Liverpool FC Forum

[Owzat]

We have a huge problem of scoring this season.

form the look of it, I would rather have a 4-5-1 formation now with torres lone striker

I think Torres is far more effective in this role.  We dont have a striker a good enough 2nd striker to play alongside Torres at this moment.  Keane is a very overrated player and won we paid to much for. £20 million can buy World Class, something Keane isnt.

Sadly 2/3 of the people on here voted 4-4-2 last time I looked, whether they want Keane to be a success or because they think he will work with Torres is a different matter.

Maybe the difference this season is Riera, Kuyt scoring a few goals and our resilience, and has FA to do with finding a partner for Torres. One of the advantages Kuyt has playing out wide is that he isn't marked by a CB and can find space more easily.

[Simari]

4. The players (both liverpool and fulham) seemed not comfortable with the weather. Was it cold outside?

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It was cold, but the other games - apart from Chelsea, Man U and us all had plenty of goals and attacking play. Nope, the weather did not play any factor in this result. It's been cold in November for decades

Fulham have been playing well in their recent games. They don't concede many goals - I believe they're 3rd after Chelsea and us.

Our midfield was bound to be out hustled, once I read Masch and Lucas as the duo. Without the midfield ticking, we really had no cohesion. Lucas had the opportunity to shine and Fulham at home was a good choice to do it against. I don't hold Rafa to sword for that.

Lucas isn't in the same mould as Gerrard or Alonso. These guys create plays in different ways.

What a strange day of football though. Could you ever imagine a saturday of league football when:

Liverpool
Chelsea
Man U
Arsenal
Villareal
Valencia
Sevilla

all fail to score a goal on the same day?

Freakish ...

Fair enough the top four all failing to score is strange but why have you included three random spanish sides?
Im sure lots of teams failed to score, like they do every week.
Your point?

Those aren't 3 random spanish sides.

They are 3rd, 4th and 5th challenging for the top 2 spots - if you will, the equivalent of Arsenal and us in terms of position in the league and teams that usually can score a lot of goals.

It was a freakish day of football, that was the point

But perhaps this particular conversation should move to the general football area as we are in a Liverpool specific section here.

[neil]

people suggesting we buy Owen are doing my head in, he's probably registered himself as a newkit member in order to start this cr4p, with the intention of getting signed by us so he can get his england place back. Owen is not very good anymore, why the barcodes have their very own 'cows ars3 banjo thread' up there on their forum dedicated to the little welsh guy.

[redhayesy]

I have to say that Lucas really needs to sort himself out. He never looks for the ball and when he happens to receive it he lays it sideways or back to a defender with his first touch. There was groan in the boozer when we saw the line-up and considering the only difference to our team prediction was lucas instead of alonso..says it all and he played like we expected. I have to say theres too many boring struggles at home this season, I worry that I'm not watching champion material.

He cant sort himself out mate,its not in him!
Rafa needs to ship him out...Brazilian young player of the year my @rse!We've been had,no one told us but he was Brazilian young player of the year at darts.
It sure as feck was'nt footy!

spot on mate!! lucas makes me 

[redhayesy]

January... get owen ffs , dont care if keane is only a few games away from finding his form or whatever... we need to have a good striker on the bench to call on if our starting pair cant get things going.... N'gog is not ready and dont think he even made the bench today...

I absolutely agree, I don't think that we can afford to wait for Keane to get his together.  Also Owen would be a great purchase, he's still one of the best finishers in the world and I'm sure that the team would love to have such a legend back at the club.

agreed

totally dis-agree!! i for one don"t want owen back, for many reasons. the main one being the way he shafted us in his transfer move,showed no loyalty to the club or fans that you quite rightly regarded him as a legand of this club. N"gog may not be ready, keane may have made a bit of an inconsistant start, but i"d rather stick with both of them rather than bring owen back,he had his chance with us,thought the grass was greener realised it wasn"t! came back to england with his tail between his legs,& has never  nor will be the player he once was when he was here. i sincerly hope we don"t go for him in the january window,because as far as i"m concerned he doesn"t deserve another chance to wear the red shirt after his behaviour & reasons why he left us in the first place.

[Toffeehater]

people suggesting we buy Owen are doing my head in, he's probably registered himself as a newkit member in order to start this cr4p, with the intention of getting signed by us so he can get his england place back. Owen is not very good anymore, why the barcodes have their very own 'cows ars3 banjo thread' up there on their forum dedicated to the little welsh guy.

 

[bunglemark2]

A very disappointing match.  We just looked out of sorts from the off and never really found a cutting edge.  Fulham bossed us about for a lot of the first half, which was worrying, but we took control of the game completely in the second half.  As ever, though, we looked well short of ideas against a team that sat back and the game just fizzled out.  Alonso was sorely missed from the start and the Torres/Keane partnership was simply not clicking.  Like many, I'd like to see us go back to 4-2-3-1 when Stevie returns and hope to get Torres back into the kind of scoring groove we know he's capable of.  Once that's established, we can think about how to integrate Keane--if indeed there's a need to.

While I'm not blaming Lucas himself, I do blame his selection as inexplicable. Rafa replaced arguably our best player who is out injured, with someone who is an irregular first teamer and yet to really prove himself instead of a player who has been a CL winner and is arguably our most creative source. I don't know why we needed Mascherano to be honest, I gather Fulham had the worst away record in the league before yesterday (may still have) so why play 4-4-2 with a DM alongside a still inexperienced and unproven CM?

So the first name on my teamsheet from a midfield perspective would have been Alonso.

