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Parky

by Parky
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buzza

buzza

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Tell you what, that Bolassie would walk into any prem team at the moment... Very impressive!

Enjoying the red mass drowning in inept team displays at the moment. Actually enjoying football at the moment, if only Pardle could catch a voice nulling cold or something and it would be perfect...

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Guest firetotheworks

Guest firetotheworks

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That's what happens eventually when you make a player bigger than the club. It happened to us with Shearer in terms of quality, not effort mind. Never seen Shearer saunter about.

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Tooj

Tooj

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Did you know that eight different books have been released to commemorate the story of Liverpool’s second-placed finish in the Premier League and how close they came to re-establishing themselves as the champions last season?

 

Only one was brought out about the champions, Manchester City, and it is certainly a strange set of events that there was a full summer’s worth of reading about the club where Bill Shankly’s old prophecy about first being first, and second being nowhere, is almost as much a part of the history as the Anfield gates.

 

The first was released 10 days after the final game of the season. The next was six days later, followed by three more in June, two in July and one in August. Two have the same title, Make us Dream, not to be confused with Daring to Dream, or indeed They Dared to Dream. Another takes its name, We Go Again, from the line Steven Gerrard used after beating City, and there is something rather quaint about the one that goes by the straightforward A Surprising Season. All tell the story of Luis Suárez bludgeoning defences and the exhilaration when everything started to fall into place. And what a story it was in those days and weeks when the bus was inching through the throngs outside the stadium and Anfield, once again, felt like the place to be.

 

None, though, has a happy ending. Liverpool will be reminded of that when they return to Selhurst Park on Sunday and the scene of so much sporting desolation the last time they played Crystal Palace that when the television cameras panned away from Suárez, sobbing beneath his shirt, they picked out a Liverpool Echo reporter in the stand. He, too, was in tears.

 

A fortnight ago, the opposition was Chelsea, bringing another set of raw memories, and perhaps the most conclusive evidence yet that Gerrard has not been the same player since his ordeal the previous time they met. Brendan Rodgers was booed for making unpopular substitutions and, even with two-thirds of the season to go, it would need a particularly vivid imagination to see how Liverpool can possibly stop themselves now from reaching 25 years without a league title. Liverpool are then on course to equal, and probably surpass, Manchester United’s record from 1967 to 1993. The difference, unfortunately for them, is they have just moved on the player who offered them what Eric Cantona did for Alex Ferguson.

 

This is certainly a delicate moment for Rodgers but, even by the standards of the modern game, it seems faintly preposterous that press releases have started arriving from various bookmakers announcing that he and Manuel Pellegrini, the top two in the league last season, are moving up the betting-shop chalkboards in the running to be the next managerial casualty. Let us have some common sense here. Rodgers was named manager of the year in May. To go from that kind of position to being told his job is suddenly in danger feels like football at its kneejerking worst.

 

Yet managers, like players, go through periods of good, bad and indifferent form and here’s a statistic to make you think: did you realise that Rodgers has won 52.63% of his games at Liverpool whereas David Moyes’s win ratio with United was 52.94%?

 

At the same time, take a considered look at Liverpool’s signings in the Rodgers era. Daniel Sturridge, despite his luckless run with injuries, can be filed with Philippe Coutinho as good buys and Alberto Moreno looks an accomplished left-back. Yet it is a thin file. Adam Lallana, Emre Can and Javier Manquillo are entitled to more time but Dejan Lovren and Lazar Markovic have started their Liverpool careers in a way that makes them look dreadfully overpriced. Joe Allen is a more rounded player than many perceive but Gazzetta dello Sport probably called it right after Real Madrid had left their calling card at Anfield and the newspaper described him as “inadequate at this level”.

 

Then consider Iago Aspas, Luis Alberto, Aly Cissokho, Mamadou Sakho, Nuri Sahin, Samed Yesil, Tiago Ilori, Victor Moses and Oussama Assaidi. Kolo Touré and Simon Mignolet are too erratic for a club with Liverpool’s ambitions. And what of Mario Balotelli, Rickie Lambert and Fabio Borini, three strikers who have played 998 minutes of league football this season and not managed a single goal?

