new liverpool thread - everyone loves them (3 Viewers)

[Hector Grey]

Liverpool FC has submitted its 21-man squad to the Premier League. Home grown players: Carragher, Cole, Darby, Gerrard, Johnson, Jones, Konchesky, Spearing. Non home grown: Agger, Aurelio, Babel, Jovanovic, Kuyt, Kyrgiakos, Leiva, Meireles, Poulsen, Reina, Rodriguez, Skrtel, Torres. Roy Hodgson can also call on U21s Gulacsi, Kelly, Wilson, Shelvey, Pacheco, Eccleston and Ngog for Barclays Premier League games.


small squad... could have been smaller if babel and levia went for cole.
someone buy the fucking club. pleseeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaardasdqadqfREHQRTH

 

[evil bandit]

Souness not Ferguson knocked Liverpool off the top


Jamie Carragher owns two restaurants in Liverpool and hopefully his next culinary step will be to host Come Dine With Me. The company and conversation would not be eclectic – his obsession with leading managers would produce a guest list limited to such names as José Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson and Fabio Capello – but the concoction would be unforgettable.

"There is still a mystique about these people for me," he says. "The likes of Ferguson and Mourinho, I could talk to them all day if I had the chance." Which raises the question of what the Liverpool defender would ask the Manchester United manager if the opportunity arose?

For once, Carragher pauses to consider a response. His eyes sparkle when it comes. "I'll tell you what I would say to him. I'd say he never knocked Liverpool off their fucking perch. That's nonsense that. Graeme Souness did that. United were competing with Norwich and Aston Villa for their first title. They weren't competing with Liverpool, were they?" Why Carragher remains a prized interviewee requires no explanation.

Fourteen years after breaking into the Liverpool first team as a goalscoring midfielder, or so we thought, the 32-year-old stages his testimonial at Anfield this afternoon. He has invited an Everton XI to provide the opposition and Michael Owen to face the wrath of the Kop by swapping United red for Liverpool's.

Both have caused a stir, though proceeds do go to his charitable 23 Foundation. The choices are unsurprising, however.
Owen is a lifelong friend, Everton are the team he loved, and he has never become the PR-moulded, bland character we now expect – but abhor – of our Premier League stars. It is the reason Anfield identifies with Carragher more than any other player of his generation and why, despite a wish to retain a low profile ahead of his big day, 10 journalists are waiting when he walks into the press room at Liverpool's training ground.

Fourteen years of opening up with searing honesty, yet he still retains a capacity for revelation. Only when discussing the testimonial guest list does it dawn on Carragher that his mother, Paula, will watch him play today for only the second time in his life. Not the second time in a career that has yielded every medal bar the Premier League championship – his whole life.

"It's just never been the done thing in our family" is the explanation. "She didn't watch me as a kid. My missus doesn't go to the match either. It's a waste of a ticket. To my mum, I'm James. I suppose she's kept me grounded. She still lives where we always lived and she does the normal things like going to the Asda. It's funny, she went shopping the other day to the Lidl, which is the cheap one, isn't it? And one of the girls on the till went: 'What are you doing in here?' She can't go back now. She said she only went in to get a bit of fruit."

Andy Burnham MP is also expected at Anfield, and his presence suggests Carragher's claim to be interested only in "Liverpool football club and my family" is not entirely true. The Bootle-born defender donated £10,000 to Burnham's Labour leadership campaign, having been impressed by the then culture secretary's efforts to release internal documents on the Hillsborough disaster, though Carragher proclaims only a passing interest in politics. "I watched Tony Blair's interview with Andrew Marr the other night and I'll watch Newsnight, but that's about it. I like Tony Blair. But [donating to Burnham] was because he is a local fella and I vote Labour and hopefully that would give him a good push. I like seeing people from round here doing well and it would be great if someone from round here was leader of the Labour party.

"He's an Evertonian, though, isn't he? I think he's coming to the match with the leader of the council. It probably looks good for them as well, doesn't it? I read Piers Morgan's book on holiday and he was never out of Downing Street."

Any fan of Blair must place an importance on image and Carragher is no exception, although only in the context of the club he serves. Proud though he is of his achievements at Anfield, and of a career of dramatic highs and lows on a collective and personal level, the defender admits the recent image of Liverpool FC is one that pains him.

