Liverpool Thread

Re: Liverpool Thread

You knew Benni was going to take it around Pollitt though, he NEVER shoots first time, always tries to do the fancy stuff. Cracking finish though.

Great pass by Mash but Benni, Gerrard and Babel have been poor in creating chances for Torres. One good shot by Babel really.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

DagsJT said:
You knew Benni was going to take it around Pollitt though, he NEVER shoots first time, always tries to do the fancy stuff. Cracking finish though.

Great pass by Mash but Benni, Gerrard and Babel have been poor in creating chances for Torres. One good shot by Babel really.
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:LOL: How can you be having a go at him after he just scored!
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

YoungGun_UK said:
:LOL: How can you be having a go at him after he just scored!
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Does scoring a goal suddenly make you become a great player? Titus Bramble scores a goal so are we supposed to say good things about him too?

Anyway ....

Title race is over for me. Is that 6 draws in 9 games now? Our lack of creativity is ruining our challenge (ruined already?) and I just can't see United dropping enough points.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

We've struggled at killing teams off for years.

Lucas :BRICK:

Bringing Torres off when he can score goals out of nothing :BRICK:

Bringing off the player most likely to score on the whole pitch in Gerrard :BRICK:

Fed up now.
 
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Re: Liverpool Thread

Don't worry mate we'll be challanging for 3rd as usual .. I think Rafa completely lost the plot.
 
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Re: Liverpool Thread

He's controlling the title away........

I mean what is the f#$king point of having both Lucas and Masch on the pitch. All they do is pass 10 yards to each other a couple of times and then pass it out wide to the backs or to the central defenders. There really is no point in having both of them on the pitch. We already saw it at Stoke when we created next to nothing, and the same happend yesterday. We aren't playing top teams were we need this cover/control.

I would have put Gerrard back in Lucas' position and added Keane to the team. It's really showing at the moment how negative Benitez is setting his team up. Babel did one good thing the whole match, the rest of the time he lost possesion....so thats the leftwing useless. Beni Noon had a good game but isn't good enough to force something to happen. Gerrard is pants atm, which isnt a surprise with the courtcase and Torres (who had one header all match) is still getting match fit.

Combine that with 6 defensive players. It doesn't take a genius to realise that the team and controlling the game isnt good enough.

Oh well, atleast we know in time to focus on the CL!
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Seriously, if someone had given you the position you are in right now in August, wouldn't you have taken it?

Imagine what the table would look like if Ronaldo hadn't been missing for the first 6/7 weeks of the season...
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Thing is Ryan, if someone told me in August that we'd have a clear gap at the top of the table, then we go through January not winning a game (second January on the run in which we haven't won a league game I've heard) and losing so many points, giving up our lead, I wouldn't be happy about it.

We're throwing this away and it's absoloutely gutting to think we had such an advantage and now we're back to our usual scrapping for places rather than holding the top like we should be.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

I think we do, its just not using them.


@ Dags,

You're starting to understand my analogy from last week I see ;)

And does anyone know what the whole "Crazy game, crazy 3 games, ferguson knows" is about?!
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Its another sly dig at the referees from what I heave heard this morning
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

IMO Liverpool under Rafa have always been too cautious. With the team you have you should be attacking more and going for it and turning these draws into wins. You don't lose many games granted but 3 wins and 3 defeats in 6 games is better than 6 draws.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

I see posts in here saying that Rafa is throwing it away. Throwing what away exactly ?, I dont beleive that the particular something your throwing away, was never actually yours to throw away! ;)
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Having been top of the table, with a fair lead on everyone else, says we had quite a bit to throw away.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

CW said:
Its another sly dig at the referees from what I heave heard this morning
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So he's pissed about those two corners given to Everton, and then the 'stonewall' penalty last night? Surely just by looking at Leiva he could see it was a penalty. Not sure I understand his gripes, to be honest.

I still think Liverpool have done really well in the league. I don't get why everyone isn't impressed that they're even as close as they are. Not because the team isn't good (I saw an interesting fact - apparently Liverpool have only spent £30m less than United over the last 10 years, not sure if it's true but curious if it is) but because the team isn't used to competing at the top of the table. I mean, for me Arsenal last year were doing it on reputation alone. They exepcted to be up there and so were, despite the team not being good enough. There's something about that mentality.

I also think this season Stevie G has been absolutely immense. A lot of liverpool fans were happy to dig into United as relying solely on Cronaldo last year, but without Stevie you guys would arguably not even be in the top 10.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

I think Rafa might need to go for you to win the league, I just can't see him winning the title, he doesnt have the right mentality for this league. Torres and Gerrard off with 10 minutes to go 1-1? Could you ever imagine us taking of Ronaldo and Rooney with 10 minutes to go with the score 1-1?. Also he's pretty crap in the transfer market, when he first arrived he signed lots of average spanish joe's, then bought a few other average players (Pennant, Kromkamp, Degen etc)

With all this said I hope he signs his contract :)) KRAP!

