That’s the least you can expect, even after the months of drivel they’ve spouted defending Rodgers poor 1st season and pathetic third season.
But then we come to nonsense like this piece. Ive read many complaints about this site being incredibly pro-Rodgers and one that toes the club/party line, until recently. Maybe in exchange for the interviews with players you are getting? Maybe that’s why articles like this are still appearing even now?
Because one things for sure…..anyone who has two brain cells to rub together cannot have watched Brendan Rodgers’ perform this season, make so many mistakes, never learn from them, be a joke in Europe, be tactically all over the shop, man-manage Markovic and Balotelli deplorably, want to bomb Sakho and Lucas out, insult the intelligence of the fanbase, have the worst start to a league in 50 years, contradict himself ten times, watch the players stop giving a fuck, fail to win every must-win game there was, and see him clearly lose the dressing room (or at least a big part of it), AND STILL have any sort of faith he is the right man for this job.
Makes you wonder.
We were playing for a league position between 5th and 7th. and a spot (whether wanted or not!) in the Europa League.
Since when did that not matter?
By that argument, the run in to the 2012/13 season, especially the 6-0 over Newcastle when many though it a key game in our development? Didn’t matter, and we should have judged Rodgers solely on earlier in the season when it did matter.
But no one said that then..
It is fascinating to read the posts, and illuminating to note how many (albeit diminishing) are still prepared to give Brendan Rodgers the benefit of the doubt (as if there is any). All views are valid. If only Roy Hodgson had garnered such loyalty, there no telling what he might have achieved.
Borini, Balo and Lambert, by the way, cost almost as much as the derided Carroll. That purchase cost Kenny his job.
With RAFA gone to RM reportedly, we are, in my biased view, one more FSG managerial miscalculation from being another Leeds United or Nottingham Forest.
“…if the owners want me to go, I’ll go.” To which there is an unspoken rider…Or maybe I won’t.
The article adds another perspective; a refreshing one to be honest, if only because it is small departure from the deluge of ‘Sack Rodgers’ opinion pieces flooding the net.
I hope Rodgers stays; I hope he wins a league and FA cup double next year, not because it would give me pleasure to see the club on top (it will), but more so I can read what the thousands of so-called ardent Liverpool fans currently brandishing their torches, heating up the tar and plucking the chickens have to say.
‘There were times when I wondered if he had what it took, but in my heart of hearts I always KNEW he was the right man for the job’.
Classy fans? YNWA? Support the club through thick and thin?
In another universe, maybe.
I find it strange how you basically get all smug and pretentious about standing behind the manager then proceeds to call the club’s greatest ever player “Stevie Me”
Insanity
While I disagree with Neil’s view that you sack managers on the back of one catastrophic result like this one, I also disagree that this game meant nothing
Gerrard’s last ever game, even if you don’t win it would’ve been nice not to send him off with the club’s biggest defeat for 43 years and the first time we’re 5-0 down in our 123 year history
Also 5th was very much what we needed to guarantee Europa group stages
Plus we have underperformed in bigger games this season as well, basically crumbled in all the meaningful games.
This result is very much the straw that breaks the camel’s back, managers have been sacked for less
Speaking of it being Stevie’s last game:
1. Other than scoring the goal, did he play well? Was he a “winner” and a “leader” on the pitch for us?
2. Did the manager do a good job choosing THIS, Stevie’s last game, to try a 41212 with the last ‘2’ being Coutinho and Lallana?
Perhaps, just perhaps, the other 10 players were thoroughly sick and tired of the Stevie cavalcade? Perhaps they were, in their heart of hearts, sick of seeing Stevie stand about in the middle of the park, not shutting down, not making tackles, not tracking back, not applying pressure when the other lot have the ball, basically not doing any of the things that every other player is apparently required to do, but throwing orders around when other players didn’t meet his standards?
Magnificent player and a great captain, but he has been carried this season – worse, the other players know they are expected to carry him, but if they lose after having to play 10 and a half against 11 they get told they have let him down.
I hate to use the expression, but it has been more and more apt as the season has worn on: Stevie Me is, sadly, an apt nickname. He has made this season more about him than the club – no wonder there might be the odd teammate who might get the hump.
If they’re sick of a player who has achieved infinitely more in his career than all 10 of them put together combined then we really have a fucked up squad
The key word there is “achieved”, as in the past tense. I love Gerrard as much as the next supporter, but his glory days are well behind him and any honest assessment would acknowledge that players, like Henderson, have been relegated to being his water carriers to compensate for the fact that his legs are gone.
He has been a passenger this year and not only have the other players suffered because of it, but Rodgers has suffered for it too.
If he played him he ‘didn’t have the balls’ to tell a club legend that his time was up; if he didn’t play him he was ‘being disrespectful’ to a club legend.
I for one am over the moon that Gerrard turned down a contract extension to head off to the States. The legend was fast running the risk of turning into a millstone around the manager’s neck.
Achieved in past tense is better than “never achieved” like 10 other players on the pitch
Drop the act, you don’t love him, anyone who loves Gerrard does not call him Stevie Me
You have the audacity to have a go at “classy Liverpool fans” for not backing the manager yet basically namecalls our greatest ever player. That’s you done
The ‘eleven sulky lads’ thought
A) that their jobs were safe so there was no point in risking injury (hence the 2 fouls only);
B) They didn’t want to play for LFC/BR; or
C) they are expecting to be sold or jettisoned.
It was a meaningless game until we lost 6 fucking 1. Don’t blame “us”, had we drawn or even won that game nothing had been made about it other than we looked poor as usual, but when you put on a performance like that you better make sure you can stand responsible for it.
This has been coming for a while now, against Palace Rodgers got his tactics wrong, against Villa too and also not starting Gerrard against Man Utd was wrong. I don’t think he’s good enough but unless we can lure Ancelotti or Klopp who else is there and Raf’s gone to Madrid.
This article is a total fop to BR and how things are (not) progressing at LFC. I backed BR all the way but this is a comical farce now and we should and need to get rid.