Liverpool FC Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 2015/16 (*EVERYONE READ MOD POST in OP)

Benzino wrote: »

Just my 2 cents, as somebody who wants Rodgers replaced, it would be pointless to sack him now if we don't have somebody better to replace him. Until we do have a replacement, I think it'd be more damaging to sack him now.

Benzino wrote: »

Just my 2 cents, as somebody who wants Rodgers replaced, it would be pointless to sack him now if we don't have somebody better to replace him. Until we do have a replacement, I think it'd be more damaging to sack him now.

wrote:

Sometimes I find it makes more sense to write a general “state of Liverpool FC” piece before the game, especially if the team has been struggling, so that what I have to say is not affected by the noise that follows a draw or a defeat; or the sense of a corner possibly turned with a victory, which can often be just as misleading.

And I certainly don’t want to write a piece every week pondering if the manager should keep or lose his job. So most of this week’s piece was penned before the game against Norwich, which, for the record, I felt was a better performance, but where almost anything would have been an improvement on recent showings. (Briefly, I felt that the Reds were a little unlucky, but not desperately unlucky. Also, the previous substandard showings had removed the leeway for games like this, when things don’t fall your way. Brendan Rodgers needs to win games, and yet again that didn’t happen, even if this was a case of fine margins.)

A couple of days ago I decided to address a question posed to me by someone on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/BrJNi/status/644886121437077504

“honest question, Do you feel the overall quality of the squad has deteriorated over the last few years”

Obviously the “last few years” isn’t particularly precise. It seemed logical to look at the squad at the time FSG took over (pretty much exactly five years ago), and compare it with where it stands now. It made sense to look at FSG’s starting point, because players at the club before they took over, who had already left (say, Javier Mascherano), had no bearing on their handling of the club.

We can all think back to the excellent team of 2008/09, which was probably the best XI the Reds have had in the past 25 years, but that was well on its way to being broken up, not least due to Messrs (sorry, messers) Gillett and Hicks reducing spending in 2009 and 2010, and just generally cluster****ing the crap out of the club.

And just at the time when Gillett and Hicks reduced investment in the team, Man City sprung up on the back of massive spending to nail-down one of the top four spaces; essentially leaving the rest to compete for three places.

That instantly made it harder – another case of Liverpool’s awful timing when it comes to the Premier League era. Meanwhile, Rafa Benítez’s final buys had not been as effective as his early ones – so many of whom were game-changers; Roy Hodgson’s spending was literally a waste of time (all of the players were soon gone); and by the time Brendan Rodgers arrived – after the highly mixed buys of the Dalglish/Comolli era (two absolute gems in Suarez and Henderson, two costly flops in Carroll and Downing) – the club had already become annexed from the Champions League positions.

It’s obviously hard to attract the same calibre of player when you’re not in the competition. It’s not impossible, as seen with Suarez, Sturridge, Henderson and Coutinho, but it is a drawback. And even then, Suarez was slightly unwanted goods due to his biting in Holland, Coutinho was a young Inter Milan reserve, Sturridge was in essence a Chelsea reject and Henderson was merely a promising player at a club below Liverpool in football’s food chain, for whom Anfield would be an obvious step up. Even the richest English clubs are struggling to lure the world’s best players to the Premier League. Liverpool can’t even offer the Champions League.

Now vs Then

In some ways it’s harder to assess a current collective, as opposed to making comparisons to a historical squad (a difficulty I’ve written about many times), because you know what the ones from the past went on to become, and can therefore use hindsight.

For instance, I thought that David N’Gog might turn into a pretty decent back-up striker – does ‘young French lad scoring a game-killing goal in game against Manchester United’ ring any bells? – but he never did. So if I was assessing him when FSG took over – when he’d started the 2010/11 season fairly well – I’d have a different outlook on him to now. Therefore, the current squad may contain similar promising players whose futures are not clear: some may turn out to be better than expected, others may fade away.

Anyway, here goes my comparison, with a quick look at the 2008/09 squad for good measure – the last time Liverpool challenged for the title and also competed in a lot of games in Europe.


Comparison

First of all I tried to pair up players from September 2010/11 with their counterparts in the current squad, to see who was better. Now, this isn’t a simple task, given that some players don’t have natural equivalents.

Another problem is as follows: say one of the Liverpool squads had two centre-backs who were fractionally better, and two centre-backs who were miles worse – that would equal “two better, two worse” (or on balance, the same), when in truth, one squad would clearly be better than the other in that department.

