Neil is joined by Gibbo and Gareth Roberts in a hectic pre Bray live show.
Music this week from Esco Williams and Dying Embers
Direct link to CITYTALK: PARTY TIME?
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With apologies to Shakespeare: “How do I condemn thee? Let me count the ways…’
One’ll do; bog pitch. Allen in for Lucas.
We are witnessing an enormous ego imploding. Thumb me down all you like, but he is a tactical black hole.
Oh for God’s sake Kevin, will you just bore off and find another site to drum up recruits for your Anfield coup. Rodger’s egotistical??… I think you are in need of a mirror. I’ll bet anything you were one of those “supporters” who were slating Lucas when he was 21.
If you were half as good at reading a game of footy as you claim your IQ is, you would have seen that after a nervy start we were in total control of that game until their 30 mil striker hit a strike as good as you will see. If Suarez had put in one of four great chances (with Allen playing a key role in one of them), it would have been a great performance a very long way from home. Tactical black hole my arse, if anything we were probably just a bit too comfortable in our play and pushed a little too much after missing so many good chances.
Okay, maybe total control was a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t think they had a shot on target up until the first goal since halfway through the first half and we certainly had the better of the chances.
You are very wide of the mark, Tom. I have been a fan of Lucas Leiva from day 1 – I saw in him what I assume Benitez saw. When Roy Hodgson was trying to off-load him I said to my son “If we let this lad go he will come back and bite us on the arse one day.”
I am a ‘glass half full’ man; whatver the circumstances, I think we can still win, even if we are 3-0 down at half-time, like teams in the Wizard or Hotspur, or Roy of the Rovers. But not any more. If we go a goal down now, I think we are done for, and so do our opponents.
I have been a Liverpool fan for 60 years, watching my first game in the season we were relegated. In all those years I have never thought we couldn’t win. Until this season, that is. And the players look as if they think we can win, either. What happened to the Psychologist?
I am entitled to an opinion, as you are. And I am quite prepared to admit I was wrong. But after two-thirds of a season I see no saving grace with Rodgers. He has all but destroyed Coates; Sterling; Suso. He is, in my view, well on the way to destroying Shelvey. None of these played as badly as Allen (who I think is a good player but who has no effective role) did for MONTHS until the penny dropped. And he is there on the bench, waiting to be called, in recent weeks top replace the wrong player.
what has Assaidi done wrong? In fact, what has he done at all? Has he – and the others- let slip that they are fans of ‘The Office’?
Contrary to the general view, I don’t blame the owners at all. I don’t LIKE them, but they have provided the money when asked. apart from the Dempsey embarrassment, and they were possibly right then. They were wrong with Roy, and admitted it; they were right with Kenny but let PR get in the way (as did he – I supported his backing of Suarez but it developed into a seige mentality and FSG couldn’t cop that). I will support this club until I die, but not this manager.
Hey Kevin, you are certainly entitled to a opinion and I am keen to hear it when it comes to the reasons why certain tactics aren’t working and why including someone would improve the team. What I think is very boring is your constant personal attacks on a man you have never met and are basing your assessment of him on a reality TV style documentary and the tone of his press conferences. From where I am sitting it seems as though he has the full-backing of the dressing room and the people working under him, so that is all that really matters in my opinion.
That was quite insightful of you to be a fan of Lucas from day 1, I take back what I said. I’m interested though, what was it about him that you saw considering he wasn’t in good form at the start? My take on it was, that he had plenty of time to learn, had the backing of the manager, was the captain of his national youth side and had a great attitude, so there was definitely enough about him to give him time and space to develop. So same goes for Henderson (who looks like he is coming good) and same goes for Allen for mine.
Couple that with the fact that Allen was our MOM for pretty much the first 2-3 months solid and played every game. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that he burnt out and his form has dipped since, especially given he played in the Olympics and he is still only 21. I think everyone could see it coming, including the boys on the podcast, but we were very short of options until Lucas came back. After that he was hardly playing for “MONTHS”, 1 tops, before it became obvious that the chemistry wasn’t right between Lucas, Allen and Gerrard because Gerrard is sitting deeper these days, he has been sitting on the bench ever since.
On Rodgers destroying Sterling, Suso and nearly Shelvey, where does that come from? They are all very young guys and still have plenty of time to establish themselves in the first team. The have had way more minutes than they normally would have had this season, which can only be good for them in the long run. While I like all three of them, they have been overhyped up by both fans and press in the case of Sterling, so that way too much is expected of them for where they are at in their development. I think Suso in particular needs to really work on the defensive side to his game as he often looks lost and out of position (and slow), which is why we don’t see much of him at the moment. Besides, this is not the academy and we are trying to push for Europe next year so we have to put out the team who will give us the best chance of winning. Rodgers gave them all a chance in the FA cup, they blew it, and he was slated for it, what do you want him to do?
As for Assaidi, I think “what has he done right?” is the more pertinent question, he offers very little for mine. I’ll grant you that I would have liked to see a bit more of Coates this year (and last), and when I saw Carragher back on the team sheet I winced because I thought his legs were completely shot. But I have had to eat my words because his leadership qualities have been very important for us through a run of tough games. And I reckon this is why Coates hasn’t been playing in general, because we need as much experience on the pitch as we can get at the moment.
It sounds as though you used to be a “glass half full” man, but that you have gotten a bit jaded seeing our fall from grace over the last few years. If you were truly a glass half full man, you would take the half of the recent run of games where we have played some really nice football, taken teams apart even (especially with Sturridge who we missed in the last couple), and see a rosy future. Not saying it is definitely going to happen but there is enough there to give Rodgers until the end of next season at least in my opinion.
