new liverpool thread - everyone loves them (9 Viewers)

[Cryptid]

I have to say, the goal by Coates was a peach.

 

[evil bandit]

 

[oh shit]

Is Lucas the difference here or what? i dunno. fuckin' car crash results all over the place this year. this has to be up there as one of the worst

Lucas is our best player by some distance, I said it'd go tits up when he was injured.

But it's not Lucas's fault that we got rid of miereles and aquilani in favour of a fat rangers reject and a moderately promising kid. oh and fucking downing

 

[Hector Grey]

Last night's performance went beyond words. It's beyond understanding. All you can do is blame everybody for everything.

 

[Hector Grey]

Lucas is our best player by some distance, I said it'd go tits up when he was injured.

But it's not Lucas's fault that we got rid of miereles and aquilani in favour of a fat rangers reject and a moderately promising kid. oh and fucking downing

also, agger is massive. The back four were immense with glen, skrtl, agger and jose. it's shit with carra in there, not least because it moves skrtl back to the left. And jose has begun to make the odd mistake. unfortunately for him, every lapse results in a goal.

And the fucking post?? if we'd scored half of the post hits and peno misses we'd have 12-15 more points. HOWEVER, the table doesn't lie. that's where that squad deserves to be. You look at the kind of player we miss... meireles and aqualani aren't the greatest in the world, but they're both real players, and they both have a good touch. they get into the box and neither of them are charlie "charlie" adam. even joe cole would be better than stew downing, too. kenny went mad erasing roy from history, getting rid of all his boys asap, including the one good player he bought.

suarez and gerrard look like they could work together. if only suarez could score goals.

like i say, we're 5-6 decent players away from the top four. wingers (downing: fail, kuyt:spent...um, that's it. one winger at the club), goal scorer(carroll: fail), midfield mentaler(spearing is improving, but we need a tiote type who will just break people in our final third, and let lucas be the finesse player he is), good centreback cover(carra looks increasingly past it), dinky in the hole lad(we don't have a tiny playmaker. cole, pacheco: fail. even an aquilni/meireles type player..imagine), metronomic passer(adam:fail, henderson's not yet there. a leon britton type, just keeping the ball moving. adam and gerrard's instinct is to ping it hollywood).

the squad is fucking tiny, really. our "star" player has scored 6 league goals this season. the real problem, as i see it, is who would kenny buy. probably leon fucking britton.

 

[Unicron]

I think too much is made of all the woodwork strikes and the "unluckyness" of it, a miss is a miss and hitting the post is no better or worse than putting it just wide, it's finishing that isn't good enough. I say this as a fan of a club who for years was blighted by the unluckyness of habitually hitting the post.

 

[ratmonkey]

hitting the post is no better or worse than putting it just wide, it's finishing that isn't good enough.

Unless you're Johann Cruyff and bored.

 

[Hector Grey]

I think too much is made of all the woodwork strikes and the "unluckyness" of it, a miss is a miss and hitting the post is no better or worse than putting it just wide, it's finishing that isn't good enough. I say this as a fan of a club who for years was blighted by the unluckyness of habitually hitting the post.

exactly, at what point does 20+ post hits stop being about "luck". Suarez averages a gol! gol! GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! once every 14 shots. That's not incredible. He missed a couple of sitters last night. He does so much jinking around that by the time he's supposed to be hammering it home, he's fucked.

 

[Unicron]

exactly, at what point does 20+ post hits stop being about "luck". Suarez averages a gol! gol! GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! once every 14 shots. That's not incredible. He missed a couple of sitters last night. He does so much jinking around that by the time he's supposed to be hammering it home, he's fucked.

This season Yak has scored a goal every 3.5 shots, which is pretty phenominal, expecially when you consider that he's in an awful team that don't create many really good chances.

 

[Unicron]

Can anyone confirm that last night was Downing's first assists in the league of the season?

 

[Cormcolash]

I remember in school, a bunch of us were playing football, and some lad took a shot that came back off the bar, so he turned round and said "I'd rather hit the post or the bar than score, it's more satisfying"

Funny enough he doesn't play in The Premiership right now

 

[Hector Grey]

Can anyone confirm that last night was Downing's first assists in the league of the season?

that was hardly an assist.... but afaik it would be. if it wasn't just a weak shot.

