Liverpool FC Forum

[ballotelliman]

Competition for places isnt saying that one player should play for 70 and the other for 20 like you stated.

Im not a fan of Balotelli I think he can work well in a certain system but we dont have the players or the players arent used in the right way to get the best out of balotelli.

He wasnt a BR signing lets face it he was pushed on Brendan and us without thinking

BTW my point wasnt that because we have paid 16m he should start my point was that you dont just throw 16m around for a player who is destined for 10 or 20 minutes thats what Lambert is for. Spending 16m on a striker when you have lost one of the best you have ever had should be a player that fits the system you have and easily adaptable something that Balotelli isnt

Why we didnt sign Remy is a mystery he would have been cheaper and worked out alot better in every single way

But we didnt sign remy and we didnt sign sanchez all ifs and buts all im saying is we have what we have and i agree with you  its  brendans fault for not finding the correct system to suit the players we have.

[maguskwt]

Charged by FA... wtf, first Suarez, now Mario... Wtf has the world become, the over sensitivity is just amazing... And it won't be like a fair trial either, fa will be like, I'll paint you with a racist brush and you're gonna have to accept it. One of these days a player being charged like this should sue the FA for defamation...

[parchpea]

Think balotelliman has it bob on and the lad is now angling for a move away.

Personally I like Baltolli as a man and he doesn't give two shytes about the rules but is smart enough to manipulate situations in his favour.

A club signing all day long and I am genuinely sorry he hasn't worked out, short of a miracle, but he will be on his travels again soon enough.

[Stu the Red]

The lad has quality, just a shame our manager doesn't know how use any of it

[kazza]

The lad has quality, just a shame our manager doesn't know how use any of it

He has ability but he has not really shown us quality and I'm not sure how you can blame the manager despite your obvious dislike for him for that. This was his last chance to prove what a good player he is ( according to his agent) but he hasn't. Even though he is not a target man type player you would hope that he has the desire to adapt his game and improve the team. The amount of times he got caught offside because he was walking back and thus stopping a good attacking opportunity is irritating. It does not take much to jog back onside and that has nothing to do with the manager, that is just laziness and is not good enough. I remember when Crouch first came he went something like eight games without a goal but all the while you could see he was working for the team, we do not get that luxury from Mario. For me going to a London nightclub right after we lost to Chelsea even though we played in Liverpool was the last straw. I expect a little more professionalism from our players and once again that has nothing to do with Rodgers.

You can blame the manager for many things but I'm not sure his lack of drive to work for the team's benefit is one of them. He has played for big clubs and big managers and should be more of a winner considering his experience but he is not, that is down purely to him.

Incedently his games played to games banned ratio is now worse than Suarez, in that respect he is more successful. Suarez was banned for 28% of matches for us, Mario is now higher. Once again you can't blame the manager for that.

[red till i die!!]

Did the squad not disband after the chelsea game for the internationals ? Surely that would have meant mario was on his own time and could have been in london waiting for a flight to head off to meet up with the Italy squad. If that was the case then so what if he had a night out.

If he was doing it in between our games then id say its a problem.

[kazza]

Did the squad not disband after the chelsea game for the internationals ? Surely that would have meant mario was on his own time and could have been in london waiting for a flight to head off to meet up with the Italy squad. If that was the case then so what if he had a night out.

If he was doing it in between our games then id say its a problem.

I forgot about the international break but surely he was too tired to go out nightclubbing after giving 100%     at the match where we were so easily outplayed. The fans go home depressed yet the players go out and celebrate like it means nothing. Illustrates the lack of passion for the club, international break or not. It was the same night after all.

[The_Rock]

Rodger's treatment of Balotelli is just a reminder on why he's not cut out to manage a big team.

All this talk about balotelli is not a rodger's signing...is all smokescreen to mask rodger's questionable man-management ability. Any competent manager would have identified our next best striker after sturridge got injured (newsflash....its not lambert...its not borini....). And set up the team to play to his strengths.

And what does the coach do..... throw valuable points out of the window trying to accommodate Gerrard in the DM role (when it was f*cking obvious to everyone and their dogs that it wasn't working out). And eventually ...once he came to his senses and started to put a player in the DM role who actually protects the defence, we have already thrown away tons of points. But at least our defence looks more decent now.

Why am i making the above point in a balotelli thread...well its connected. Balotelli is not a lone striker. He holds up the ball well. He brings other players into the game. Instead of setting up the team to play to his strength (ie... pair him upfront with lambert or borini) the coach wasted so many f**king days/months trying to fit gerrard into the team. If he had spent half his time in playing to balotelli's strength, he might have banged in a few more goals and our season would have been that much better.

Its a recurring trend with Rodgers.....he fell out with superior plays like sahin, agger, reina, lucas....etc and played cr@p in their place. And its no wonder he is do a stinking job with this team.

This season is a write-off. We need a DOF. We need coaches with European experience. We need coaches who have handled big squad of ego players. We don't need a manager who spent the summer whitening his teeth and ditching his wife instead of trying to fiqure out how we are gonna cope with suarez.

[only me]

Rodger's treatment of Ballotelli is just a reminder on why he's not cut out to manage a big team.


