Liverpool FC Forum

by **redbeergoggles** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 1:54 am

Lets view this game as a kick up the backside, holidays are well and truly over if Liverpool genuinely have any aspirations towards becoming Champions then the sand needs to be shook out of their proverbial boots
Babel doesn't merit any inclusion in my post ,abjectly pathetic excuse for a winger .
Mascherano is taking the p*ss out of the shirt he's wearing ,if he doesn't have the heart for the fight any more, then that red shirt needs to come off his ungrateful back ,Lucas was doing the work of two ,no wonder he couldn't afford to play further up the field ,this game was crying out for invention and the inclusion of a little live wire like Pacheco ,he and Insua were the only players who impressed me pre-season

On a more positive note Ayala fitted in quite well and Insua had a steady game ,Benayoun pulled their defence all over the place and was the architect of our most attacking forays ,Gerrard will get better every game he plays ,and Johnson will prove to be a very useful addition ,and lets not forget Spurs have recently become our new bogey team ........

Whose to say Liverpool wont go the rest of this season unbeaten ,this match could well be the catalyst for a truly remarkable season, today has been a sobering experience lets hope its a watershed for the players as well .

It goes without saying enough pundits and journalists are awaiting our fall with feverish glee ,so maybe we as fans should back the Reds , and see what the season brings the hard graft begins now cmon the Redmen .

by **redbeergoggles** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 1:59 am

Lets view this game as a kick up the backside, holidays are well and truly over if Liverpool genuinely have any aspirations towards becoming Champions then the sand needs to be shook out of their proverbial boots
Babel doesn't merit any inclusion in my post ,abjectly pathetic excuse for a winger .
Mascherano is taking the p*ss out of the shirt he's wearing ,if he doesn't have the heart for the fight any more, then that red shirt needs to come off his ungrateful back ,Lucas was doing the work of two ,no wonder he couldn't afford to play further up the field ,this game was crying out for invention and the inclusion of a little live wire like Pacheco ,he and Insua were the only players who impressed me pre-season

On a more positive note Ayala fitted in quite well and Insua had a steady game ,Benayoun pulled their defence all over the place and was the architect of our most attacking forays ,Gerrard will get better every game he plays ,and Johnson will prove to be a very useful addition ,and lets not forget Spurs have recently become our new bogey team ........

Whose to say Liverpool wont go the rest of this season unbeaten ,this match could well be the catalyst for a truly remarkable season, today has been a sobering experience lets hope its a watershed for the players as well .

It goes without saying enough pundits and journalists are awaiting our fall with feverish glee ,so maybe we as fans should back the Reds , and see what the season brings the hard graft begins now "cmon the Redmen ".

by **redbeergoggles** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:06 am

I apologize for the double post ,I hate laptops when your p*ssed

by **del_potro** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:08 am

Is it possible to watch a summary of the match, somewhere?

by **JoeTerp** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:48 am

one thing that makes me mad is it seems like we played the "Reina saves our skin card" and wasted it on a lost. Although I guess to let in some of those chances would have been really embarrassing.

by **Madmax** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:06 am

Man what a shyte performance.. Its clean macha and lucas will never work so until aqua man gets back i would prefer rafa to play this...

macha gerrard
kuyt riera/babel
yossi

torres

If he continues to play lucas then i can't see gerrard or torres getting any service... Early days but were fecked a lil.

by **akumaface** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:11 am

Fowler_E7 wrote:Thought the whole team were awful today, with a special mention to Ryan Babel and Lucas Leiva who may as well have stayed at home with the amount of input they had in the game. When i saw the lineup today i feared the worst, i mean did anyone really expect of host of chances being made, with Babel, Kuyt, Mascherano and Lucas in the team? poor selection from Rafa IMO. I think for the next game we should make a few changes in midfield to spice things up a bit, it was disgustingly limp out there today.