 

Hypothetical, of course, but it is tempting to wonder if there are people at Anfield who now suspect it might have been worth putting up with the hassle that comes with Suárez rather than waving through his transfer to Barcelona.

 

Yes, he frequently offered the impression that he was no more trustworthy than a rattlesnake that had removed its rattle. His offending was of the serial nature and it probably sums him up that the Premier League lost its best player in the summer and its chief executive, Richard Scudamore, still sounded glad to be shot of him.

 

Yet Suárez belongs to the small band who seem to be on first-name terms with the ball. Briefly, he did make Liverpool’s fans dare to dream. That’s why Liverpool tried to become the first team to win 9-0 away in the history of the Premier League on that wild night at Selhurst. When Suárez popped in the third goal, tucked the ball under his arm and sprinted back to the centre-circle, the crazy thing is it wasn’t utterly beyond the realms of possibility. He was a swine, but he was a brilliant swine, and the common assumption that he would have withdrawn his gifts and drifted resentfully to the edges had Liverpool pulled down the shutters on Barcelona is simply incorrect.

 

Suárez is the guy whose foot was broken, growing up in Montevideo, when a car ran over him but carried on playing until the plaster cast was completely worn away at the heel. “I know what you are like, I know how you live,” Rodgers told him after that dalliance with Arsenal the previous summer. Sure, Suárez was aggrieved and for a couple of months he and Rodgers barely exchanged a word, but he still gave absolutely everything on the pitch. As long as he had kept doing that, Liverpool would have been authentic challengers. The size of his grudge would have been irrelevant.

 

Instead, Balotelli’s first few months at Anfield can probably be summed up by a moment of tragicomedy before the Chelsea game when his team-mates were going through the pre-match hugging and comradeship routine and he was out by the wing, staring into the middle-distance, apparently oblivious to what was going on in the centre circle. Sturridge’s injury record makes it legitimate to wonder if he will always be undermined by physical shortcomings and, as for Gerrard, it is starting to feel as if Liverpool’s captain might have been jarred more than we know by the way everything unravelled last season. One thing Gerrard does not lack is competitive courage. He can, however, be tremendously hard on himself and his story is so entwined with Liverpool’s it is virtually impossible to think he has got it out of his system.

 

Gerrard does not deserve trial by Opta but the number-crunchers can show you he has made fewer tackles, goals, interceptions and runs this season. One statistic in particular leaps out. Gerrard regularly covered 11km in matches last season. This season, he has not run that far once. He is 35 on his next birthday, and age catches up with everyone in the end, especially when there are other statistics that show the Premier League is 20% faster now than in 2007.

 

Liverpool have lost their control of matches and Rodgers has started talking up performances that, plainly, have not merited such acclaim. Liverpool, apparently, were desperately unfortunate to lose to Madrid at the Bernabéu (Liverpool did not manage a shot until 10 minutes into the second half). Rodgers took a similar line against Chelsea and the deception was obvious again. It is an old managerial trick, designed to manipulate the headlines, and it is as see-through as it is unoriginal.

 

Liverpool have lost all their forward momentum. Southampton, having banked two-thirds of the Suárez money for Lallana, Lovren and Lambert, must be sniggering behind their hands as they peer down the table from second place. Chelsea have become a speck in the distance and Liverpool are approaching a milestone they would never have thought possible when Alan Hansen lifted the trophy in 1990. From here, it is threatening to be an awfully long way back.

 

Moussi’s game of faith, hope and charity

 

It has been another strange week inside football’s bubble courtesy of Dave Whelan transporting us into an old episode of Mind Your Language, another round of charm school from Fifa, the latest on Ched Evans and an exchange of texts between the Football Association and England’s official band during the Scotland friendly to ask if they could be good enough to back off accompanying anti-IRA tunes.