All this talk about ballotelli is not a rodger's signing...is all smokescreen to mask rodger's questionable man-management ability. Any competent manager would have identified our next best striker after sturridge got injured (newsflash....its not lambert...its not borini....). And set up the team to play to his strengths.

And what does the manager do..... throw points out of the window trying to accommodate Gerrard in the DM role (when it was f*cking obvious to everyone and their dogs that it wasn't working out). And eventually he came to his senses and started to put a player in the DM role who actually protects the defence we have thrown away tons of points. But at least our defence looks more decent now.

Why am i making the above point in a ballotelli thread...well its connected. Balotelli is not a lone striker. He holds up the ball well. He brings other players in the game. Instead of setting up the team to play to his strength (ie... pair him upfront with lambert or borini) the coach wasted so many trying to fit gerrard into the team. If he had spent half his time in playing to ballotelli's strength, he might have banged in a few more goals and our season would have been that much better.

Its a recurring trend with Rodgers.....he fell out with superior plays like sahin, agger, reina, lucas....etc and played cr@p in their place. And its no wonder he is do a stinking job with this team.

This season is a write-off. We need a DOF. We need coaches with European experience. We need coached who have handled big squad of ego players. We don't need a manager who spent the summer whitening his teeth and ditching his wife instead of trying to fiqure out how we are gonna cope with suarez.

Agree with the point you are making with one distinction ,Mario should have NEVER been signed ,he was a terrible signing which marks BR way to the exit sign.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

I am firmly in the pro Rodgers camp but Rock makes a couple of points it's hard to argue with, especially Brendan's insistence on playing Gerrard as a DM, in flogging that particular dead horse I think Brendan probably did cost us points.

[Boocity]

I don't think Mario was a bad signing, its obvious BR's game plan was to play him up front with DS, the problem is that when DS got injured his game plan went of the window and he reverted to playing one up front to accomodate SG at DM as Rock says. Until DS is back I would play Mario with Gerrard playing off him. I reckon that would give us more of a goal threat than we currently have.

[only me]

I don't think Mario was a bad signing, its obvious BR's game plan was to play him up front with DS, the problem is that when DS got injured his game plan went of the window and he reverted to playing one up front to accomodate SG at DM as Rock says. Until DS is back I would play Mario with Gerrard playing off him. I reckon that would give us more of a goal threat than we currently have.

Mario is a terrible player no matter DS condition. He failed miserably in City and a bunch of other teams ,his Work ethics is a disgrace ,his approach to the game is amateurish ,he is full of himself and frankly his quality shows once in a blue moon. BR tried to pull some-kind of "taming of the Beast" farce and it failed. He shouldn't be playing one second longer ,get some Academy players in and sign someone on January.

[The_Rock]

I am no fan of balotelli. I really wanted us to sign Alexandre Lacazette of lyon. Any competent manager/scout would have gone for him after failing to sign sanchez. I reckon we could have gotten him if we paid $25M pounds. But now its too late. He is scoring loads of goals in france this season....and he is going to go for insane money this summer.

As for balotelli..... I do think he has loads of raw potential. He single handedly destroyed Germany in the euro championship 2 years. And that Germany went on to win the world cup this year. A good manager will really be rubbing his hands in glee if he was given an opportunity to manage balotelli. And lets face it. Balotelli wasn't brought in to be the main striker in LFC. So he would have been given time to work on balotelli.

Yes sturridge was injured. But that doesn't mean Rodgers has to take the lazy way and just put balotelli as a lone striker does it ? The smart thing to do was to slowly re-introduce balotelli to our team. This guy didn't have any pre-season training with us. We bought him a day before our 2nd match of the season. So to simply throw him as a lone striker really does no justice to balotelli.

We did the right thing by pairing him with sturridge against spurs. So the burden was not on him to immediately start scoring. But once sturridge got injured...if we had to go with a lone-striker...then lambert should have started those games (He was playing that position for Southampton). Then balotelli should have been introduced from the bench. This is similar to how markovic should have been introduced. Instead he was thrown in to start games....and once he fails to deliver (can you blame him), he is not even given much opportunity to get off the bench. But this is for the markovic thread.

Getting back to balotelli I have seen people compare him with Zlatan Ibra. For me....I think the better comparison is Eric Cantona. He was virtually handed to leeds by his French club. Fergie bought him (as a joker in the pack type of player who could score goals out of nothing...). He moulded him. And eventually Cantona came into his own. A good manager would have managed balotelli differently. But we have Rodgers..... so yeah, I can understand why the balotelli move is not working out.

Balotelli for his part is not helping himself though. He has to realise that if he wants to be known as one of the best strikers in the world (and he has the potential)...he has to do his part by working on his game intelligence and stop getting into trouble.

[red till i die!!]

All thats wrong with balotelli is that our fantastic manager hasn't got the time to teach him what he is all about due to the amount of games we have. When Brendan finally gets to give them the training they need to fit his system then they will be world beaters just like all his other signings.

[SkippyRed]

The problem with Mario is he can't lead a front line by himself, especially when we don't have very creative midfielders. The bullet needs to be bitten and he needs to play Mario up front with Borini/Sterling to ease some pressure off him.