NEIL ATKINSON is joined by Melissa Reddy, James McKenna and Paul Senior to discuss Liverpool’s coaching appointments and what that says about the football team’s direction in the forthcoming 15/16 season.
PODCAST: COACHED ANSWERS
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Really glad I listened to this. I think I’m up and down and with the summer being the time our season gets defined, in a sense, then I’m more unstable than usual around about now. A blow, say in the transfer market, gets magnified or an exciting ‘buy’ sends me into meltdown.
Deep down though, I do believe Liverpool have a plan. I have from the first days of FSG. When we brought O’Driscoll and Ljinders in I had the initial shock but then I thought this must be for a reason. Benteke wasn’t the kind of player I’d envisaged but I’d concede they’ve probably seen something I haven’t due to my limited knowledge. I simply don’t believe the transfer committee have sat around and said – ‘I reckon we go for that Benteke, seen how many he scores? Always looks good against us too’ yeah but the fans are saying that kind of striker doesn’t work for us’ ‘fuck that, he scores loads, that’s what we want, he’ll be sound’. It may appear that way sometimes but it’s not. There’s a plan. Rodgers didn’t say – ‘that O’Driscoll’s sound, I’ve always liked him’, ‘ok get him in then, see how he gets on’.
This podcast has kind of pulled together all the things I think must be happening and put them into a cohesive plan. Makes absolute sense to me and has left me full of anticipation.
It’s come at a good time too. I was helping me mate move house at the weekend and saw the lad I go to the match with. Not seen him since the end of the season. He asked what I thought of our business and I was really positive. He was agreeing but then said, come off it mate, we’ve got a Brazilian that no one’s actually heard of, another Southampton player. one from Burnley, one from Bolton and probably one from Vila, a free, oh, and an assistant from the lower leagues. In truth, I thought it was a compelling case.
You can take my mates view or you can take the view of this podcast but one’s built on a bit of thought and linking the pieces together and the other’s built on our own fears. For tonight at least, I’m really confident about Rodgers next season. I think it’s gonna be fairly dynamic. I can’t wait to see Milner and Firmino. With Henderson and Coutinho somewhere around them it’s gonna be good.
Er… there was 5 or 6 seconds at the end with just nothing. Thanks for that! 6 seconds I’ll never get back!
Jesus!
I’ve said for a while that people’s views on LFC come down to their personality as much as what they’re seeing at the club.
With regard to recent appointments, Pep could step into Brendans shoes further down the line, once we’ve won a few league titles of course :)