Liverpool FC Forum

[Bad Bob]

big mick , you're not invited around for xmas. boooooo

[Bad Bob]

!. The goals. Yes we have suddenly found our shooting boots and it's very encouraging. The way the team and in particular our best striker is playing though, makes the baffling decison to leave him out in two consecutive league games (nether of which we scored a goal in, all the more, well baffling. We also never managed to break down Fulham until Torres came back from injury and produced a moment of magic. All told though, no argument. we are playing well and scoring goals. We'll get a couple more this weekend no doubt.

I was delighted with the Fulham game and i'd like to see us win more games like that. We attacked all game, they dealt with it, they got tired, we bring a couple of fresh players of the bench and we stole it in the last ten minutes. the mancs have been doing it to smaller teams for years.

Good point, well made Scott.  How often do the Mancs (or Chelsea or Arsenal) stick the dagger in inside the last ten minutes and every praises them for doing what (potential) champions do?  Of course, we start doing it and we get Andy Gray the other night saying how unconvincing we were for half the game.   

[Bad Bob]

12. Scoring goals from set pieces again. Sabes what's all this "again" mate?  It's nothing to do with rafa mate our failure from set-pieces, we've fecking NEVER scored goals from set-pieces. Even the really top Liverpool teams never scored goals from corners. Feck knows why, we just didnt. Nice to see we have got a couple though recently. Plus from rotation number two: the opposition hasn't a hope in hell of watching videos of our set-pieces and working out what's going to happen. Not only will it probably be a different bloke taking the set-piece form the video, he'll probably be aiming at an entirely different target as well. The bloke who someother bloke was aiming at on the video, will like the aimer himself have been rested.

Well, according to Andy Gray the other night, Porto conceded two corners due to their insistence on using zonal marking!  No mention whatsoever of how effective we are at zonal marking--just his usual rubbish about the system not being effective enough.  Perfect opportunity to have a proper pros and cons discussion of zonal marking and he opts for the usual ill-conceived soundbite.  Change the record, Andy.

[neil]

I dont like Bennayoun, he's a lightweight half asleep a moaner who demonstrates his displeasure with his little pantomimes when he isnt passed to in the way he wants(yet he is the worst culprit for this kind of thing) and lets sell sissoko.

[redmikey]

12. Scoring goals from set pieces again. Sabes what's all this "again" mate?  It's nothing to do with rafa mate our failure from set-pieces, we've fecking NEVER scored goals from set-pieces. Even the really top Liverpool teams never scored goals from corners. Feck knows why, we just didnt. Nice to see we have got a couple though recently. Plus from rotation number two: the opposition hasn't a hope in hell of watching videos of our set-pieces and working out what's going to happen. Not only will it probably be a different bloke taking the set-piece form the video, he'll probably be aiming at an entirely different target as well. The bloke who someother bloke was aiming at on the video, will like the aimer himself have been rested.

Well, according to Andy Gray the other night, Porto conceded two corners due to their insistence on using zonal marking!  No mention whatsoever of how effective we are at zonal marking--just his usual rubbish about the system not being effective enough.  Perfect opportunity to have a proper pros and cons discussion of zonal marking and he opts for the usual ill-conceived soundbite.  Change the record, Andy.

andy gray grips my sh!t

why do they allow that feck half wit cUN? TO SPEW SH!T OVER THE AIRWAVES IS BEYOND ME

rotation, zonal marking,big squad, width, and not being manure ,this is what andy gray has written down for him to talk about every liverpool game

i hate that scottish tw@t

[stmichael]

12. Scoring goals from set pieces again. Sabes what's all this "again" mate?  It's nothing to do with rafa mate our failure from set-pieces, we've fecking NEVER scored goals from set-pieces. Even the really top Liverpool teams never scored goals from corners. Feck knows why, we just didnt. Nice to see we have got a couple though recently. Plus from rotation number two: the opposition hasn't a hope in hell of watching videos of our set-pieces and working out what's going to happen. Not only will it probably be a different bloke taking the set-piece form the video, he'll probably be aiming at an entirely different target as well. The bloke who someother bloke was aiming at on the video, will like the aimer himself have been rested.