"I care about the club because I'm a supporter as well," he says. "It does bother me if things aren't as they should be. I think a lot about the future of the club, the direction it's going in, the way it is run and how it is perceived from the outside. There are some things that Liverpool should be doing in a certain way, the correct way. We should be a little bit different, and we need to get back to that.

"I'm not just talking about winning games, but the way we do things and the way we conduct ourselves. The class and dignity this club was renowned for. It's the way Liverpool used to be seen by people and we should be aiming to recreate that."

Carragher's use of "class and dignity" is instructive. Those are the same words David Moyes used to describe Everton when responding to the former manager Rafael Benítez's description of his Merseyside rivals as "a small club". George Gillett and Tom Hicks have brought financial turbulence to Anfield and supporters on to the streets. Though Carragher refuses to mud-sling – "I'm not getting into why we lost that, but we do need to get back to it and I think we are" – it is clear he believes the American co-owners are not entirely responsible for Liverpool's recent soap opera.

"I just think that over the last few years people didn't like Liverpool. Other managers didn't like us, we were always getting criticism in the press, obviously we were not doing well on the pitch so that comes with it, but everything was just negative Liverpool all the time.

"We've had situations like Martin O'Neill and Steve Bruce criticising Liverpool and they were right. We shouldn't be getting involved with stuff like that. Everyone else should look at Liverpool and say they have dignity, class. I mean, like the way people look at Arsenal. They do things right and you think they conduct themselves in the right way. I think we have been a club who were like that and we need to get back to that, to do things right. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; that's football. You can't win all the time. But you can still behave in a way where people respect you."

Though it goes against the grain for Carragher, a testimonial demands reflection and the vexed issue of what next? His son, James, is already at the Liverpool academy and while a step into management has always appeared natural, a reluctance to leave Liverpool does not make it a foregone conclusion. "If it was just me and the missus then I wouldn't mind seeing the world or different parts of the country, but I'm very big on my kids being settled with their family," he says. "I want to be a manager, it wouldn't scare me, but
I also think you could be sacked in six months and you'd have to take the kids back to school with your tail between your legs."

He is, however, unequivocal about what he will not miss when the time finally comes to hang up the No23 Liverpool shirt. "People go on about how much players earn in the Premier League but once you've bought a nice house and car, what else is there to spend it on?" Carragher asks. "There is pressure, and I would never complain about that, but as players we put pressure on ourselves all the time. That's one thing I won't miss when I finally stop playing. It was my wife's birthday party last Sunday but I knew I wasn't going to enjoy it if we didn't beat West Brom that afternoon. It was on my mind from the moment the whistle went. All through the game, I'm thinking: 'We've got to win it, we've got to win it.' "

Six hundred and thirty five appearances for Liverpool and still yearning for victory. That says it all.

Link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/sep/04/jamie-carragher-liverpool-testimonial

 

[Cormcolash]

Pepe Reina shows his class

http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/6813476/

 

[Wheels]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/sep/09/rbs-tom-hicks-george-gillett-sell-liverpool

Oh dear lord, could this horrible affair with the Duke Brothers finally be nearing an end?

 

[Hector Grey]

maybe that's what the prospective buyers were waiting for. now they can get the club for less than it took to buy blackburn rovers.

 

[maims bond]

This is good for the club isn't it? Bascially, RBS have control over the debt and, ergo, the club. So, they'll sell the club to someone who can buy out the debt, leaving the club with a rather attractive buying price and the yanks with a big hole in their wallet. Am I right?

 

[Con]

Hopefully this means the yanks will have no control over the club beyond the 6th of october deadline. It looks like all their in-fighting and their ridiculous valuation for the club has backfired badly on them and means that they are going to leave the club without the huge profit they always sought. It also means that there'll be a long line of potential buyers as the minimum price that RBS are going to look for for the club is the 200 odd million that Gillet and Hicks owe them. I'd expect all those talked about as potential buyers to come back into the frame when the bank takes over. No-one is going to want to do a deal with Hicks and Gillet when they can just wait a few weeks and get the club for a, relatively, bargain price.

The main concern now is that RBS and the liverpool board choose the right people to take over so the club doesn't end up in the same situation a few years down the line.