With this in mind I had considered marking each player out of ten, but then that in itself can be misleading. For the sake of simplicity I stuck to like-for-like comparisons, based on position, playing style and in some cases, age and level of development.

There are just two players who appear in both squads, which goes to show the huge turnover of players in less than half a decade. Two!

Of that pair, I ranked Martin Skrtel as the same now as he was then (sometimes good, sometimes bad), and I rated Lucas as worse now, mainly due to the injuries that have slowed him down a bit – when, otherwise, I think he would be a better player now. (Lucas was awarded the Player of the Year in 2011, which was at the end of the season in question.)

Excluding youth team players who have barely featured, and kids out on loan, both squads comprise 25 players. What’s striking is that the 2010/11 squad averaged 26 years of age, whereas the current squad is just 24.4. This suggests far more scope for development in the current crop.

That said, in 2015 money, the current squad cost £354m to assemble, whereas the 2010/11 ensemble was just £244m. So the cost of the squad is currently over £100m higher, and this is not down to inflation – this is all assessed in current day prices. By the start of 2010/11 the cost of the squad had fallen considerably from the 2007/08 peak of the Benítez era, when it was similar to what it is now. (All of these squads remain well below Chelsea’s £600m collection of just under a decade ago, and the £500m squads of today’s richest clubs).

One main difference between the two squads, however, was the number, and value, of the “free” players. Liverpool have no one on the books to match Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, as they were five years ago, in terms of home-produced talent where no fee was paid. In addition to the pair who’d each go on to pass the 700-game mark, there was Jay Spearing, Martin Kelly and Jack Robinson, while Jon Flanagan is not included as he’d yet to make his debut (that came in the second half of the season).

However, when it came to free transfers, the success of Joe Cole, Fabio Aurelio (re-signed by Hodgson) and Milan Jovanovic all proved a false economy, with only Maxi Rodriguez worth the punt. Right now, Liverpool have James Milner (who has been very poor in the last three games), Adam Bogdan and Kolo Toure as Bosmans, with only Jon Flanagan as purely home-grown (Andre Wisdom and Jordon Ibe were bought as a ‘negligible-fee’ 14/15-year-olds).

Of course, now, as then, there were a whole host of promising kids, with one or two sub appearances, or a run out in a cup competition, to their name. No matter how excited we get by them, it’s unlikely that more than one or two will break through on a permanent basis, unless this turns out to be an unusually gifted group (we can but hope). In 2010/11 there were still high hopes for Daniel Pacheco, Daniel Ayala, Thomas Ince, David Amoo, Nathan Eccleston, Stephen Darby and others, and they all ultimately ended up as second-tier players at best. Jordan Ibe may be struggling right now, but he’s already ahead of all of those players.

Mano a Mano

(Which, admittedly, means ‘hand to hand’, not man vs man, but still…).

As mentioned earlier, I tried to be as fair as I could in choosing the match-ups, so that, for example, Fernando Torres was paired against Daniel Sturridge, as both represent the quick, high-goalscoring no.9.

Obviously Pepe Reina and Simon Mignolet go head-to-head, and as no-nonsense centre-backs, Jamie Carragher is compared with Dejan Lovren. Had Andy Carroll already been at the club at this stage of 2010/11, he’d be the obvious candidate for comparison with Christian Benteke, even though the later is still sufficiently different. But as the squad stood five years ago it was hard to find a like-for-like with the big Belgian.

Some of my conclusions may be controversial, but I think most should be common sense. For example, it’s harsh for Jordon Henderson to be up against Steven Gerrard, but they are both all-round central-midfielders who captain the side.

Where it gets tricky is working out how good Gerrard was in as he hit 30; his last truly world-class season was in 2008/09. Henderson is nowhere near Gerrard at his best, and stands little chance of ever getting close. But Henderson, aged 25, would be a pretty good match for Gerrard aged 30, and certainly offers greater scope for years of future performance. Henderson has the scope to further improve, whereas Gerrard was already starting to melt. Even so, Gerrard wins the vote.

I’ve perhaps been generous with Joe Gomez (18) and Divock Origi (20) when compared to their obvious counterparts, Danny Wilson (18) and David Ngog (20), not least because they new boys have played far fewer games; indeed, Origi has about 90 minutes’ football, against Ngog’s 94 games. (I know!) But Gomez already looks miles better than Wilson, and Origi scored more goals in France than Ngog, and has 15 caps for Belgium, whereas Ngog never got past the France U21 side. These are perfect for comparison: British centre-backs aged 18, and French-based strikers of vaguely similar styles, both aged 20. Both new boys win.