EDIT: WTF?! He's lost it...

Benitez garbled: ‘We had control of the game in the first half and didn’t kill it off. In the second half it was a crazy game.

'When you don’t control crazy games you don’t win points. I don’t know what is happening.

'Actually I do know, but I can’t say anything about it. It is just crazy.

'You can’t control what you can’t change. It could be like this for years.

'Alex Ferguson has been here for 22 years and you can see what it means when you have been here for so long. The past three games have something in common I don’t like.’
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Re: Liverpool Thread

We have a fantastic opportunity – Rafa Benitez
Jan 30 2009 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post


RAFAEL BENITEZ brought some perspective to Liverpool’s recent indifferent form by insisting his team still have a “fantastic opportunity” to win the Premier League.

But the Anfield manager accepts his team must begin turning their possession into goals if they are to lift the title for the first time since 1990.

Liverpool were held to a 1-1 draw at Wigan Athletic on Wednesday and now stand two points adrift of leaders Manchester United, who have a game in hand.

It was a seventh draw in their last 10 league games, with Benitez’s side dropping to third behind Chelsea ahead of hosting the Londoners on Sunday.

At the same stage last season, Liverpool were down in seventh place, eight points worse off and a mammoth 17 points adrift of leaders United.

Indeed, in the 28 seasons since three points for a win were introduced, the Anfield outfit have bettered their current 48-point tally after 23 games on only three occasions – when winning the league in 1982-83 and 1987-88 and, most recently, when finishing runners-up in 1990-01.

And Benitez said: “The players know that, after a lot of years talking about being contenders, this is a fantastic opportunity so they are really together and you can see the mentality of all of them. The training sessions over the past two weeks have been very good.

“This season, from the beginning we were so good, we were scoring goals and winning games and everyone could see that it was an opportunity for us.

“People were saying, ‘Maybe it’ll be this year’ so we have created a lot of the expectation ourselves. But we are still in this position so everybody knows that we have to do our best.

“Clearly we have to improve in attack. We have plenty of control and plenty of possession, but we have to create chances and take them. This is one area we can clearly improve on and we are trying to improve.”

Liverpool have been beset by uncertainty in recent weeks, with Benitez rejecting the offer of a new contract, the club linked with yet another prospective takeover opportunity, and a number of players in limbo concerning new deals.

But the Spaniard believes his squad are not being affected by the off-field distractions.

“The players are really focused and know that the things off the pitch don’t have to affect the players on the pitch,” added Benitez. “They are professionals and are just thinking about how to win the next game.
“When you talk with the players you can feel if they have confidence or not and it’s clear they have confidence.

“I don’t care if some people seem to want us to fail.

“We are in the best position that the team or club has been in for the last 15 years or something so we have to be positive and think about the positives, concentrate on Chelsea.




“I can guarantee that 90% of the players – I can’t say 100% – are just talking about football.”
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I think Rafa needs to give these interviews a rest now. He's not helping at all.

And if some players aren't giving 100% then why are they still at the club? It's our most important season for years, we can't afford to keep players around who aren't fully commited. It's an insult to the club and the fans to say some players aren't pulling their weight but we're keeping them anyway.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Opinion on Rafa's credentials are becoming increasingly polarised with each fixture that passes and it's really becoming apparent that it is dividing our fan base to the same manner with which it did during Gerard Houllier's final season here. Those who debate on both sides of the argument really need to stop being so esoteric. There are criticisms of Rafa which are valid and it is important that any individual at the club; players, coaching staff, the manager, the board et cetera are not beyond reproach. It's a particular kind of argument on this forum, probably because the popularity of the forum means that there is a huge variety of supporters here, not just those that go to the game or live local or have an encyclopedic knowledge or understanding of the game.

It really becomes tiresome to hear criticisms of the manager evoke the kind of responses that they do on this forum, nearly as tiresome as some of the ill-thought criticisms that Rafa is getting here. It descends to an almost childish debate at times. It's important that constructed criticisms of Rafa are not dismissed implicitly as coming from 'whoppers' or 'day-tripper's' and the like, I know many match-going fans who feel his time is up.

For me, I think Rafa has made many mistakes, this season and during his entire time here. But to focus only on his errors is an absurd injustice to a manager who has reconstructed a club that was directionless and a fading force into a club that has genuinely challenged for major honours in each season that he has been here (Champions League Final in 2005 & 2007, Semi-Finalists in 2008, the FA Cup in 2006 and now a title challenge in 2008-9.) The squad he inherited was poor, the team was poor and lacked quality. The academy wasn't producing new talent and the whole club practically needed reconstructing. What he did in his first season was almost miraculous. To see Igor Biscan confidently rampaging through the Bayer Leverkusen midfield and playing a delightful throughball for Luis Garcia to finish was almost miraculous.