 

[Unicron]

The main concern now is that RBS and the liverpool board choose the right people to take over so the club doesn't end up in the same situation a few years down the line.

Whatever about the board surely RBS won't give a damn about the "right" people and will sell to whoever ponies up the most dough.

 

[Hector Grey]

Whatever about the board surely RBS won't give a damn about the "right" people and will sell to whoever ponies up the most dough.

yes, but hopefully there's a lesson learned in all this, eh?

 

[Vinnie]

yes, but hopefully there's a lesson learned in all this, eh?

Yep. The lesson is that this could finally be Liverpool's year. I can feel it in my tears.

 

[Hector Grey]

Yep. The lesson is that this could finally be Liverpool's year. I can feel it in my tears.

i hope you're right, i really do. this could be the corner. that we either "turn" or hit with accuracy into the box in a way not seen since the 80s.

 

[evil bandit]

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...-claims-hes-very-fit-for-purpose-2077037.html

Houllier has suggested that Villa are on the verge of appointing a manager who can take credit for UEFA Champions League glory, although Rafa Benitez was actually at the helm of Liverpool when they beat Milan in 2005.

"I went into the dressing-room in Istanbul and stood shyly in a corner," Houllier said.

"Some of the players saw me and they all came and hugged me. They said: 'This is your team.'

"I hadn't noticed, but apart from two players they were all signed by me."

 

[Wheels]

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...-claims-hes-very-fit-for-purpose-2077037.html

Houllier has suggested that Villa are on the verge of appointing a manager who can take credit for UEFA Champions League glory, although Rafa Benitez was actually at the helm of Liverpool when they beat Milan in 2005.

"I went into the dressing-room in Istanbul and stood shyly in a corner," Houllier said.

"Some of the players saw me and they all came and hugged me. They said: 'This is your team.'

"I hadn't noticed, but apart from two players they were all signed by me."

Houllier did a great job at the beginning of his reign at Liverpool, weeding out the troublemakers and cleaning up the club's act. The treble of 2001 was no mean feat, nor was finishing 2nd the following year. But he needs to stop inflating his image by laying claim to Istanbul. He'd completely lost the plot before he was given the boot and Benitez deserves all his credits for Liverpool European profile over the last 5 years. "I hadn't noticed, but apart from two players they were all signed by me." Oh yeah? Well one of those signings was Djimi Traore for goodness sake.

 

[Cormcolash]

Traore had a great striker's touch remember

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[Hector Grey]

well, the reason liverpool won was steven gerrard, who would have been there regardless of the manager. although rafa did try to flog him.

yesterday was painful. the poulsen-lucas matrix has nothing going forward. did they even leave their own half? we looked much better when raul m came on. i mean, in a footballing sense, in a haircut and tats sense, we probably looked as good as we've ever, ever looked. at least he was getting into the box and gerrard was threading passes that the other two wouldn't have thought of.

i wonder will he start with gerrard-raul in the middle, and cole off torres for united, or cole on the right, raul-poulsen in the centre? oh, it's so intriguing. thank god spurs and city are doing so shite.

 

[washingcattle]

Actually the reason was Didi Hamann.

 

[coast to coast]

Actually the reason Liverpool won was cos of a combination of the players the manager and the supporters.
Notice that Gerard Houllier isn't any of those three things.

 

[Wheels]

How nice to wake up and find that Liverpool actually managed to score a couple of goals for a change, some good ones too. I read that the team were pretty shaky under pressure for large periods, but it was good to hear that Cole was getting into his stride. 7 goals for Ngog now this season too and again, I don't think you would have seen him score that type of chance last season. Better, slightly better although I'm still not very confident of getting a result at OT on Sunday. Maybe if United continue to give away goals in Fergie time?

 

[Cormcolash]

Ngog is turning into the player I always said he was

 

[oh shit]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/sep/16/tom-hicks-george-gillett-liverpool

hicks is in town seeking loans to keep control - loans the club will be loaded with, obviously

at least the board is against it. just can't understand the logic of wanting to loan this man more money. i suppose his idea might be that gillett will be forced out now that a personal loan to him is being called in, leaving hicks in a position to take all the money on sale, in which case he might agree to sell for a reduced price instead of the fantasy £800m they bandied about all summer. but what the fuck? he's like freddie kruger. just when you thought it was safe to go to sleep...