Liverpool FC Forum

[lakes10]

We as you might been able to tell, i went out right after the game, just as well as i might have got banned.

To start off by us not winning the Game Rafa has made himself look a bit of a prat in the meadia after what he said the other day.

The line up as i said before the game was mad but this time IN RAFA I DID TRUST, only to see our team have no idea how to play a game of football, i am not going to blame loads of players, yes the team was poor, but when you best striker that is fir is left on the bench for 60 mins it will be hard for him to lift the team that look like they had no idea in what was going on.
during the game i said the look on our plyers faces were no right and they looked unhappy even before kick off, this was also picked up on radio five live, they are asking was ther a bust up between Rafa and Sammy before the game as Rafa was due to sit on the bench and not in the stands? well i dont know about that.

but what i do know that Rafa did cost us that game, yet again he did not do his home work on a lower team, his idea of  THEY ARE NOT A TOP 4 TEAM SO WE WILL WIN ANYWAY  might have just cost us 19.

what can he hope for...0-0 today would help, i do fear a Man u win. its not in our hands right now and it might not be for the rest of the year.

Rafa today gave the half time team talk, the first one he has given for sometime...(radio five live) we might have to start to look whats going on at the club once again and not just on how our players feel.

I think Rafa is very unhappy right now, might be down to not having the contract done and as on pundit on Sky said " i dod wonder if the owners have eyes on Sammy as the NO1"

all that aside we were

[metalhead]

wow lakes, why do you take everything so negatively sometimes

cheer up a bit 

[Ciggy]

this was also picked up on radio five live, they are asking was ther a bust up between Rafa and Sammy before the game as Rafa was due to sit on the bench and not in the stands? well i dont know about that.

Lakes you need to stop listening to bullsh!t on the radio, Rafa is going back in hospital this week for another op.

[Scottbot]

If Torres was fit enough for 30 minutes he was fit enough to get minutes from the opening kick off and Keane, no matter how many sitters he's missed this season, still offers more of a goal threat than Kuyt. 

To be fair mate, I had no problem with Torres being used as a sub because it makes sense to have him come on with a few tired legs out there and the game a little more stretched but he could have come on at half-time. Totally agree on the Keane point though. I really don't understand what Rafa sees in Kuyt that makes him think he can play as a long front-man? We played 80 minutes of a Champions league final (the bad one) in this set-up. I just can't see it. Kuyt doesn't have ANY of the qualities needed to play the role. You need to be able to do SOME or ALL of the following;

- Have the mobility to work the entire back four at some stage, work the flanks (Torres)
- Have the physical presence to out-mucsle, unsettle and bully the centre-halfs (Davies, Drogba)
- Offer a threat in behind to keep the centre-halves honest (Torres, Drogba, Andy Johnson etc)
- Have the aerial presence/ability to win flick-ons plus bring the ball down off the deck (Crouch, Davies, Kenwyn Jones)
- Be able to play with your back to goal, hold it up, use intelligence and bring others into play (Drogba, Crouch, Jones)
- Run your nuts off as the teams first point of defence

How many of these qualities does our Deadly Dirk posess? He has the last one in spades plus he can do a bit with his back to goal but that is about it. I don't especially like Keane as a lone front-man but he ticks more of the boxes. He is more mobile, has a better touch, can drop short, face up and make something happen and he offers a threat in behind with (considerably) more pace and his clever running. Keane matches Kuyt's work-rate off the ball, has an infinitely better touch and matching Deadly for his back-to-goal play. I just don't understand it.

[Number 9]

After sleeping on my dissapointment it has to be said that the manager and the players are both to blame yesterday!

Playing 1 man upfront against one of the tallest defences in the League was just plain stupid,sorry Rafa but a schoolboy would have figured playing 2 would make more sense especially when we have no one good in the air.Another man up there would have occupied their defenders more and freed up room that there was none of.Kuyt was isolated and it was obviously gonna be like that after watching 10 minutes of  the game.
Stoke had a gameplan and it was always gonna be that way,it worked.We were non effective in the centre of the pitch.Again it was obvious after early in the game that Lucas and Masch offer nothing together.Gerrard should have been pulled back into CM Lucas taken off and either Torres or Keane brought on to help the lone striker.

Another thing,with us being so shi'te in the centre yesterday it was absolute crazy to take Riera off.Nothing was coming from the centre,so it was crucial to keep the flanks working..Riera never had a good game but there was more chance of something coming from the left than the centre.Silly substitution.

Also we need to stop these fuc'king stupid senseless long balls from deep within our own half..totally stupid.Too many times yesterday we ran out of ideas and hit and hoped..doing nothing but giving Stoke back the ball.SO FRUSTRATING!

Poor from every player yesterday,no excuses,it was a flat passionless performance and they all need to take a look at themselves.We are not out of it yet,nowhere near it,just hope UTD dont win today though.
We cannot afford another game like that yesterday,Rafa needs to sort out these team selections(he could have played 4-4-2 yesterday) with Torres and Keane on and Kuyt on the right..no reason why not.Just stupid fuc'king "resting" of players.He needs to be careful he does'nt rest the League out of our hands,cause that cant happen again what happened yesterday!
3 points there for the taking and no matter how ya look at it we threw 2 of them away!

[kunilson]

disappointing.

the team we started with baffled me, i didn't see us making alot of chances and we didn't.....the team we ended with was the one we should have started with!

