This week Neil is joined by John Gibbo and Sean Rogers as they look towards the dreaded trip to Old Trafford.
Music this week from Hypnobeam and Danny Gruff
Direct link to CITYTALK: NOT THEM AGAIN
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If Shankly were managing us today, in a world of 24 news, post-match interviews and pre-game press conferences, I can’t imagine he’d be whole lot different to SAF. He had a better sense of humour than Fergie, but in terms of taking opportunities to do whatever he could to help his team win – including indulging in so-called “mind-games” and pressurizing refs – I reckon Shanks would be teaching old red nose a thing or two. Peas in a pod.
Of course, this doesn’t stop me hating Fergie and his team. Indeed, the shared LFC-MUFC antipathy is in part driven by an unacknowledged truth, which is that each club is more like the other than either is prepared to admit.
Does that make Suarez our very own ‘Fergie’?
It’s got to be 4-3-3 all the way from now on. Gerrard-Henderson-Lucas, with SaSaS up top. Great second half after an inept first. You saw in that 2nd half why, even with RVP, the Mancs will do nothing in Europe. LFC 08-09 wins this league at a canter.
So each time we reorganise and step away from Rodgers’ ideal system, ie go more direct we have success. Even against the table leaders.
Rodgers is a lucky manager. Not convinced by what he’s trying to do but he hasn’t had his players to do it with, whatever that might be.
Now he has the front line and he can integrate them. Allen has been so out of form its not funny yet won’t be dropped. Was very good at the start of the season but not for a while now, probably due to the baby.
the midfield is a mess and he’s not getting it fixed. that’s making games much harder than they need to be, like today. And sometimes it’s a disaster like, well, you know.
Perhaps Allen will be better late in the season (new baby), but Lucas might need at least that and a pre-season to get his game back. He’s class so he will be ok.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to The Specials in quite the same way again. More gutted than what I was watching our first half non-performance today. Seriously.
Maybe deserved a draw today but not too down about it. Think we played like scared schoolboys in the 1st half- Sterling/Downing anonymous and Lucas/Allen utterly awful. Lucas looks worryingly poor since coming back – he’s a yard off the pace in every game. There have to be some doubts creeping in about whether or not he can be the same player, doesn’t there….?
Second half very promising and Sturridge looks good. United are better than us but take RVP out of that side and it is very average.
Wisdom MoM for me, but shouldn’t have given Evra so much space for their first.
Yep, good shout on Wisdom. Looked like he belongs at this level and can only get better. Feel genuinely positive, however…
I don’t understand the first half approach at all. We’re going to win jack this year, we’ll finish mid-table and games against this lot and the other top 3 won’t define this season. Games against MUFC can never be described as games to , but this as close as it gets. We could have had a go and no-one would have blinked had we come away with our tail between our legs. If you’re not going to have a tilt at them on a day like today, then when? Hope BR has learned a lesson.
The second half showed that Manchester United were beatable, and we probably had the personnel to do it. Our biggest problem is Rodgers’ ego, his belief that his system will prevail if only we stick with it; but the fact is that his tikka takka merely allows opponents to compose themselves, while w erun back and forth across the park, as if there was an invisible barrier. And let us hear no more about Sterling’s promise. He is bloody useless. Don’t give him the ball, just give it to the opponents, cut out the middle man. But Rodgers doesn’t see that.
The team that started the game was on a hiding to nothing. In discussions with other fans we more or less agreed that we should start with Coates instead of Wisdom (wrongly, as it turned out); Henderson instead of Allen, and Sturridge instead of Sterling. Two of those selections may have won the game for us if they had started the game. I hope – but doubt – that the manager has learned from this game that fucking around, passing 2 metres all day, is not going to win any games for us. Not games that count, anyway. For over 3 months now, Allen has been utterly ineffectual, and leaves us with a hole in mid-field that Henderson fills extremely well when he comes on. But Hendo’s problem is that Rodgers didn’t sign him. Brendan’s boys get picked. Simple…I doubt that any other manager in the EPL would persist with an Allen/Lucas pairing, and no other manager would have yanked the wrong one at half-time.