Another one where I felt conflicted was Ryan Babel vs Jordon Ibe. I found it astonishing that Babel played 146 games for the Reds, although he obviously started a low percentage of those. I had to rate Babel higher, based on the sheer weight of games played, but equally, I wouldn’t swap Ibe’s potential for Babel’s application. At 28, Babel is now playing for Al Ain FC (I know, I had to look them up too), having just left Kasımpaşa Spor Kulübü (I know, I had to look them up too). Hopefully Ibe will better motivated and have a greater number of brain cells – after all, just see Babel’s tweets about Rafa Benítez, and how he’d ruin Ronaldo by getting him to track back. (Real have yet to concede a goal this season, and Ronaldo has eight goals in five games. So yes, Ryan, obviously it was all Rafa’s fault.)

It made sense to compare Adam Lallana with Joe Cole, as late-20-something Englishmen with lots of skill but not much consistency and fitness, and although Cole at his West Ham and Chelsea best was the superior player – as evinced by 10 goals in 56 games for England – Lallana has already done more in his time at Liverpool (seven goals in 32 games) than Cole managed (three goals in 32 games); with both players tied when it comes to ‘bending over gasping for breath’.

A really tough call was Torres vs Sturridge, which I scored as a draw, not least because both scored 0.63 league goals per game. Five years ago Torres was already a fading force, although we weren’t quite aware just how dramatic that would be (and maybe he’d have still been successful and revered had he stayed at Liverpool). I can’t yet say how Sturridge will be after his own injury problems, but it’s hard to see him falling away like Torres did. All in all it seems fairest to score this as a draw, although I’m willing to assume that Sturridge, now 26, will be better than Torres was when aged 26-31.

Another tie was Glen Johnson vs Nathaniel Clyne, with the former a brilliant attacking right-back in his prime, and the latter currently a consummate defensive full-back. It’s easy to forget just how good Johnson was back then, particularly going forward. But Clyne has been nigh-on perfect during his brief time in a red shirt.

One controversial decision might be rating Soto Kyrgiakos over Kolo Toure (if anyone can really get wound up about 4th-choice centre-backs), although neither was much more than an ageing cover player. I have fond memories of the giant Greek, and it may be purely of the ‘cult hero’ variety. I’ve also probably been generous rating James Milner over Raul Meireles, especially after the former’s last couple of games. But Milner should prove his worth. (After the Norwich display, I’m tempted to reverse this decision.)

Another controversial one is choosing Mamadou Sakho over Daniel Agger, especially as I was such a fan of the Dane. But Sakho has the physical gifts to be something really special, while Agger proved too fragile over the years. Had Agger stayed fit enough he could have been a true great; as it was his body couldn’t cope. None of this is to say that Sakho has been injury-free, but he has more pace and power than his left-sided predecessor.

Otherwise, Liverpool have loaned out Lazar Markovic and Mario Balotelli, whose combined fees pretty much equal what was paid for Alberto Aquilani, who had just started his years-long exile back in Italy (can we recall him from loan yet?). I scored Aquilani ahead of Markovic, although hopefully the young Serbian can return from his loan with the best of his career ahead of him.

Overall Results

By my reckoning, the current squad is better than the one from five years ago, with 12 of the 25 superior to their counterparts, with nine inferior, and four of equal standing.




The good news – for the long-term picture, at least – is that the 12 current superior players average out at just 23.6 years of age, and none is older than 29; the 12 they are better than averaged out at 24.6. The huge red flag is that the nine players who were superior from 2010/11 averaged 27.7, with over half of them already in their 30s. Those players were all at their peak, but most would be ‘finished’ within three or four years.

Four of the nine ‘superior’ players from 2010/11 proved to be fairly worthless over the coming seasons – Kelly was always injured, Soto was only a short-term success, Aurelio never really played again (but I still rated him above Enrique), and Babel flitted off to waste the rest of his career.

2008/09

While I don’t think it’s entirely fair to compare where Liverpool are now with a club that was in its 5th straight season in the Champions League, it seems harmless enough if that major caveat is appreciated.

