Liverpool FC Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 2014 - Mod Note in OP, 1/09

02-10-2014 10:51AM

Fescue wrote: »

Well then is it worthwhile adjusting the team to get the most from him?

For instance returning to the diamond despite the defensive frailty of it.

I'd imagine it's only right to see him and Sturridge together for a good few games.

If Sturridge is out again the formation would probably need adjusting

Fescue · 02-10-2014 10:56AM

rarnes1 wrote: »

I'd imagine it's only right to see him and Sturridge together for a good few games.

If Sturridge is out again the formation would probably need adjusting

I think a lot of his shortcomings will be ignored if he starts scoring goals. If he can't contribute goals or assists, then he is of little use to anyone.

With Origi arriving next year, he could find himself well down the pecking order.

Agent Coulson · 02-10-2014 10:57AM

Ballotelli needs to play with someone beside him.

He likes to come deep to collect the ball and turn and run at defenders if he doesn't have someone up with him to drag players away he is running into a road block.

Harry Palmr · 02-10-2014 10:57AM

rarnes1 wrote: »

Nobody is turning against Rodgers. It's normal to question the manager after a run of poor games. 1 good performance in 10 isn't good enough.

Sticking the head in the sand and blindly hoping things will get better is ridiculous.

Why mention Arsenal? We are 9 points off Chelsea after 6 games! 7 off Southampton.

Agree with you on Can, calling him a baffling transfer when's he's out injured having not played for us is hilarious.

Don't agree on Balotelli.

4th place. That's the presumed minimum isn't it?

Jordon Ibe is in the England U20s squad to play a 4 nation tournie in Heerenveen.

England will play Germany on Thursday, October 9, Holland on Saturday, October 11, and Turkey on Monday, October 13.

Balo will be gone in January if things don't knit together with Sturridge.

and finally - I look forward to 8-10s first hand account of the game.

Kimbot · 02-10-2014 10:59AM

Balotelli last night showed an improvement but the main thing i noticed was that when he got the ball and ran forward more often than not there was nobody beside or ahead of him.

Sir Gallagher · 02-10-2014 10:59AM

joe123 wrote: »

Its actually laughable how quick some are to turn on Rodgers. The man that brought us to the cusp of a Premier League for the first time in years.

Absolutely laughable. I was at Anfield for the Everton game and the good news is that support is very much behind Rodgers which is a good thing. Reading some of the absolute tripe from the usual critics on here you'd swear hes about to get the sack.

We are badly missing Sturridge and I am convinced that once he is back, Balotelli will come into his own. It is clear Balotelli needs a strike partner.

Allen is a big miss for setting the tempo which allows Henderson push further forward. Cannot understand the post calling Can one of the most baffling transfers of the summer either. He has the potential to be one of those powerful midfielders that we so badly lack.

If Rodgers deserves anything after last season its time. We are only 3 points off Arsenal.

I said it about Can.

When you look at our DM and CM options who have we got, a 34 year old, a passenger and a player who's never fit for purpose. That's why a 20 year old Can is a baffling purchase to me. Dont get me wrong, he could turn out to be a good player in a few years, but he's still in the "potential" bracket when we needed an established player.

Fescue · 02-10-2014 11:04AM

Sir Gallagher wrote: »

I said it about Can.

When you look at our DM and CM options who have we got, a 34 year old, a passenger and a player who's never fit for purpose. That's why a 20 year old Can is a baffling purchase to me. Dont get me wrong, he could turn out to be a good player in a few years, but he's still in the "potential" bracket when we needed an established player.

As limited as he is, I would play Lucas in that role ahead of Gerrard.

Sir Gallagher · 02-10-2014 11:08AM

Fescue wrote: »

As limited as he is, I would play Lucas in that role ahead of Gerrard.

Not me, that'd mean double the the amount of set pieces coming into our box. We are truly fcked in DM at the moment.

Gbear · 02-10-2014 11:32AM

Sir Gallagher wrote: »

I said it about Can.

When you look at our DM and CM options who have we got, a 34 year old, a passenger and a player who's never fit for purpose. That's why a 20 year old Can is a baffling purchase to me. Dont get me wrong, he could turn out to be a good player in a few years, but he's still in the "potential" bracket when we needed an established player.

There was clearly room for both though.

