Neil is joined by Ben Johnno and John Gibbo as they discuss another embarrassment of a performance against Stoke before turning the focus on QPR on Sunday.
Music this week from The Protocols
Direct link to CITYTALK: STOKED
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How do I download that song? It was great!
Glad you liked it.
Song is fresh from the studio. I think the plan is to release it in Feb
Best following them at
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Protocols/129595017074143
To stay in touch
An interesting podcast, notable for the way you all avoided calling BR a dolt while pointing out all of his errors. Let me remind you that he took a side which finished 7th and whose manager was sacked because he didn’t finish 4th. He ‘strengthened’ it, jettisoned all of it’s strikers bar one (okay, Maxi wanted out and so did Bellamy, but Dirk could have been coaxed – as probably could Maxi; Carroll wasn’t given any choice) and dragged it up to 12th after 30 matches in charge, losing to teams that the ‘nextgen squad’ would have tested.
This is not a club to ‘learn your trade’. A manager of an EPL team shouldn’t need the weaknesses of his team selection pointed out to him. New strikers wouldn’t have stopped Villa and Stoke planting 3 goals on us. As you suggested, he didn’t know what to do about Jones or Walters, just as he ‘didn’r see Villa’s goals coming’.
I have to bow to your collective wisdom, but my embedded view is that our manager is out of his depth and drowning not waving. I am not a ‘Kenny should have been given more time’ or an ‘IRWT’ member, I am just a football fan watching a team I have followed since 1953 being managed by a man whose only credentials are an adulatory folder he wrote himself.
It’s time to get out your A4 placard ROGERS OUT then Kevin
I’m not a placard carrier. But I am also not a ‘my manager right or wrong’ loyalist. Particularly when he is wrong and can’t admit it.
Joe Cole on the bench…Coates reportedly off on loan when any decent strategist would have selected him against Stoke. This man is not LFC quality: c’est facile, n’est-ce pas…Let him go and learn his trade elsewhere, and stop pumping out embarrassing, self-satisfied homilies. Work in progress my arse; it’s called football. You win, lose or draw. That’s all. Right now I wouldn’t give a toss if we won as ugly as you like, just do it. Lovely football gets a bad wrap when you’re not competitive.
So lets get Tony Pulis in then. If your not actually interested in watching football then Tony is your man. Stoke have a fabulous atmosphere, they obviously enjoy it, & you have to admit that route one is quit effective. But you know, even if we were to get Tony in it would take him a season at least to develop the team as he would like it and as you well know after 5 months we would have all these forums calling for his head because it is instant enough for them.
Football is a results business. So far BR has had a very poor season and I honestly can’t see any progress. In fact we have gotten worse. He talks a great game and he is very good at cosying up to fans like you, but there hasnt been anything tangible to point at to argue that he, or his plan, is working. The only way he can win over us more intelligent fans (who have not YET called for his head) is by winning games. I’m not asking for 5-0 wins over our big rivals. Just wins over teams like Villa, etc. As for touting this “work in progress’ mantra….show me the progress?! You cant , coz there aint any. An up and coming genius should be able to show us something by now. My patience is wearing thin with BR. I’ll reserve judgement for a few more games, but I wanna end on this: there is NO WAY FSG will give him 3 years if he does not show progress. Oh, and by the way what fantastic football have you been watching? You take you ipad to the game or something? I dont recall LFC of the 70s and 80s passing the ball around in our own half. We used to play football in their half of the pitch and score!
Three points at QPR. If they’d torn Villa a new one LIKE EVERY OTHER TEAM IN THE LEAGUE they’re in 5th place going into the new year. The inconsistency does my head in.
It’d be great if all our opposition rolled over like that for us. As Redknapp said, we should be in the top four with the players we have. A welcome three points though. I hope BR leaves the snakes and ladders game at home in the new year.
What’s this telling you Steve? Liverpool win away in the league, 3 goals, clean sheet and you’re still not happy. I think your veiled cynicism is telling us something about how you feel. You want this to fail.
Lets face it – we screwed up – and that probably includes the manager. The hysterical, fickle and intransigent fans will pounce, but thats just par for the course.
We used to be ‘in transition’, well in many ways we still are. But the point is we have seen enough of the performance of the manager and the players to know that we can do better. We have coped with physicality, we have done the ‘in game management’ thing, we have bettered the best sides in the league etc etc – in fact its this competence that underlines the incompetence of our performance at Stoke.
‘In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king’. The QPR result, as nice as it was to see, only papers over the cracks. If you can’t see it, then you really are blind. Criticising those of us who can see what is really happening sheds light on how you really feel: you like a manager who blows smoke up you, and then are too uncomfortable to ask difficult questions.
‘Work in progress’, show me the progress so far? There isn’t any. I’m not going to pretend I can see progress because we beat the worst team in the league. By the way passing the ball around at the back for the sake of it, and almost always giving away possession, is not progress. LFC of the 70s and 80s always played football in the opposition’s half – NOT in our half.
BR thinks he has 3 seasons. FSG will want to see some of this progress by the end of the season – they’re a business, they’re not fans. I don’t think he has the time he thinks he has.
Any way, happy new year, hope for the best – but tell it like it is !
Josek,
Hate to mention this but Mr Moyes came from the Championship, and hit the ground running with the Bitters. Sure there have been bumps along the way, but you have to agree , they are going forward while we are going backwards
Comments about the 70s and 80’s is why other teams fans take the piss out of us. They say we’re always living in the past and comments like that don’t help. We are no where near as good as we were back then, so whats the point is using them as a comparrison. Hell we aren’t even close to where we were in 2009.
I’m willing to give BR time, but will admit he should be doing much better with the team we have. Having said that, twice, we’ve had decisions go against us which did/could have cost use points – Suarez’s goal at Everton and the goal where Enrique was given offside (I forget who against). So if we’d have gotten those wrongfully given results given to us, we’d be in a strong possition, hovering up around 4th.
Yes, we should be turning over Villa at home and be showing more of a fight against Stoke, but what about the run we’ve recently had? 3 loses in 10 games, 5 of them wins and a draw against Chelsea in a game they battered us in. The signs of improvement are starting to show and hopefully with some good signings in Jan, it might propell us further forward. Yes we have blips (Villa being the biggest) but what mid table team doesn’t? And at the end of the day, thats what we currently are, so people need to stop pretending we aren’t.