Well, according to Andy Gray the other night, Porto conceded two corners due to their insistence on using zonal marking!  No mention whatsoever of how effective we are at zonal marking--just his usual rubbish about the system not being effective enough.  Perfect opportunity to have a proper pros and cons discussion of zonal marking and he opts for the usual ill-conceived soundbite.  Change the record, Andy.

People shouldn't be surprised by this anti-liverpool bias.

You can imagine the pre-production walkthough where they talked about the best outcome being a Porto win and a Rafa sacking. They love that sh#t way more than a regulation Liverpool win. Despite Gray's 'entertaintment' enthusiasm, he's much more interested in the 'story' than the football. Rip your script up, ya tw@t.

[Owzat]

9- Competition For Places - Less used players like Crouch,

Should it be used-less players like Crouch, certainly closer phonetically speaking! 

[Bad Bob]

9- Competition For Places - Less used players like Crouch,

Should it be used-less players like Crouch, certainly closer phonetically speaking! 

[Fowler_E7]

6- Post-Christmas Record - Liverpool collected more points in the league than any other Premiership side after Chrimbo last season. They pretty much achieved the same feat the season before. Looking good considering we have made a much better start to the season this time around.

Excellent point, was saying the same thing to my mate the other day. Under Rafa we always do well in the second half of the season, combine this with the fact that we have actually had quite a good start for a change then hopefully we could do really well in the league this year, i personally wouldnt be suprised if it goes right down to the wire, i cant see anyone running away with it this year.

The thing i like about us this season is the refusal to get beat. Weve really put up a fight for every point e.g Villa away, Fulham and Spurs at home and the defence has repelled almost everything thrown at it. We have seemed to develop a real winning mentality about us

so heres hoping 

[bigmick]

Can somebody nail this "after Christmas" nonesense. How on earth can we have collected more points than anybody else after Christmas last season when we finished twenty one points behind the eventual winners? It can't be right, surely we weren't further than that behind at the half way stage? My memory tells me that Manchester United and Chelsea went into a who blinks first head to head, winning every week and matching each others results until Chelsea finally cracked. Not a lot of six and seven changes per game going on there I can recall as well. Liverpool meanwhile, out of the league concentrated our efforts (not without justification) on the Champions League.

We drew at Villa, Man City and various other places. Feck me I had the pro-rotationers bleating at me for fecking months during the closed season, page after page of them telling me "twenty one points is not a true reflection, we were clearly playing a weakened team to concentrate on the Champions League". If we accept this premise, which I broadly do BTW, (I think my final assessment is that we may have got the gap down to fifteen points if we hadn't over-rotated in order to keep the players fresh), then how can we also claim our team gained the most points over Christmas?

Just as a footnote, those very same pro-rotationers who slam any dissenting voices were the self same people who claimed that us making all those changes in the League and resting our best players for the Champions League last season, cost us points and made us finish further adrift. Those are also the self same people who jump on a bandwagon and tell me I'm being inconsistent  It's incredible when you think about it.

[account deleted by request]

Can somebody nail this "after Christmas" nonesense. How on earth can we have collected more points than anybody else after Christmas last season when we finished twenty one points behind the eventual winners? It can't be right, surely we weren't further than that behind at the half way stage? My memory tells me that Manchester United and Chelsea went into a who blinks first head to head, winning every week and matching each others results until Chelsea finally cracked. Not a lot of six and seven changes per game going on there I can recall as well. Liverpool meanwhile, out of the league concentrated our efforts (not without justification) on the Champions League.