I was able to match-up 24 players in much the same way I’d managed with the 2010/11 vintage. The 2008/09 squad was £50m cheaper in 2015 money, although once the loan-outs are removed from the current crop then both weigh in at around the £300m mark. (So pretty much what Manchester City’s starting XI cost this weekend, although that was without inflation. I’ll look into City’s XI with inflation this week, and I’m guessing it will be up towards £400m.)

By my reckoning, the 2008/09 squad had 11 players who were superior, to the current squad’s nine, leaving four players of equal standing.

As with the first comparison I did, some leeway has been taken in terms of the current squad, and what I feel they can achieve. After all, we haven’t seen enough of someone like Firmino to make a strong judgement, but his pedigree suggests to me that he should be better than Albert Riera, who had an excellent few months before disappearing up his own arse. (Firmino looked sharper against Norwich, which bodes well.) I would also take Christian Benteke over Robbie Keane, not least because the latter just never looked comfortable at the club.

While the squads aren’t too far apart, it’s in the first XI where the drastic differences occur. I would select seven of the 2008/09 team as superior to their current-day counterparts, with only two of the current group better than those from seven seasons ago (a further two were tied). And even then, it may be generous to label Sakho better than Agger, and to say that Sturridge, at this point in time, is as good as Torres was in his pomp.

A quick note here: when whittling it down to 11 vs 11 there had to be a couple of reassignments. For instance, Gerrard would logically remain compared with Henderson as a player, but by this stage the former captain had been switched to a second-striker role. In 2010/11 he was back in central midfield, hence the obvious Henderson comparison with the team from five years ago.




Rafa’s team cost £18m more (TPI), but the most noticeable difference is in age: a “perfect 26.6” for Benítez’s XI (with that age more-or-less the average for league champions), whereas the current crop weigh in at an alarming 24.2 – a fraction above the youngest teams ever seen in the Premier League era, with 24 the rock-bottom age of a side over the course of the season (Paul Lambert’s Villa from a few years ago). But please note here that while Liverpool’s ‘strongest’ XI may be that young, it doesn’t follow that the average age at the end of the season will be so low, because older players will fill in. The age of the side over the first five games was 25.2, which ranks 19th out of 20 for the season (so far, only Spurs have been younger, at 25, before this weekend’s games.)




The truth is that in 2008/09 Liverpool had many proven greats, whereas now it’s more about potential.

Replacing Greats

Martin Samuel made an interesting point on The Sunday Supplement a few weeks ago, which ties in with my transfer analysis over recent years.

He correctly noted that in a short space of time, Liverpool have had to replace Luis Suarez, Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Raheem Sterling (with Daniel Sturridge absent but without a fee, although this is my addition). He noted the astronomical cost of finding players who are definitely that good, and that didn’t take into account how you could buy four players that good and still find that one or two of them flop (given that even nailed-on superstars can falter in a different milieu).

On top of this, Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano were offloaded over an 18-month period between 2009 and 2011. (Not to mention Dirk Kuyt and Pepe Reina since 2012. Reina’s powers had faded, but at his best was the kind of goalkeeper that is hard to find.)

While I think that selling big and spreading the resources across several positions can reap great benefits (see the sale of Ian Rush in 1987), there’s also my theory that you usually have to buy two players for every one sold just to get one success. (It’s a rule of thumb that isn’t as accurate over smaller samples, but the theory remains solid.)

But then bear in mind only maybe 10% of your buys will be über-successful; and Liverpool have sold/lost almost all of their über-successful signings of the past 11 years (Reina, Alonso, Mascherano, Torres, Suarez, Sterling), plus two of the best homegrown players the club has ever had (Gerrard and Carragher).

Aside from Suarez, whose arrival coincided with Torres’ departure – but was not connected to it – these weren’t top-class players bought by selling others in the list. These were all players who could feasibly have been at the club at the same time, with the exception of Carragher, whose retirement in 2013 was unavoidable. (Reina’s decline was less fathomable.

Being out of the Champions League played a fairly big role in the departures of Mascherano, Torres, Suarez and Sterling (in Suarez’s case the Reds had just qualified – but Barcelona obviously offered better long-term odds, as well as more money, a greater chance of silverware, better weather and a Latin culture). It’s telling that the sales of Alonso, Suarez and Mascherano were to Europe’s elite – indeed, all three still play for Europe’s elite – while Torres and Sterling forced moves to English football’s nouveau riche. That shows just how good they were whilst at Liverpool.

So it’s really tough to buy the kind of game-changers that were either sold (and often justifiably so, given the agitation involved) or melted into retirement.