Sturridge obviously didn’t know that he was expected to pass the ball backwards or sideways at every opportunity, so his entry into the game was refreshing.And he scored a goal by following up – something that has not happened all season.
We can get fourth, but not with tikka takk and not with bloody-minded stubborn persistence with a system that concentrates on possession only.
Today’s game proved yet again that Rodgers is way out of his depth.I would like to think that Allen will turn out to be a good player.But today?Yet again a headless chicken.
If Brendan wants to know about “pass and move”well forget about history;just look at Manu today.I hate to say it but that is what is pass and move is all about.
It’s easy to say with hindsight but Shelvey should have been in there.Much more mobile and more likely to make a nuisance of himself by disrupting their play.
Anyway,let’s give him another 5 or 6 years eh? I’m sure he’ll get the hang of it!
“It’s easy to say with hindsight but Shelvey should have been in there.”
The point is that *if_Rodgers_was_detemrined_to_play__the_way_we_did* then Shelvey and not Allen was the obvious choice. Allen is basically there to link up play between the back four and midfield yet we set up like a team that intended to do little more for the first half except to get in the face of ManU and disrupt their play. It wasn’t that the team or the tactics were wrong per se, but that *together* they made no sense.
I suppose the upside is that Rodgers realised this eventually and changed it. As I’ve already said, this was effectively a game to nothing for Liverpool given the gap in points and respective aspirations this season. Rodgers would have learned a lot more about his players if he’d started the game with one that more resembled the team that finished it. A lost opportunity.
Well, a bit too much respect to Fergie on the podcast.
He’s no genius, just very good. He gets beaten and then each time, works out what he has to do to fix it, and he’s spent big bar the glazers slamming the brakes on for 2/3 yrs just after Rafa arrived.
He has spent well though and the coaching philosophy is very effective here though not in Europe. Direct, accurate and pacy but they are not a top team without RVP and that says it all. But yes he’s kept up with the big spenders.
And don’t forget his first 6 years of rubbish. Loads of money spent, done badly, press and fans chanting “you don’t know what you’re doing” 3 years in after finishing 2nd/11th/13th.
He’s the luckiest man in football cos noone else would ever have kept his job that long. And he has the nerve to call Rafa lucky. Twat.
And it was Brian Kidd that went in and sorted out Utd. He wasn’t getting anywhere and his first title winning side, each player bought cost more than half the British transfer record. And utd like to criticise Kenny for buying the title with blackburn. Typical scumbag fans.
So less of the eulogising about Fergie, though despite being lucky, I doubt Rodgers will achieve anything of note.
On a different note, the song this week by Danny Gruff was mint. Usually I don’t like the music you guys play but this was really decent. Been listening to it on YouTube a bit over the weekend.
The game has changed over the years.The team and tactics are just part of it nowadays.
The fact is that press and tv play a massive part.I know I bang on about Ferguson and ManU but they have media manipulation off to a fine art.Just look at the stories that come out about any team they are about to play.The papers are full of stories about unrest in their opponents camp.They single out players who might be a threat and and the papers and tv hang on to every word,analysing the comments with examples to support Ferguson’s claims.
It’s underhanded,insidious and basically cheating.But we seem like an old-fashioned response.Rodgers talking again that we would be good if only we had good players.Jesus!I’d be really be inspired to bust a gut listening to him!
Just have the guts to hit back like Benitez did.Everybody agreed but then the media got worried about which side their bread was buttered on and started kow-towing to Ferguson again.
But all this comes back to the owners too.They hid away when Suarez was hung out to dry and Dalglish ultimately paid the price.
Just take a few minutes to think about the disgraceful behaviour of Manu players over the past 15/20 years and “Sir” Alex has always come out and defended them and the media has always seen his side of the story.
Ever wondered why?No brown envelopes.But you get barred from Old Trafford and some other places if you disagree with “Sir” Alex!