We drew at Villa, Man City and various other places. Feck me I had the pro-rotationers bleating at me for fecking months during the closed season, page after page of them telling me "twenty one points is not a true reflection, we were clearly playing a weakened team to concentrate on the Champions League". If we accept this premise, which I broadly do BTW, (I think my final assessment is that we may have got the gap down to fifteen points if we hadn't over-rotated in order to keep the players fresh), then how can we also claim our team gained the most points over Christmas?

Just as a footnote, those very same pro-rotationers who slam any dissenting voices were the self same people who claimed that us making all those changes in the League and resting our best players for the Champions League last season, cost us points and made us finish further adrift. Those are also the self same people who jump on a bandwagon and tell me I'm being inconsistent  It's incredible when you think about it.

Its drivel Mick, We only got 34 points after Christmas last season (starting Boxing day) the mancs got over 40 points (it was sending me crosseyed )and I couldn't be bothered checking Chelsea's but I would bet they got similar to the mancs.

[Walk On]

Reality check - for most of the season we have looked clueless in attack, i don't think we can buy an open play created goal most of the time. Don't let results against Derby or Besiktas fool you - rubbish teams. I think we will finish behind Man utd about 8 points or so and will be vying for second or 3rd.

Rafa needs to decide on best strike partnership and stick to it - seems obvious it's torres-crouch but alas rafa likes to over complicate things and play according to opposition rather than focussing on our strengths.

Aint rockets science this footie lark, put me in charge and i win us the league:

             Reina
Finnan   Carra  Agger   Arbeloa

Benayoun   Gerrard  Masch   Kewell

            Crouch    Torres:p

[bigmick]

Its drivel Mick, We only got 34 points after Christmas last season (starting Boxing day) the mancs got 44 points and I couldn't be bothered checking Chelsea's but I would bet they got similar to the mancs.

EDIT EDIT EDIT>
Thanks very much for that saint. Ansd sorry I didn't say that at the time mate.





There's a shock. Now the season before, we did play well after Christmas and look like the best team in the League. We deservedly beat man Utd on the way to the FA Cup final and thanks to Gerrard scoring from forty yards with about twenty seconds left, managed to prevail against West Ham in the end.

Hopefully this season will be more like that one. It'll need to be of course. Should we keep going as we are now and avoid defeat against Man Utd on the 16th, I would suspect we reach the half way point between four and eight points behind the leaders. We will then have trips to Chelsea, Manchester United and arsenal in the second half of the season. All that rotational freshness is going to be needed for us to stay in the rattle, you can be sure of that.

[imouthep]

Reality check - for most of the season we have looked clueless in attack, i don't think we can buy an open play created goal most of the time. Don't let results against Derby or Besiktas fool you - rubbish teams. I think we will finish behind Man utd about 8 points or so and will be vying for second or 3rd.

I disagree. I enjoy statements by the likes of roy evans who state that you can only beat what is in front of you. Yes we thumped poor teams like derby and besiktas and they were poor. But it was due to our dominance that they seemed poor, victories like thyis can not be excluded when it comes to looking at how good we are attacking wise. We are scoring a lot of goals and good ones at that.Babel's goal against newcastle was brilliant i think we had a dozen odd passes before he was released on the wing. The play between him and Stevie was good and we scored. Such a goal can be scored against even the best in the league with good running and communication. We are grinding out results and having less nil nil games. We are wearing teams down and attacking until minute 90. I mean we put four past porto,I don't care how they came you don't put four past teams like porto. We are looking very good and maybe we could do with more consistency upfront but I don't think we are clueless.

[66-1112520797]

8. Competition for places. I'm not sure that's a concept which we use any more. It's more of a take your turn thing these days it seems. Unless you're Crouch, in which scase you don't really get a turn and that doesn't seem to alter too much regardless of whether you score a goal or play well. In fact the best bet for a striker seems to be not to score. Kuyt perfected the art of doing next to feck all and then getting picked every week. Unfortunately for him though, he managed to let the ball hit him and go in against Newcastle to get his name on the scoresheet. Worst thing he could have done of course as he was inevitably rotated for the next game.