As for Keane, well I was ticked off enough by his effort yesterday, but looking at the replay (again) on SSN this morning is he looking at the ball or the goal/keeper? How can he beat the keeper if he is watching the ball? Or even know if to square/pass/cross or shoot if he's looking at his feet. If I'm right then I wonder if his airshots of recent weeks aren't the cause psychologically.

All that said we should still have created more chances and arguably better chances. At least we didn't lose ground, but we don't want to start dropping points at home and our title challenge fade because we can't beat sides we should. I'd say our draws are causing me more concern than the defeat, drawing at home to Stoke and Fulham, and not even scoring in those games, or away to villa, is worrying - even if the mancs couldn't score at VP either.

Good news is the "pride of london"  are not that convincing at home and surely can't keep winning away from home. But never write off the mancs, had they won they'd have been six points behind with a game in hand and that is how dangerously close they are. I notice that Ashley Cole, Joe Cole, Lampard, Ferdinand AND Rooney all played yesterday while Gerrard was out injured. Who had to prove he was injured to Cappello and who just excused themselves and played Saturday as WIDELY PREDICTED by every fan of more than seven years of age and who's followed football for more than a season or two? I think Liverpool should demand compensation for the 'humiliation' and time spent confirming what should have been accepted

Mate, I'm not gonna get on the Lucas-bashing bandwagon here but he was abysmal yesterday. For those of you who go week in week out (unlike me who gets to a game maybe three times a year - a damned OOT'er to some of ye    ), I don't know how you could pardon some of his passing yesterday. It was shocking, to be honest. For a guy who captain's a young Brazil team (?), he surely couldn't play like that for his country.
Mind you, I think a few were MIA yesterday. Man it was cold.
So all in all, a big disappointment. An early start, a bit of a trek to get to Anfield, a night in Manchester (although proudly wearing a woolly hat with a LFC badge emblazoned all over it !), and back home again....Tired, disappointed, but at least we didn't lose ground. We should on the other hand be sitting on top tonight though....

[tubby]

Are we still talking about this.

[LFC2007]

A generally lackluster performance. Torres the only player offering us drive/creativity/goal threat. Lucas shocking, may as well not have been on the pitch first half. Riera/Keane/Kuyt/Masch/Lucas, not enough intensity to their play, passing not quick enough, too sloppy in final third. Overall it was fairly similar to Pompey game, the key difference being Gerrard's influence, and even then we were fortunate.

No ground conceded by virtue of a one off set of results, we move on.

[NANNY RED]

Werve you been bit late in reporting on the game

[LFC2007]

Werve you been bit late in reporting on the game

Watching a certain gobsh!te get hammered

[Rush Job]

I only seem to post on here when we've done .

I only seen the second half today, but Robbie Keane is really starting to me off,

I missed the chance he had in the first half,(which i've heard was another sitter),  It was that half chance in injury time which drove me mad.

fair enough, he did well to pluck the ball out of the air in the first place, but once you've got the ball under control, if you have your back to goal, with a defender behind you, the first thing you would do is look up, if our number 7 would've looked up he would;ve seen one of the world's best strikers open and in space right in front of him,
But no, Keane tries an audacious flick over the defenders head, which predictably didn't come off.
WTF

We can't afford luxury players in our team

I am phuking livid, i hope Rafa is,

every other regular starter is playing at a really high level right now,

It worries me that it is Keane's tranfer fee £20M FFS, that is keeping him in the team,

Would he still be in the team if he was a free transfer?

Just seen the first half chance on MOTD,

OMG how many more points is this fella going to lose us.

So you post the same sh!t in two threads then quote your self.
Well done you.

[dame]

i m sure rafa knows who is our best 11. But the problem he faced is that we need to win the EPL as well as the CL.

With our thin squad, we must try to win some matches in an "economical" way, ie with fringe players. This is of course gamble. i think this is a gamble we need to take if we want to prolong our challenge in both EPL and PL.

In the early stage of the season, when torres is injured and gerrard is not 100% sharp, Kuyt suddenly performs, Riera is lively and Skytel start commanding the defence. That's the major reasons why we are top of the league now.

Our squad is definitely not as deep as Chelsea (potential winner: Deco, Anelka, Lampard, Essiens, Ballack, Drogba, Terry, Joe cole, and worldclass in cech and boswingwa) and MU (Berbatov, Rooney, giggs, ronaldo, teves, world class players in scholes, Ferdinand and Vidic).

Compare our squad with them, you will understand why we do not play our best 11 very often.

To punch over our weight, we need more players, incl. those so-called "fringe" players, to shoulder responsibility and perform.

As to Owen, I am not sure if he can maintain his very high standard (speed, physical condition and goalscoring ratio) in the past. If price is low, he could be a quality stand-in if our first choice striker is injured.

[Bretc]

Lucas needs to improve and he needs to do it fast before we ship him out. To me, he offers nothing special. He doesn't have the drive of Gerrard, the vision of Alonso and the tenacity of Monster. He's just a normal run-of-the-mill kinda midfielder - someone like Fletcher but at least Fletcher is better!

Rafa may seem overly-confident by omitting Alonso but on paper, we DO have the quality to win and we shld have won. But then, with the exception of Torres, we just did not create enough clear chances. Keane was missing and looked lost. I'm still waiting for him to reproduce his Spurs' form. But the person who infuriated me the most was Babel. He was sent on to create an impact but he was absolute rubbish!

[Toffeehater]

Are we still talking about this.

You've turned into a little of a pessimistic person mate , babel thread , keane thread . You're always angry when we don't win even though we did not lose any ground . Seems like us sitting joint  top of the table has gotten everyone's hopes up , results like this are expected and we need to bounce back stronger