Stoke made it very hard for us, and didn't offer much to the game apart from when they had set pieces....we had to rely on trying to break them down, but too much faffing about passing around the back four and then losing posession where it mattered made the match more frustrating as it went on.

we NEED a good run of winning games now, and hopefully if we do the job against the bitters it will give us that lift we need, cos some of the players out there yesterday looked they were fed up for some reason and didn't wanna play.....fu.ck looking at what man u and chelsea do for a while, just concentrate on us and out performances, if we don't already do that

[HacksawJimDuggin]

Reading the BBC website there is a very accurate post on the forum...

With Mascha and Gerrard not performing and Lucas giving the ball away we REALLY missed Xabi Alonso. Add to that our wide men offered us NOTHING all night and it was a bad day at the office. We had no pace or creation last night. Bringing Torres and Babel on was the right idea but it should've been a lot earlier in the game...!

If we are going to win the league we are going to have to do it the hard way...by beating Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Everton, Villa etc in the 2nd half of the season. We should be out of sight by now and I can't help but think that we "might" be talking about games like the ones vs Stoke as where we f*cked it!!

[HacksawJimDuggin]

the ref looks like a scumbag manc fan honestly. i didnt like his face.

That ref was a gobsh!te end of.

That was his 4th game incharge for Stoke they won 3 drawn 1.

Enough said, dirty big yard dog bullies one flung Gerrard into the hordings he give them a goal kick, the other prolapsed Skytel whilst strangeling him and the corner flag in the process no yellow card nothing.

We can't blame the ref for last night!!

[Scottbot]

Rafa knew, or should have known, that Stoke were going to set up two lines of four. So why the hell did he choose to go out with a defensive formation against that? That was just stupid.

The formation wasn't necessarily the problem mate, the problem was the personnel used to play it. Stick Torres in for Kuyt, swap Gerrard back for Lucas (or Mash) and then play keane in Gerrard's position and there is nowt wrong with the formation. The biggest concern for me was watching our best player starved of possession for massive spells of the game with no effort to change it. I can see the merits of playing him behind Torres, you only have to look at the Newcastle game to see it in full-flight but when it's not working (see 90 minutes yesterday) then surely you have to find a way to get the Captain on the ball? It would have been easy to drop him back into the central-two and bring in Keane or Babel to play in the hole. Alternatively, he could have gone wide right and suddenly we would have had a genuine threat on the flanks. He played (pretty much) a whole season out there (his best season for me) and yet now it is a complete no-go? Even as a change-up in a game.

I'm more disappointed with yesterday than with any other result or performance this season, especially after the tub-thumping (which I loved) of the previous evening

[Ciggy]

We can't blame the ref for last night!!

Whos blaming the ref?

We where sh!te but so was he, what was all that about Delap goin for a towel and adding 5 extra yards further up the pitch for his throw ins and the ref was allowing it.

Closest thing to Wimbledon Stoke are, they make Sam Allerdyce's Bolton look like Barcelona.

[lakes10]

this was also picked up on radio five live, they are asking was ther a bust up between Rafa and Sammy before the game as Rafa was due to sit on the bench and not in the stands? well i dont know about that.

Lakes you need to stop listening to bullsh!t on the radio, Rafa is going back in hospital this week for another op.

I would is it was not both Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson who said it.

[Effes]

I'm more disappointed with yesterday than with any other result or performance this season,

Agree with you there Scott, and with the fact that Rafa didn't seem to change
enough on the pitch.

[Ciggy]

I would is it was not both Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson who said it.

Thats bullsh!t lakes sammy & rafa havent had a bust up atall, rafa is goin back in hospital for another op, lawro is full of sh!t anyway.

[Scottbot]

We can't blame the ref for last night!!

Whos blaming the ref?

We where sh!te but so was he, what was all that about Delap goin for a towel and adding 5 extra yards further up the pitch for his throw ins and the ref was allowing it.

Closest thing to Wimbledon Stoke are, they make Sam Allerdyce's Bolton look like Barcelona.

It's no excuse but we didn't get anything from the ref. He was quite happy with their Saturday night wrestling tactics. It's the sort of thing Wenger has a two-week whinge about but you knew that was the way they would play. I'd be interested to see how long the ball was actually in play? By the time Delap has dried the ball, waited for Shawcross to run up the field (it's no wonder the lad had cramp after 60 minutes + did you spot that Rafa? The pace of Babel/Keane might have been an idea), and stole another 5-10 yards you're talking 60-70 seconds for EVERY throw-in. Fairplay to them but I hope they get relegated. I'd rather see a side like West-Brom (who play some good football) stay up than this lot.

[Owzat]

Approaching half-time when I thought Rafa should have brought on Torres, probably for Lucas, I was thinking this was reminiscent of Reading away last season. We had some bad results against the sides we should have beaten last season, we've dropped points against them (different ones) this.

Maybe we didn't lose last night like we did against Reading, but it was just as poor a performance with the same concerns over formation, tactics etc. That Reading match was the end of our unbeaten start to the season and probably our title challenge, beginning a run of eleven games with just three wins. We've now played eleven games since and including our first (only) league defeat this season

Eleven Games From 1st League Defeat

07/08 P11 W3 D5 L3 PTS 14/33
08/09 P11 W5 D5 L1 PTS 20/33

Six points better off, but then we played more tricky games in last season's run from our first defeat - Man Utd away (lost), West Ham away (lost) and draws away at Citeh and Boro, at home to Wigan and villa. We've played Arsenal away as our only real tester in this season's eleven game run, we have yet to play Boro, Man Utd and West Ham away where we dropped points last season. Too many drawn games in both runs, too many poor performances such as Stoke, Hull, West Ham and Fulham. We're on course for matching our 13 drawn games of last season, we could even best that record