 

The trumpeters and drummers have since explained that they did not hear all those people singing around them for several minutes on end. And who are we to doubt them?

 

A nod of appreciation to Whelan, too, for pointing out that he often holidays in Barbados and has lots of Jewish and Chinese friends, so there is absolutely no way all that stuff he said was how he meant it or, failing that, the only other possible explanation was that a journalist with enough professional awards to fill an aircraft hangar had misquoted him. Which is a relief, because there was a moment back there when Wigan Athletic’s chairman seemed to think PR stood for Prat and Relic.

 

As for Evans, he has discovered that, contrary to the song adopted by some Sheffield United fans, he cannot do what he wants. It doesn’t quite explain why Marlon King, with sexual assault among his extensive previous convictions, was playing at Bramall Lane last season without any real fuss. But football has never bothered itself with consistency and Evans will have to wait to get hooked up at another club. Someone, somewhere, will decide he deserves another chance once he is fit again and, most importantly, ready to start banging them in again. Wigan, quite possibly.

 

Enough of that, though, and take a moment to consider a story that has not had anything like the coverage it probably deserves. Step forward Guy Moussi, out of the game since he was released by Nottingham Forest at the end of last season, but now back in the Championship with Birmingham City. Moussi signed his two-month contract only after specifying that he doesn’t want a penny for himself and all of his wages are split between four charities – the club’s disabled supporters’ organisation, Stop Ebola, his church in Paris and the Soma mining disaster fund in Turkey.

 

Moussi is not single-handedly going to take the usual suspects off the back pages (Malky Mackay, I hear, will be very fortunate if more revelations about his time at Cardiff don’t surface over the coming months). But I hope it doesn’t sound terribly pious to say Moussi has reminded us that football is not the cesspit it is sometimes made out. If we had a Man of the Week award, it is his.

 

And, football being the industry it is, let us hope he is not experiencing what Niall Quinn went through, back in 2002, when he started the modern trend of donating testimonial earnings to charity.

 

“Embarrassing and awkward,” Quinn recalls of the publicity. “When I close my eyes, all I can see are lads in dressing rooms up and down the country pointing to their newspapers and them saying what I’d say myself: ‘Who does that twat think he is?’”

 

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Guest firetotheworks

Guest firetotheworks

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He did, but only when he was absolutely physically spent in the latter stages of games in his last 3 seasons. Gerrard does it all the time now.

 

Aye exactly, it was never like Shearer was slacking. As you say, he was just spent. Gerrard just struts about from the get-go.

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Guest n4e

Guest n4e

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THE BOOK OF THE GOLDEN SKY 2

 

Clouded Horizons with Silver Linings

 

Now these are the names of the children of Liverpool, which came into the Club of Liverpool from different cultures and sources; every man and his household came to the God-King Brendan for supplication. Glen, Martin, and Dejan, 3 Mamadou, Jose, and Alberto, Javi, Jon, and Kolo, Kevin, Lloyd, Stewart and Jamie. And the children of Liverpool were talented, and waxed exceedingly mightily, and were ardent Defenders of the Club.

 

And the God-King Brendan said unto his children, Behold, for I shall raise a Prophet high, and he shall detail how you shall train. And so PhaseOfPlay was raised among the children of Liverpool, and he informed them that their methods would not be block methods but would instead be immersive and would be more easily transferable to real war.

 

So did the God-King Brendan dealt wisely with them.

 

And in 2012/2013/2014, the prophecy bore visible fruit as Glen, Martin, Mamadou, Stewart, Kolo, Jamie, and Jon formed the spine of a machine which smote its enemies relentlessly. It came therefore to pass that the Club of Liverpool was more and mightier than the sum of its parts, the talented spine seamlessly integrating to form a solid backbone of a charge against the world's infidels.

 

And yet, as with all things, it was inevitable that key components of the spine would decay, wither, and be left behind.  And so Jamie rode off into the sunset, and the God-King Brendan sent Stewart (despite the sorrowful pleadings of the Adherents) on a suicide mission to the faraway Western Land of Pig-Meat to enlighten to the savages there.