 

[Luther Blissett]

A fairly polemical article in the Telegraph about Liverpool's current woes.

Liverpool's latest disappointment at home to Wigan highlights Anfield's blindness to modern failings

Aside from those institutions that adjoin Stanley Park, one of Liverpool’s most famous clubs is called The Grafton.

Desperate times: Kenny Dalglish watched his Liverpool side drop to their second defeat in a week against relegation strugglers

By Chris Bascombe, Anfield

A once grand ballroom that fell into disrepair, it was a location where ladies of a certain vintage relived their golden days, throwing on the lipstick for one more shot at rapture alongside a fresh generation. Every now and again they would strike lucky too, as visitors in awe of the sheer novelty value of the 'grab a granny nights’ succumbed to its particular charms.

In so many ways, Liverpool Football Club have something in common with the ladies of The Grafton.

They are like an old lush, sat in the corner telling the world how attractive and marvellous they are, utterly affronted when anyone blind to their natural beauty suggests otherwise. Friends, lovers and acquaintances nod enthusiastically each time the club attest to their own greatness, but neutrals and rivals think their better days have long since passed.

Every so often the reminders are more potent. A magical one-night stand in Europe, or (as this season’s Carling Cup final demonstrated) an occasional trophy, but the most serious threat to Liverpool’s enduring significance is not the criticism or pity of onlookers, it is their own lack of self-awareness.

Defeat at home to a bottom-three side such as Wigan Athletic is still looked upon at Anfield as a shock, a performance which belies form or tradition. Why?

Wigan have not lost to Liverpool for three years. They are one of 10 teams to have left Anfield this season enthused by their opponents’ inability to win at home. Shaun Maloney’s penalty and Gary Caldwell’s 64th-minute winner condemned Liverpool to their worst Anfield run since relegation in 1953.

In applauding his own side’s “historic” win, Wigan manager Roberto Martinez generously suggested Anfield remains a special, iconic football venue. That view is based increasingly on the place’s sense of the past. Liverpool might as well be playing in their museum.
Walk around Old Trafford, the Etihad Arena or the Emirates on matchday. Pause, soak in the scale of the view and keep convincing yourself Anfield does not look like the remnant of another era. One day you will wake up and those Malaysian fans you keep fluttering your eyelids at will be wearing City scarves.

Look at the league table for the last 22 years and ask how many genuine title challenges there have been. Two? Three perhaps? Thoroughly examine why the club have fallen from their lofty perch. It is not because they have been pushed off by others, been victims of some bizarre FA or Sir Alex Ferguson-led conspiracy, been sidelined by high finance or have suffered two decades of bad luck.

It is because successive managers have wasted millions on inadequate players. Those still inaccurately perceived as their closest rivals (a 28-point gap to United is a loose definition of 'close’) have used their resources infinitely better. When a £35 million striker and a £20 million midfielder turn out to be appalling, the simplistic demand is for another cheque to be signed. Supporters work out the profits from sales, subtract the fees from purchases and use this an excuse for buying pap. It is desperately feeble.

The other option is another managerial change and the recycling of mitigating factors for 12 more months of rebuilding. That has not worked much, either. Kenny Dalglish is destined to get one more chance next season regardless of the debate about whether he should.

Not because it has been a fantastic season (it clearly has not), not because the league table tells fibs (it does not) and not because his signings are good enough (they certainly are not).

He will get another season because there is no appetite to write him off after one trophy winning campaign, which could still end with the FA Cup.When Rafael Benitez came seventh and Roy Hodgson flirted with a relegation scrap, you could call anyone at Liverpool and aside from a handful of sycophants, 90 per cent of employees from the board down to the secretaries did not just crave change, they lobbied for it.

The fundamental difference between then and now is the same enquiries provoke the opposite view. Dalglish is not just liked, or respected. He is adored and trusted. Liverpool were booed off on Saturday, but Dalglish’s name was still sung (although not as much as it was when he still a club ambassador).

