Liverpool FC Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 12/13

Chucky the tree wrote: »

Gerrard again? Are we expecting him to play every game this season?

Dont think he would drop him for a game like Spurs. Plenty of teams coming up that he could rest him in over this one.

Kerrigooney wrote: »

No Sahin again either. If he did join us over Arsenal because he was told he'd get first team football he must be getting a bit pissed off.

I don't think he deserves to start going on what we've seen so far.

Yes..."out of position" blah blah blah....don't care. Not good enough.

His last couple of interviews for German tv have had him gushing about the club, and retelling the story of being at the 2005 CL final.

He went into a bit of detail about how he has never played in the role that Rodgers uses him in, and that the traditional number 8 role is his best, but that he will do his best wherever he is put. Talked a bit about his fitness and settling in as well.

He does come across as quite an intelligent bloke, and seems to have a fair bit of gra for the club's history.


As for not deserving a start based on his form to date, well you do have a point there, but then again if we were to take form over the season so far as a reason to drop players, then the likes of Gerrard, Shelvey, Enrique (until of late), and a few others would not be getting within an ass' roar of the first team either.


Question though, how do you expect Sahin to adapt to the Premier league and also to get match fit without regular games? He has really only had one run where he had a few starts in a row and that three of four game run saw him get 3 goals and 3 or 4 assists.There are other players in the squad, and I am not thinking of Gerrard this time, who have played in England their whole career and somehow get excuses made over their inability to perfrom well. Excuses like they are young or settling. Surely those same excuses should be just as applicable for a youngish player playing in the country for the first time?


Personally I think that Rodgers should either play Sahin in his best position or just send him back, because using him out of position every now and then is no good to the team and no good to the player as he cannot get up to speed with the league or match fitness.


I think Rodgers' use of both Gerrard and Sahin has been poor, and that he is playing the two players in positions where neither can give the best of their abilities to the team.




As an aside, and to the other german speakers on here (Nuri, Oatsey etc), his german is quite interesting on the ear in terms of syntax and morphology making it somehow sound less Northern in terms of dialect than it should for a guy who was born in the North west and who grew up there. I am wondering if his fluency in other languages has taken the Sauerland twang from his accent. I know my own accent has been bastardized over the years through speaking German, Japanese, Flemish etc has left me with a strong germanic twang coming through my scouse accent (Think Didi's accent in reverse) but it is something that I tend not to notice save for when someone in the family mentions it (generally takes someone on my grandfather's side, Danish, to comment on it), but listening to Sahin speaking in German really piqued my curiousity and when I youtubed some older interviews of his(pre his time in Holland) the difference in his accent when speaking German is pretty interesting as his natural german (and he is a native speaker) now sounds like it is of a different dialect. I would have thought that he would have developed a twang from one of the other languages he speaks, but it sounds like his actual german accent has switched from a Northern dialect (North West to be more accurate) to a much more Southern dialect.

RodgersLFC wrote: »

Sahin hasnt shown even half of what hes capable of yet. He's a superb midfield player when playing at his best. Any fans of the Bundesliga will tell you that.

The concern is, that it'll take most of this season for him to regain full fitness and once he does, he'll be off back to Madrid. Would love to keep him past this season.

I know how good he is, that is why it is so frustrating to see him being played as more or less a standard AM or traditional number 10. He simply is not effective in that role. If we were playing him in his best position and he only managed to regain 75% of his form in that slot, then we would still have an amazing player on our hands. But by playing him in an AM role we are making a very good player look very poor, and the player himself will not do anything for the team in that advanced role, so everyone loses.

We should keep Sahin in the wrong position - Real will think he's shíte and sell him to us on the cheap, then next year we play him in his best position after he gets his fitness back after a full blown year (the usual turnaround time for a professional athlete it would seem) and he'll be class for us.

It's all about the long term plan here guys

Kess73 wrote: »

They are totally different players in terms of style though, and who would play in different positions. Putting Sahin in the AM role would have been like putting Alonso in an AM role and expecting him to become some kind of attacking force.

Where did he play in Germany? Are you saying that Sahin is more suited to a sweeping DM role (aka the Lucas role) or the midfield metronome / recycling ball playing role (aka the Allen role). It looks to me like he isn't as good as Lucas or Allen in either of these roles. If he was, there's no way Rodgers would be playing Gerrard there ahead of him.

From what I've seen, Sahin has an eye for a pass, isn't afraid to take responsibility, and has an eye for goal. I'd try him as an AM to see if he has what it takes.

However, I'm by no means a Sahin expert so am open to correction on that!

rarnes1 wrote: »

Even switching Gerrard and Sahin currently would work better.

When Lucas comes back, obviously things can be reorganised properly.

Switching Gerrard and Sahin looks the most obvious thing in the world right now. It puts Gerrard into the advanced position where his superior attacking qualities can benefit the team rather than playing him 30 or 40 yards deeper than that, and it puts Sahin back alongside Allen where Sahin can act as the playmaker type between Allen and Gerrard.

It really is not difficult to see that Gerrard has always been better in attacking roles than deeper ones, and likewise it is not difficult to look atSahin's career to date and see where he has been at his best.

For some reason Rodgers just plays them in the other's best position, and the end result so far is that Sahin looks average to poor, and Gerrard simply is not getting to be the goal threat that he could easily be.

PRAF wrote: »

Where did he play in Germany? Are you saying that Sahin is more suited to a sweeping DM role (aka the Lucas role) or the midfield metronome / recycling ball playing role (aka the Allen role). It looks to me like he isn't as good as Lucas or Allen in either of these roles. If he was, there's no way Rodgers would be playing Gerrard there ahead of him.

From what I've seen, Sahin has an eye for a pass, isn't afraid to take responsibility, and has an eye for goal. I'd try him as an AM to see if he has what it takes.

However, I'm by no means a Sahin expert so am open to correction on that!

No he most certainly would not be a sweeping DM. He would be closer to the metronome role but with playmaking ability and the ability to join attacking play from the CM slot. For Dortmund he was pretty much the player that linked the defence (and DM) to the attackers (but still had an AM in the team playing further up than him).



If I had to make a comparison with current players, He kinda played with a mix of the styles of Alonso and Modric (albeit not at their best levels)

Kess73 wrote: »

No he most certainly would not be a sweeping DM. He would be closer to the metronome role but with playmaking ability and the ability to join attacking play from the CM slot. For Dortmund he was pretty much the player that linked the defence (and DM) to the attackers (but still had an AM in the team playing further up than him).



If I had to make a comparison with current players, He kinda played with a mix of the styles of Alonso and Modric (albeit not at their best levels)

So with everyone available, should Sahin be placed beside Lucas in team formation and jaunting upfield when the occasion arises?

Who was his midfield partner for Dortmund??

Kess73 wrote: »

Bender was the DM, and Gotze would have been the AM during Sahin's last season. Kagawa would also have been in the AM role