NEIL ATKINSON, John Gibbons, Mike Nevin, Paul Senior, Rob Gutmann, Craig Rimmer, Giulio Canetti and James Cutler temporarily detach themselves from celebrating the death of the ghost of futures past to bang in a quick post Stoke Pink.
THE REDS
ITS ONLY BACK ON ISN’T IT!
Was at a rooftop party, silent disco, DJ was taking birthday shout outs, checked my phone at the right time, literally secs after goal, got her to give my friend Philipe Coutinho a birthday shout out in to everyones headphones:)
Was already dancing so just added the Ole Ole.
Everytime he scores another worldie I worry Barca will come knocking.
Good day at the office. I don’t think I truly realised until today how hard it’s going to be for Lallana to create a place for himself in the team given the size of the squad and the players within it.
Emre had a significant impact when he came on. Still not sure if it makes him a starter given the fluctuations in his form and the fact that even though there was a real lack of invention (with the team and formation) at points before his introduction, we appear to have a slightly more developed awareness of how to keep it tight at tricky away venues. Or at least they did today.
Big shout to Dejan. He might just be shown some Lov after all.. Definitely my M.O.T.M
Love listening to the pink guys, especially after a win! My mates reaction to the game has been hilarious. He’s fuming at how shit we were and that we will be turned over by any side that plays decent and i almost wanted to fly back from Oz to slap him. My mates don’t seem to agree with me about how difficult that game was. I personally think that after the top 4, Stoke away is the toughest fixture of the season. They’re a fucking horrible side and after losing 6-1 last season, to win that game and be troubled so little is massive! Also Mike is absolutely fucked. I can’t believe he managed to do the show haha!
Just what the doctor ordered I thought. In a couple of weeks time with improved understanding, Benteke scores 2 goals and that game is put to bed, but in the mean time, stand up and be counted, piss Charlie Adam off, and steal the game with a moment of quality.
Also, I reckon everyone should stop stressing about the Coutinho to Barce doom and gloom talk. I reckon he likes it here, loves the reaction he gets from the crowd (I remember him crying in an LFCTV interview when they replayed the crowd singing his name for the first time) has plenty of years ahead of him to play in Spain if he wants, and his best mate has just joined the team. Barce will probably come but I reckon he will stick it out here for another few years at least.
I think you might be right about Coutinho mate. He’s 23 so it’s not like he’s 27 like Suarez was and i also think he might look at what’s happened with someone like Fabregas at Barca and he could be here for a few years yet.
Yeah, I like your thinking, I am gonna quit that pointless speculation shit, Coutinho loves Liverpool and We love him and he will stay and prosper.
Thks for checking me, PMA.
Cheers mate, any time :)
Terrible what happened Cesc at Barca. 96 games in just 3 seasons despite 2 spells injurrd, won the league & the cup & reached two champions league semi finals. What a disaster. What age was Sterling when he left this summer?
This match smacked very much of January. We were poor but got away with it thanks to a wonderstrike.
Its the first match if the season so any criticism should be tempered, but at the same time there were worrying signs.
Mignolet time wasting and going long every single time? Thats clearly an order from the manager. If so, he’s lost his balls again. What happened to playing out from the back? Death by football? We play with 11 players, others play with 10 and a keeper. Remember that?
Everything was safety first. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind that. But its what it symbolises (Rodgers chopping and changing his philosophy) is concerning. If Rodgers is to be a success we can’t do what we did yesterday. He seemed more than happy with a dour 0-0 draw. I mean we were atrocious going forward. Absolutely abysmal. Will it improve as we go on? Not sure. People said it would inprove with Balotelli & it never did.
Speaking of Balotelli – if he put in that same performance Benteke did yesterday there would have been blue murder from a lot of our fans. They’d be going apeshit. He looked very Mario-esqu, especially when it came to his complete lack of pressing & his runs when we had possession.
Is 4-2-3-1 going to make him look as shocking as it did Balotelli? Because just like Mario last season, Benteke was isolated, posed no threat and torally ineffective. He won a few headers that resulted in nothing, just as Balotelli did plenty of times.
Heres a crazy thought but one Ive said for a year – maybe the strikers are good enough but the formation chosen by the boss won’t get anywhere bear enough out of them?