 

Therefore the God-King Brendan spake unto the Children of Liverpool, and said thusly The Club of Liverpool doth requires replacements for these talented players, and henceforth Javi, Alberto, and Dejan (who are equally as talented as Jamie and Stewart) will replace them and form the spine for its crusades in 2014/2015.

 

And the God-King Brendan spake unto them at the time, saying, Behold, I have set the objectives before you: go in and supplement Glen and Martin, to integrate seamlessly into the existing spine.  For I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Thenceforth began the period of acclimatisation for Dejan, Javi and Alberto.

 

And as with all new beginnings, the path to glory is fraught with trials and perils. Behold, a storm now brews over the Club of Liverpool, and the Adherents have began to question the shelter provided by FSG / the God-King Brendan / and the Transfer Committee.

 

Yet, the City of Liverpool is great. Among all other things, the Adherents resident in Liverpool know that if one faints in the day of adversity, one's strength is small.  They know instinctively that above the dark, gloomy clouds, the sky is still golden. And the clouds cannot disguise or suppress the wonderful talents that the God-King Brendan has so correctly identified.

 

And so the Club of Liverpool shall support its children Glen, Martin, Dejan and Alberto, and in time the clouds will part to reveal the golden sky that has, forsooth, always been there.

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Ketsbaia

Ketsbaia

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I thought Rodgers was the real deal, like, but he's spent the Suarez money terribly and not altered their style.

 

He overachieved with those players last season. Take away Suarez, Sturridge and Sterling, they're full of dross. At least when they couldn't defend last season, Suarez would go ballistic and score a hat-trick.

 

The Sturridge injury is unlucky but Balotelli was always going to be an abysmal signing. So maybe Brenda's time really is ending. It's hilarious.

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Guest firetotheworks

Guest firetotheworks

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Their football last season and the season before was very good to watch tbf, I don't think the style is wrong, it doesn't even seem like they play that way anymore, they're so sloppy in possession.

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The College Dropout

The College Dropout

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Gerrard is spent too like. He would love nothing more than to run around like a headless chicken but he can't. He never bothered to learn any positional discipline in his younger days so he just ambles about aimlessly.

 

You can't spend 90% of your career as a swashbuckling midfielder / borderline attacker then become Xabi Alonso in a season.. Alonso - who has never been the most mobile midfielder is always looking to plug gaps off the ball, anticipate danger etc. Scholes couldn't tackle but played a majority of his career in a flat 2 man midfield. He had discipline.

 

Rodgers likes to think he is too smart. He needs to go back to basics. Drop Gerrard. Spend a majority of the week focus on defence and start getting clean sheets. Then they need to work on the tempo with the ball. Instead they'll fanny around with difficult formations, not playing or defending well.

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Disco

Disco

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Their football last season and the season before was very good to watch tbf, I don't think the style is wrong, it doesn't even seem like they play that way anymore, they're so sloppy in possession.

 

They look a totally different to last season like. Flying out the traps / high pressing / quick football, there is none of that now. They've basically reverted in to the worst of what Swansea were but with less defensive solidity.

 

Amazing that given he knew Suarez was off he wasn't working day in and day out to improve the defence so that they didn't miss his goals coupled with them being shite defensively last season too. Absolutely absurd, if anything the defence has got worse.

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AlanSkÃrare

AlanSkÃrare

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Really surprised by this. Thought they looked a team who had bought into a very enthusiastic philosophy. It seemingly didn't matter if Suarez was out when Sturridge was scoring and vice versa.

 

But they thrived off a team full of bravery and attacking intent - everyone bar the CB's joined in. Now they look confused and full of fear. Defence is a shambles.

 

Still think Rodgers is a brilliant manager with all the right ideas. Hope he's given time or a chance to resurrect his reputation elsewhere. British football needs people like him in contrast to the dinosaurs that are usually given the jobs.

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