For the club’s American owners, the challenge is brutal. Chief among them is convincing their fan base to share in a communal period of self-revelation. “Slow and steady progress,” is their mantra. The emphasis is on slow. They may also have to add the word 'agonising’. Expecting them to repair two decades of fierce cultural resistance to any view suggesting the Liverpool way is no longer the correct one will take courage and a willingness to flirt with unpopularity to do what they believe is essential and right.
“There’s a word we have been using for the last 12 months,” managing director Ian Ayre said last week. “Unity.”

That is all well and good, but here is another one the club better get used to if they do not accept, confront and deal more urgently with the problem of their current place in English football. Irrelevance.

 

[Hector Grey]

Sigh. At least there was no mention of racism.

 

[oh shit]

dalglish is sounding very mental lately

at least he can take some solace from the excellent newcastle attack that we paid for - ben arfa's goal at west brom at the weekend was a work of art

 

[dunderhead]

you're bound to sound mental if you're trying to make excuses for a team that lost against two out of form relegation contenders on the bounce. a team that spent a shitload of cash last Summer too.

league cup and the fa semi has bought him another Summer anyway. I reckon some of the new lads will surely be packing their bags over the Summer, hopefully. as much as I would like to see him go, it won't happen to downing. henderson, adam or carroll. didn't know too much about henderson before he joined so won't comment but carroll and adam have completely lost the attributes that made them so appealing. adam's ability to cross the ball (even from corners) has gone to shit. I dunno how many times hes hit the first defender from a corner/free this season. sickening considering the quality he was serving up last year. Carroll, would have loved to have seen that transfer work out but the more I see him play the worse he seems almost. Maybe being a bit harsh on henderson. Still young, one for future etc. etc. has had a few promising appearances but still. 20 fuckin' mill.

Seeing Crouch in the past few weeks gotta make you ponder that decision to sell him (well, when taking into account what Carroll gives the team at that price anyway)

get well quicker lucas, you're whats wrong. i hope.

 

[Hector Grey]

some good news: Everton in the semi means that LIverpool might actually turn up, and Charlie adam is out for the season.

Dalglish bought mid-table players (or, in the case of Adam, Carrol and Enrique, relegation players), and he has a mid table team. Meireles may not be the best out there, but he's so much better than Adam... the same goes for (controversy) Ryan Babel. Someone tell me that Babel is somehow worse than Downing? Even selling David N'Gog looks foolish now. A 20 year old with potential in Henderson versus the quality of Aqualani? Is Joke Hole really any worse than DIrk Kuyt?

When it looked like Carroll might be getting to grips with it all, a couple of assists, a couple of goals and generally becoming a pain in the hole to other defences, he gets dropped. Surely they should be working out how Carroll and Suarez work together? After investing 60 million quid in the combination, after all. Word on the street is that Carroll is a terrible trainer, which is why he doesn't play. And a little birdy told me Kenny and Bellamy had a set to, which is why Craig's been out of the team.

There's nothing to lose now. Sterling showed more in 5 minutes than Downing has all season. PLay Carroll and Suarez and see if it gels. Get a midfielder from the stiffs and give him a go. It makes no difference now if the last 9 games are won or lost. They've been talking up some of these kids, lets see it. Why not?

 

[oh shit]

I don't know - will he get another season? Does anyone give a fuck about winning the Carling Cup on penalties? Are Warrior Sports happy that their shiny new kit will not be in the Champions League, but that you can see it Thursday nights, Channel 5? After all, they're basically paying for the team now. Can the owners be looking at the same thing we're all looking at but seeing something completely different? Like value for money? Perhaps the only question for them now is how to get him to walk so they don't have to be seen pushing the King.

I too would like to see the kids go out and kick it around. Couldn't be any worse. But the trouble is that Kenny is persisting with the idea that his signings will eventually start playing like a team if he keeps sending them out. There needs to be an intervention.

 

[Hector Grey]

The worst thing for Kenny's prospects is that if they have any money to spend, they will not trust him to spend it, because he's spent the equivalent of the entire playing staff of swansea and newcastle, and they're better teams.

 

[dunderhead]

well, they had eight days rest for this game so The King can't use tiredness as an excuse...

terrible. just terrible.

(and now Reina might miss the semi final. oh dear)