He has made bad decisions in the transfer market at times (though not as many as his detractors would have you believe) and some of his tactical decisions in some games can be baffling. His scatter-gun approach to developing young players and his dealings with the press are also areas where I feel he has sometimes handled things badly. This season however, the criticisms he has been accused of seems to have been intensified. I think it's probably because of Manchester United's success last season.

For so long, our supporters held our records dear as we clung on to them out of desparation as we watched United win title after title in the nineties, safe in the knowledge that it wasn't possible for them to reach our title haul any time soon. It became our comfort blanket ... but now we're in danger of losing even that and in my opinion, that's why so many have become almost irrational in our desperation to keep it. Thus, everything that everybody is doing is being scrutinised microscopically, and Rafa being the man in charge, he is the man in the firing line.

Liverpool Football Club will go on without Rafa, just as it went on without Paisley, Fagan, Shankly and Dalglish. But to underestimate the job he has done in transforming the club in the four-and-a-half years he has been here would be folly. We finished the 2003-4 season, our last under Houllier, thirty points behind the leaders, three more points than the difference between ourselves and the relegation zone that season. Our two most important players were on the verge of quitting, our head coach had just quit (who, helpfully for our new Spanish manager who had a less than perfect grasp of English when he first arrived, spoke fluent Spanish), there was little in the squad that signified we would be capable of challenging for anything any time soon and we did not have the funds to compete in the transfer market with the main challengers, and neither did we have the infrastructure to build on.

The squad he inherited was:

GK: Dudek, Kirkland, Luzi. DEF: Finnan, Carragher, Henchoz, Hyypia, Traore, Riise. MID: Diouf, Smicer, Murphy, Diao, Gerrard, Biscan, Hamann, Cheyrou, Welsh, Kewell. ATT: Owen, Heskey, Baros, Le Tallec, Sinama-Pongolle.

Gerrard wanted out, Owen wanted out. The French duo of Le Tallec and Sinama-Pongolle had shown little to live up to their hype, Kewell and Finnan both failed to impress in their first seasons and Carragher had a poor season. The consensus was that Hyypia and Henchoz were past their best and a liability, that Hamann was too immobile, Dudek and Baros too inconsistent and the rest were not good enough. In the hands of the wrong manager, inheriting this squad could have been disastrous.

Gerrard stayed, Owen went at a fraction of his value. Rafa revitalised much of the squad; Finnan became one of the most consistent full-backs in Europe for the next few seasons, Carragher established himself as a world class central defender and even some of the 'dead wood' in that squad, the likes of Smicer, Biscan, Traore and Riise showed great improvement. Rafa has spent a lot of money, and he has made mistakes of course in spending that money, but then so has every other manager. When you're playing catch-up, you have to take chances in the transfer market. Our prize asset was leaving for a pittance, and it was important we got decisions right in the transfer at that crucial time for the club. In that first summer, Rafa spent that budget by buying Xabi Alonso for £10.5m and Luis Garcia for £6m. Two players who were essential for our success the following seasons.

Of course there are managers who could come in if Rafa did leave and do a good job, but there is no one who could have done the job he has done in the circumstances, save perhaps Jose Mourinho or Fabio Capello. It is not at all constructive to merely defend your own side of the argument verbatim. There are valid criticisms of Rafa, and if these are offered, it doesn't mean that the person offering them is necessarily wanting to sack him. Conversely, just because some of his actions or decisions can frustrate at times, it does not mean that the only recourse is his dismissal. We need to defer our reactions and our frustrations, and instead analyse his performance with a much greater sense of balance, otherwise our fanbase will become even more fractured than it is already.
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Cracking post from RAWK.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

I still think Rafa has done a good job. But Liverpool fans still believe that they 'deserve' or are entitled to win the premiership. And I don't get the impression he's the man to achieve that. I could see Mourinho accomplishing it, but very few others. He's infuriating at times, makes absolutely no sense at times, makes stupid buys and great ones. Find me a good manager that doesn't.

He'll always do well in Europe, he'll always keep Liverpool in the CL and what more do you want, I mean really? This season you've done very well, but it's almost been a case of being the best of the worst, as United and Chelsea have been rubbish until Christmas. If next year either one of them get in gear early, I don't think Pool can compete over 38 games.

Anyway, maybe all this will be moot, Pool will go the rest of the season unbeaten and claim the title. Then we'll all look prety silly.
 
Re: Liverpool Thread

Pool will go the rest of the season unbeaten and claim the title. Then we'll all look prety silly.
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Well we've only lost one league game all season as it is anyway.....its not helping much atm ;)
 
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