That doesn’t mean that Liverpool have spent money wisely enough overall in the FSG era, but it shows the task at hand. Had they inherited a team settled in the top four then they’d have had a better chance of holding onto those elite players, and been a more attractive proposition to the players who ultimately ended up elsewhere. This has led to a greater number of gambles on potential, and in some cases, too much money being paid for mediocre players. But how do you attract the elite players when you are outside of the Champions League, outside the rich elite, and also outside of London, which is also a factor big players look at?

Martin Samuel noted that it takes someone like Paul Pogba to replace Gerrard like-for-like in terms of playing style and quality, and added that he’d cost £70m – out of Liverpool’s budget – and, as a fair observation, wouldn’t want to join anyway as things stand. (Of course, Gerrard wasn’t a £70m player by the end, as his effectiveness ebbed away over time.) How many centre-backs of Jamie Carragher’s quality have popped up on the market and been within Liverpool’s price range, and open to a move outside the Champions League?

And there was no way to replace Luis Suarez with anything remotely comparable; the club tried for Suarez-Lite (Alexis Sanchez), but otherwise looked for players with potential, but who, on current form, are nowhere near – just as Suarez himself wasn’t at his current level four years ago.

Perhaps it’s a bit like the way Liverpool lost so many key players in the early ‘90s, mainly due to age (and Barnes’ serious injury). I still blame Graeme Souness for his terrible buys, but Alan Hansen, Ronnie Whelan, Steve McMahon, Steve Nicol and Ian Rush were all either well past their best or, in the case of Hansen, retired, by 1991, while Ray Houghton and Peter Beardsley were also getting on (but both did well after leaving Liverpool). With John Aldridge sold and Mark Lawrenson retiring prematurely in the three years beforehand, and with Barnes’ vital pace killed by a ruptured achilles, there was far too much quality in need of replacement, even had Souness spent the money more wisely (and weirdly, he did go for some great players, including Alan Shearer and Roy Keane, but missed out on them.)

My sense remains that there is much better value overseas, which, for example, Newcastle have tapped into – but where that very same club has arguably been left with a group of transient talents, just passing through – something noted on this weekend’s The Sunday Supplement, with a bit of xenophobia thrown in. It’s not really about foreign players per se, rather the churn of players. There seems a certain soullessness to the club, but it’s not like the local lads seem particularly talented or intelligent.

West Ham have done something vaguely similar, and they look like a quick, physical side that’s going places – although interestingly, their defence (complete with holding midfielder) is fairly settled, and all are either British or from a British colony (Ogbonna is the one exception, though he was absent against Man City). Maybe this is just coincidental, and perhaps it’s the time spent at the club rather than their nationalities that are helping them to defend with understanding (or a manager who knows how to organise them). Beyond the back four, a host of players – Kouyaté, Valencia, Sakho, Amalfitano, Payet and Lanzini – have brought continental nous, and the Hammers are doing incredibly well this season with an £XI that averages just £37m.

Like Southampton last season they will almost certainly fade back into the pack, but also like Southampton last season they’ve managed to integrate quite a few new players and look like a cohesive unit from the start of the campaign; indeed, in both instances the manager was brand new. Most of these players wouldn’t necessarily look as comfortable at a higher pressure club like Liverpool, but when someone like Dmitri Payet costs less than half what was paid for Adam Lallana, and André Ayew moves to Swansea on a free, you have to ask some questions.

Optimistic

But I’m still optimistic about Liverpool’s long-term chances with the majority of the current squad.

Joe Gomez looks like one of the best 18-year-old defenders I’ve ever seen (although he obviously has rough edges), and Origi, at 20, has the potential to be something special (according to those who have worked with him), even if it will be hard to get into any kind of rhythm as a mere squad player, behind two strikers who are currently much more experienced and effective.

Jordon Ibe did enough at Derby, and in his early Liverpool games, to show that he has the talent to be a special player, but it’s currently about coming through the usual teenage inconsistency. Roy Hodgson said that Steven Gerrard raved about Ibe in the same way that he did with Raheem Sterling, but Ibe is looking like Sterling did two years ago (and indeed, Sterling looks now, under the weight of a £50m price tag).

Then you have someone like Danny Ings, who has almost no chance of being something extra-special, but who could be an effective Premier League striker like Robbie Keane or Craig Bellamy (but again, it won’t be easy as a squad player).