We could easily fit another top quality DM in the squad if Gerrard was playing the number of games he should be.

rarnes1 wrote: »

Is Ballotelli suited to quick interchangeable football, ie the way Rodgers wants his forwards to play? Absolutely not

Maybe not as a lone striker, but his ability in tight spaces, hold up play and all round technical ability would suggest that he should have no problem with it.

He needs others in the box when he plays the game outside it and there's nothing wrong with that per se. What's wrong is how we're trying to integrate that into the rest of the team.

NukaCola · 02-10-2014 11:40AM

Not writing off Mario, but what he's getting praised/defended for is the absolute basics lets be honest. He hasn't showed anything to get excited about really and thats probably not all down to him.

What is apparent though is if BR wants to play fast interchange of passing and movement up top similar to last season he is not the man to fit in. He gets on the ball and holds it for far too long and slows the attack, and doesn't press high up effectively. Wether he can adapt or not is anyones guess.

Also, i am a big fan of BR and am very confident he can tweak things to get the best out of the team but the defence is a huge blind spot for him and I'm not sure if he is humble enough to recognise this as a failing and get in help, which is clearly needed and way overdue at this stage. This is not a panicked opinion just an overhang from last season. I really thought the popular and obvious opinion was "We wont score as many goals but we can offset some of that by tightening up the back". If that was indeed the idea then he hasn't solved the problem.

Luckycharms_74 · 02-10-2014 11:42AM

BR & Gerrard post match interview. Gerrard pretty scathing of the performance.

Agent Coulson · 02-10-2014 11:45AM

Brendan is such...

Harry Palmr · 02-10-2014 11:47AM

So Rodgers sees the problem, fine now do something about it.

After the match someone on the RTE panel suggested Skrtel should be tasked with one thing only at a set piece - heading the ball and nothing else.

gafferino · 02-10-2014 11:48AM

Luckycharms_74 wrote: »

BR & Gerrard post match interview. Gerrard pretty scathing of the performance.

I am glad to see the two of them having a go. A rocket needs to be put up these guys as well as the tactical side of things. Sometimes you have to make it happen.

Will be interested to see what he says at his presser at 2pm today.

LuckyLloyd · 02-10-2014 11:49AM

joe123 wrote: »

Its actually laughable how quick some are to turn on Rodgers. The man that brought us to the cusp of a Premier League for the first time in years.

Absolutely laughable. I was at Anfield for the Everton game and the good news is that support is very much behind Rodgers which is a good thing. Reading some of the absolute tripe from the usual critics on here you'd swear hes about to get the sack.

We are badly missing Sturridge and I am convinced that once he is back, Balotelli will come into his own. It is clear Balotelli needs a strike partner.

Allen is a big miss for setting the tempo which allows Henderson push further forward. Cannot understand the post calling Can one of the most baffling transfers of the summer either. He has the potential to be one of those powerful midfielders that we so badly lack.

If Rodgers deserves anything after last season its time. We are only 3 points off Arsenal.

One decent performance in 10 games. If that happens again over the next 10 games we're going to have an issue.

I know you live in a fantasy world where some of us are desperately waiting to sharpen our knives and spring out from behind a rock. However, that isn't actually the case. I have every intention of being patient and understand that there are injuries but we've been utterly hapless for a stretch of games and I'm not seeing signs of improvement.

Some of us are just worried. I don't think we can be blamed for that tbh.

Dickerty · 02-10-2014 11:54AM

I blame the head tennis. And Pascoe's knees.

spiritcrusher · 02-10-2014 12:00PM

In the long term a poor run of games and some deserved criticism could be the making of Rodgers. It's possible that he came into this season overly confident and now is being brought crashing back to reality. He now needs to seriously re-evaluate some players, his tactics and possibly his own coaching limitations. I'm starting to feel this season may be a bit of a write-off but in the long run it may be no harm to put the shit up Rodgers a bit.

NukaCola · 02-10-2014 12:02PM

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

One decent performance in 10 games

Some of us are just worried. I don't think we can be blamed for that tbh.

Absolutely. However there are some people who appear to be a lot more panicked and negative than they should be. Balotelli was called a disease on here last night for example. SG is past it. BR is clueless. All these are classic OTT.

1 good performance out of 10 is also quite harsh. We've played 9 games this season for a start.

Against Southampton we had some good spells, standard first game back get points on the board display. Excellent versus Spurs. We deserved more from the Everton game certainly.

I accept that it hasn't been good enough but this is the kind of language (1 out of 10) that really irks me. Needlessly OTT.