I’ll tell you who isnt good enough – Lallana. £25m. We were playing with 10 men with him on the park. He’s just not very good, its that simple. He had no excuses, had a full preseason, was fully fit, no injury concerns, he has been playing regularly….and he still produced nothing.
Ibe was in and out. Inconsistent. That’ll improve.
Coutinho was brutal. Looked a long way short of fitness but Benteke didn’t offer him much – looked to me he was too concerned with not being offside, especially when Phil tried to put him through in the second half. Coutinho’s goal will mask his own and our poor performance.
Milner was good. He kept trying to make something happen in a shit game, always looking the ball. He pressed on his own too much, meaning we lost shape and as others werent doing it, he wasnt following instruction. We didnt even go to a three quarter press yesterday or anything, showing just how defensive we were.
Playing Coutinho, Milner and Hendo does not mean we are attacking and the manager is backing himself.
Henderson was below average but he was stifled by playing very withdrawn. He almost looked like a DM. Which would be an appalling waste of his ability to get around the pitch and lead from the front. He coukd have done twice as nuch running at full time and would have had more of an impact. He lost the balls a few times & lost a couple of one on ones right in front of our CBs. He also looked long far too often. Three times in 10 first half minutes he tried to play a 40 yarder to Bentekes head. We lost possession twice.
Clyne. Solid. Stifled. Rodgers has been a success when he’s told his full backs to bomb on, create overlaps and provide the width his teams need. It was clear, apart from once with Clyne, that both remained much more disciplined. They remained tucked in the whole game. Disappointing on one level, especially with an eye on how we will play in the coming months, but on another we got a clean sheet.
Gomez. He’s a kid. A big one but still inexperienced. He was poor. Again, just like with Balotelli & Benteke, if Moreno played like that yesterday & offered so little going forward he’d be getting pelters. That one moment where he tried to stop a corner and hooked it straight towards our penalty spot was mental. In the first half he gave Mignolet a horrific pass when a stoke player was closing Simon down, when Jow could easily have turned out on his left foot and put the ball down the line to Lallana.
Finally the CBs. Skrtel was Skrtel. Lovren was not Lovren. He only made one mistake the entire match and as his biggest critic I thought he was very good. I thought it was clear he was under strict instruction from the manager to not do anything stupid & that he was barred from passing longer than 10 yards. Unlike last season, every time he got the ball he rolled it to another player in black a few yards away. Risk free. Apart from the mistake when Gomez list his man & Lovren decided to cover then stopped, leaving himself in no mans land between the man with the ball and a runner in behind. Lucky John Glenson ended up chipping over.
Look its 3 points, lets be happy with that. But lets open our eyes and see the things that will be problematic in the near future too.
Nah, just nah.
Quality, intellectual post. So much football knowledge.
We won so we must have been excellent, eh?
And you are trying to tell me that you are not Chris Mc (not his real name).
I agree with Padraig’s assessment almost completely. Anyone dismissing it is either deluded or (very understandably) very happy about the win and on a high from Coutinho’s brilliant strike.
I hope we do continue getting results in the weeks to come, or even better start putting in great (or good, or… well, definitely better than yesterday’s) attacking performances, so none of this matters, but don’t think for a second that we’ll continue getting away with that kind of a performance (even against the likes of Bournemouth).
Here’s my considered response to that…:-
Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé, Olé Olé,
Coutinho-o-o, Coutinho-o-o
Just what were the doom merchants hoping for yesterday? It was first match of the season and we had two lads in the team who had no pre season to speak off. And it was away to Stoke – I’d be very surprised if they lose more than 5 games at home this season.
Loved it, get carried away guys, you are right that it is the only proper state for Liverpool fans to be in!
I might be overly superstitious but there was something infectious about the way that Steve Graves announced on the show after Stoke at Anfield 13/14 we were going to win the league, which seemed to catch on amongst the support. It carried us on right up until the moment the odds were in our favour after Man City and we dared to think, “we are actually going to win the league!”, at which point it all turned to shit. Then we go into last year thinking we are a genuine title contender and it turns into even more shit.
So the way I see it is, we need to believe we can win the league in our hearts in that hopeful tongue in cheek way but in no way believe it will actually happen until it does.
Oh, and you guys need to get Graves on more often, especially when he is half-cut and starts slurring his words, love it:)