However, if you are sat in the stands not believing that we are going to come back from 1-0, then that is going to have an effect on the team and be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you can no longer truly support you team when we are down, how about you give it a break and let someone else who can get to the games instead.
(sorry for the excessively long post, I should really get up from the computer more often)
Nice responses Tom, I agree with plenty of what you say, can I also add that anyone who thought Lucas was quality from the start based only on what they saw on the pitch must have been watching some different matches to me. Benitez and those around him had the benefit of seeing his quality in training and his effort, his attitude, his will to correct his performances and up his game on a day to day basis. We as fans don’t see any of that and have to base our judgement solely on the matches so it’s much tougher for us to decide if a player has what it takes.
Lucas is a star now, he has the potential to perhaps become a Liverpool great, but even he would say some of his early performances were woeful. And that’s not just one or two matches it was a season or two of games that he took to get adjusted and impose himself onto the team. At the start he looked out of place, out of sorts, lacking confidence and gave the ball away far too often but thankfully now (especially before his recent injury troubles) he’s playing at the level that Benitez and Kevin Barry insightfully thought he could.
Thanks Mike, you too. Actually, despite my long response, if I had to guess I would say that Mr Barry isn’t quite who he says he is, and is just on here to wind us up. It’s just that I can’t see too many Liverpool fans who started out on the terraces in the 50’s being so self-affected as to claim an IQ of 137 and start a post by quoting Shakespeare!
“I have been a Liverpool fan for 60 years, watching my first game in the season we were relegated. In all those years I have never thought we couldn’t win. Until this season, that is.”
Ha, ludicrous! If you thought we could win a few games in the last 20 years when we were down to the bare bones at times with Kvarme at the back or Biscan propping up the midfield or relying on Mark Kennedy to provide the spark or even when James was at his flapping best in net then you have proven yourself to be quite mad!
Let’s even take it back 2 years, starting with Poulsen, Konchesky, N’Gog + Jovanovic gave you enough to think “Yep, here’s another victory on the cards today for the lads, just like every previous game in the last 60 years I’ve been a supporter, man and boy I’ll have you know. I’ll rue the day if anybody new comes in and tries to get us to play football again, especially one who wants to bring in some wingers, it’s not like anyone said we’ve been lacking wingers who can go past people since McManaman. I certainly won’t allow that new guy at least a season to bed in his ideas because I need to win NOW, I mean it’s been non stop success up to this point and long may it continue…”
Loved this, cheers mate :)
And for the record I think Joe Allen is a quality little player who proved his worth at the start of the season and who unfortunately flagged a bit towards Christmas, perhaps because at that point he’d played 90 minutes of almost every game after a summer at the Olympics and had some considerable weight on his shoulders by that point.
Even in a few of the games when people has said he’s been poor I thought he was left pretty isolated by those around him and hadn’t actually had a poor game himself – it often made me wonder whether people watched the same game I was (or whether there was a lot of bandwagon jumping, but who am I to suggest that). I do believe he’s had a couple of below par outings (no where near as numerous as some try and suggest), which he’s admitted to as well, but even in those games he showed character and confidence to still want the ball to feet, to realise his mistakes and to put extra effort in to winning the ball back.
Give me Joe Allen over Phil Jones any day.
Sorry to be clogging up the thread with my responses but I wanted to make some points of my own following on from the podcast discussion.
I was just thinking about our lack of a high line. Despite Neil’s exasperation at us not keeping a high line I am assuming there is a reason behind Rodgers not opting for it and he hasn’t just failed to notice it. I know that you are meant to play with a high line in defense so you can press effectively win the ball back quickly in their half, but maybe, as I think was mentioned, our pressing isn’t good enough to pull it off with the personal we have got (I don’t think Gerrard has the legs for it these days). In that case, maybe it makes more sense to sit back a bit deeper and pick a different moment in the opposition’s build up to apply a “mini” press to try to win the ball back. I could well be talking out of my arse here but maybe that way it would also take the pressure off us in transition into our possession if there is more space to move into, something I remember us struggling with at the start of the season.
In response to another point you guys made, I was also a bit disappointed not to see Borini start, as I was really enjoying the movement Sturridge and Suarez up the front and the formation we were playing. But I think it is easy to underestimate just good Sturridge has been for us up there, he has been covering a lot of ground and also holding up the ball very well, and scaring defenses with his pace. So even if Borini had started, the formation probably wouldn’t have worked the same anyway, and I think we would have tried it at the start of the season wouldn’t we?
The crack’s good, lads. Just a couple of things to add. Initially, I was really looking forward to seeing Coates play, but I did not expect to see such a one-footed player hyped so much in this day and age. He’s as much a righty as JAR was a lefty, and we know that didn’t end well for us or John. I suspect BR would want a centre half a little less like Jamie, a little more like Dan when it comes to controlling the ball.
Also, listening to our last couple of home games on R5, I have been shocked to hear how quiet Anfield has become. Against WBA, you could hear a pin drop for the first 15 minutes. Is this, like the erstwhile genius Mr. Barry, just the manifestation, the palpitation of the anxiety and dread that has wreathed the club pretty much since Benitez left? It’s not helping. I mean really not helping.
Mr Barry doesn’t want our club to be that frog in the pot, none of us do. I guess getting these things off his chest is what keeps him such a ‘Glass half full’ kind of guy. Although if we are to believe his prescience after viewing Lucas for the first time, maybe we should all be worried.
Ferd