Dickerty · 02-10-2014 12:03PM

spiritcrusher wrote: »

In the long term a poor run of games and some deserved criticism could be the making of Rodgers. It's possible that he came into this season overly confident and now is being brought crashing back to reality. He now needs to seriously re-evaluate some players, his tactics and possibly his own coaching limitations. I'm starting to feel this season may be a bit of a write-off but in the long run it may be no harm to put the shit up Rodgers a bit.

Yep, maybe he needs more that Pascoe and Marsh, neither has anywhere near his top-level experience at coaching.
Also puts pressure on us to buy in Jan, which may not be a bad thing...

02-10-2014 12:05PM

I know a cure for Ballotellis disease.

Goals!

x43r0 · 02-10-2014 12:12PM

Sturridge was spared anyway

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29460356

02-10-2014 12:16PM

x43r0 wrote: »

Sturridge was spared anyway

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29460356

Thank fcuk for that!

Agent Coulson · 02-10-2014 12:21PM

Lambert makes the squad with maybe 30 minutes of football this season.

Just shows how light England are up front.

Sir Gallagher · 02-10-2014 12:22PM

Gbear wrote: »

There was clearly room for both though.

We could easily fit another top quality DM in the squad if Gerrard was playing the number of games he should be.

Yeah i agree, we should have bought both and got rid of Lucas. Seems to me as the Can purchase was a punt and was made to keep up the numbers. When the emphasis should have been on getting a more established player in there. It's quite clear that Rodgers doesn't rate Lucas so why not replace him during the summer.

LuckyLloyd · 02-10-2014 12:26PM

NukaCola wrote: »

Absolutely. However there are some people who appear to be a lot more panicked and negative than they should be. Balotelli was called a disease on here last night for example. SG is past it. BR is clueless. All these are classic OTT.

1 good performance out of 10 is also quite harsh. We've played 9 games this season for a start.

Against Southampton we had some good spells, standard first game back get points on the board display. Excellent versus Spurs. We deserved more from the Everton game certainly.

I accept that it hasn't been good enough but this is the kind of language (1 out of 10) that really irks me. Needlessly OTT.

We were undeserving of the 3 points against Southampton and we conceded a bunch of chances to Spurs that they really should have taken before we scored and kicked into gear during the second half.

You're reaching in the above, which irks me. And even if you were correct, and it was actually a case that we'd been hapless in 66% of our games it would still be a cause for concern.

NukaCola · 02-10-2014 12:43PM

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

You're reaching in the above, which irks me. And even if you were correct, and it was actually a case that we'd been hapless in 66% of our games it would still be a cause for concern.

I'm not disagreeing with you. But one good performance out of 10 isn't correct, or even possible.

Utopia Parkway · 02-10-2014 12:46PM

Looks like no Sturridge again this weekend. Rodgers has told Hodgson he doesn't expect him to play.

Unless Rodgers is just trying to get Hodgson off his case re: Sturridge and he will actually end up playing.

tok9 · 02-10-2014 12:47PM

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

We were undeserving of the 3 points against Southampton and we conceded a bunch of chances to Spurs that they really should have taken before we scored and kicked into gear during the second half.

You should rewatch the highlights/match. Spurs only had 1 excellent chance in the entire game (possibly another decent one) and we were 1 up at that stage.

This also really shows how much you are trying to prove your point too. If you argue that spurs could have easily got themselves a goal or 2 then you would also be able to argue that we should have scored a goal or 2 when Balotelli had some excellent chances.

02-10-2014 12:47PM

NukaCola wrote: »

I'm not disagreeing with you. But one good performance out of 10 isn't correct, or even possible.

You can play average or poor and still pick up points.

Spurs is the only game I've seen where we actually looked like a decent team tbh

SlickRic · 02-10-2014 12:48PM

the one main problem with Balotelli is that he doesn't get into the box enough.

there was a moment last night where Sterling won the ball near the penalty area, he was driving at the defence, and Balotelli just stood centrally waiting for a 3 yard square pass.

Sterling then seemed to have a go at him for not making space with a forward run.

what Sturridge will create is another player willing to run in behind other than Sterling. it will make a world of difference.

i think I remember Rodgers saying after Balotelli's goal against Ludogorets that he was trying to get Mario in the box more. we need more of that from him.

all that being said, if we could defend we'd have got out of there with a 0-0. it's what the best teams do. they get a result even when they're playing shíte. we can't do that because the defensive system is so fragile.

Liverpool FC Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 2014 - Mod Note in OP, 1/09

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