I rated Ings as worse than Dirk Kuyt in the comparisons – obviously – but I see some similarities (backed up by his bright display against Norwich). Kuyt was 22/23 when he really started to shine in Holland, having been a very mediocre younger player. By then Kuyt was good enough to start for Feyenoord, but Ings might have been better served moving from Burnley to a mid-table side as a starter for a year or two – although at a reduced fee, it made sense for Liverpool to take a chance.

Mamadou Sakho is only now at the age when I feel centre-backs become reliable; the same age that Carragher got the nod in the position, and, lest we forget, Liverpool’s French ‘soldier’ is still six months younger than Chris Smalling, who has only just now – at almost 26 – started to look the part.

Christian Benteke is the type of striker (big bullies) who should get better with time – in the way that Didier Drogba went from nowhere in French football to a star at the same age – but as with many of these current Liverpool players, I am projecting an improvement onto him that may not occur; the kind I projected onto Ryan Babel in 2007. Then again, there will be others who improve beyond all recognition, like Jon Flanagan in 2013/14. Look at any club in any season and there’s almost always an unlikely hero somewhere in the pack.

The same applies to Emre Can, who continues to confuse me – there is so much there, but a few observers seem to think he’s not quick enough for a Premier League midfield (although that was said about Xabi Alonso). Maybe Can is just slow off the mark, as once he gets running he can seem quick and powerful. Right now he looks potentially great in a number of positions, without yet excelling in any of them – but at just 21, and now a full Germany international, there’s no rush.

Alberto Moreno is another who, having only just turned 23, may prove to be a “grower” (in terms of effectiveness, if not height). He’s probably not tall enough – or exceptional enough to compensate – to be an effective full-back in this country, and perhaps not skilful enough to be a winger. But his pace could mark him out as a strong attacking wide-midfielder, who can get back to help cover. At the very least, he’s a purchase where the idea was heading in the right direction, unlike Paul Konchesky in 2010. (Note: he played very well indeed today. Moreno, that is, not Konchesky.)

Roberto Firmino is a wildcard, as someone with real pedigree but who has yet to look settled – possibly serving as another example of a foreign import arriving late (in his case, due to being good enough to play for Brazil in the summer) and not being match-fit when introduced into the team. In theory he has to be better than the 18-year-old Jonjo Shelvey, although the bald swan has developed rather well in the past year, in part from being a regular in a lower-pressure environment, where rank stupidity while you grow up is more easily tolerated.

Having said all this, none of the current Liverpool squad is world-class (by any definition), but some are outstanding for their age, which is not to be sniffed at. Only Philippe Coutinho – who didn’t have his shooting boots on today – looks capable of being coveted by Europe’s elite, but it seems a waste of energy to worry about losing him at this stage.

Eighteen months ago I would have said than Daniel Sturridge was also capable of being considered world-class, but having recently turned 26, and been plagued with injuries, it may be that his best days are behind him. I certainly wouldn’t write him off, but quick, injury-prone goalscorers often end up washed-up by their late 20s (we need look no further than Torres and Owen). He has more ability on the ball than most elite goalscorers, so that gives him a chance, but if Liverpool have a lot of players where precedent tells me things look bright – those ahead of the curve at a young age – I can’t ignore the potential decline of an injury-prone speedster.

Conclusion

It may be impossible to get back to the level Liverpool were at in 2008/09, not least with the emergence of City (who aren’t going away) and the financial resurgence of Arsenal making anything but brief forays into the top four unlikely. But I feel that Liverpool are in better shape than they were five years ago.

Maybe that’s not saying a lot, given that the Gillett/Hicks/Hodgson/Purslow era was the club’s nadir during my lifetime, but FSG have had to pick the club up and get it back on its feet. Rather than focusing on ageing has-beens it now puts great stock in youth and potential, which makes sense. Mistakes have been made along the way (particularly in overpaying for British players), but having tried to hang onto the big stars who have wanted out, the club seems stuck in a permanent catch-22

mikeym wrote: »

If we dont beat Villa this Saturday Ive had enough.

No excuses Brendan Rodgers!!!!!!!

Caovyn Lineah wrote: »

I'm not sure who has said that.

Caovyn Lineah wrote: »

That's the thing though. Even if we achieve 74 points and it's not enough, still people would give out. You know it ad well as I do.

Turtyturd wrote: »

Can we all just talk in questions?

Caovyn Lineah wrote: »

He strikes me as the kind of manager who would have the language perfected within a couple of months. Obviously he's not fluent but I'm sure he could get by as well as Rafa did.