1.Reina
Rb.Johnson Cb.Carragher Cb.Skretl Lb. Insua

Rw.Kuyt Cm.Gerrard Cm.Mascherano Lw.Riera

Am.Benayoun

St.Torres

I think we should go with that lineup until Aquilani is fit

I think Riera was injured and can't play yesterday. TBH, Babel was the worse player on the pitch yesterday. As for Lucas, I never liked him to begin with as he really doesn't have any attribute but although he didn't play well enough, so did the rest of the team. Lucas did put in the effort. I think it is proven that Lucas can't play the Alonso role. So, either we changed the formation or not to play Lucas as it will be too late when Aquilani is fit. Even if Aquilani is fit, he is no guarantee to be able to perform right away....So, Rafa need to be creative and goes with the hot hand. Play Beni (behind Torres with Gerrard dropping back to CM) and Dossena (LM) ahead of Lucas and Babel.

by **Bad Bob** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:14 am

To be fair, aCe', there were some cringeworthy comments on 'both sides of the aisle' earlier. Such is the nature of match threads during and immediately after the game, unfortunately. So, accepting that as given, I'd like to make a suggestion.

This kind of stuff...

aCe' wrote:Absolutely laughable some of the reactions on here... some apparently just coming on to have digs at anyone who has anything critical to say about our wonderful display... but anyways...

Said it before the season started, said in the game thread before the game, said it in all relevant threads... its all been said by various people, only for some to laugh it off ... well its pretty fcking obvious now...

...adds absolutely nothing to the football discussion and simply encourages the same old flame wars to kick off once more.

Whereas, this kind of stuff...

3 things im concerned about the most to be honest, and todays game did very little to assure me:

- our bench looks poor ; no decent cover for CB, no backup FW of any quality to be called on, no CMs who can actually come on and play against good players, just a poor bench overall when all is said and done. Benny was the only one, if he had started it would have been Babel, same story...

- Mascherano-Lucas in the middle... seeing as to how we were outplayed in central areas by pretty much all the sides we came up against in preseason, Rafa surely must have realized that this pairing was never going to bring the ball out from the back with any sort of conviction.. its not in Lucas, and its definitely not in Mascherano... said before the game that Gerrard is going to have to come very deep inside to collect the ball and start our play if we were to get any sort of attacking moves through the middle, and it took us 75mins or so to start doing that yesterday, prior to which, we quite simply offered nothing in terms of build-up play through the middle.. Insua and Johnson didnt do too badly but i would have expected us to push Kuyt & Babel deeper inside with the 2 fullbacks providing wide cover... very little of that happened and very late on... all in all, we need to reconsider our style of play given our personnel..

- Rafas mentality... ill leave that to a relevant thread... safe to say we went out there today to kick the tottenham boys about and stop them from playing rather than try to express our attacking talents...

Anyways... not as worried about the points dropped here as i am about our style of play and our options to try and fix that... in a perfect world we'd be going all out to buy 3 players to try and fix things a little... with our funds i dont think thats possible, still think we absolutely need atleast 2 players though.. backup CB and FW...

...adds quite a bit to the football discussion by giving people something to chew on. How thin is our squad? What game-changers can we rely on from the bench (if any)? How do we expect to move the ball effectively from back to front on the deck with Lucas and Masch in the engine room? Was Rafa reverting to the same old 'overly tactical' approach that has shown too much respect to teams in the past? Is there still time to patch up the leaks through the transfer market? etc. All big, big questions worthy of some real discussion...which will probably only happen if the prefatory :rasp

gets axed. Just my two cents...

by **bigmick** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:28 am

To be honest I thought there was a bit of over reaction to the game (although I haven't seen it so possibly I'd change my mind if I did). I wasn't massively surprised, not because Rafa is a clown or because Torres is sh!t, but because Spurs are a pretty decent team. When Redknapp took over from the baby food bloke they had 2 points from eight matches, and he took them up into seventh or something. Now it'd take someone a bit more stat minded than me to work it out, but their form must have been at least top six standard and probably slightly better for that to happen. Then they sign some good players in the Summer, we lose Alonso with about a week to spare, its the first game of the season, away, they've got the sun on their backs, Gerrard probably wasn't 100% fit, they've got blokes with a point to prove to us and all that.

It was hardly the biggest surprise in the World, neither was the realisation that if you take Alonso out and put Lucas in you're a bit weaker. So long as we get ourselves going at Home on Wednesday, there shouldn't be too much bother. We really could do with winning that one mind.

by **aCe'** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:43 am

Bad Bob wrote:To be fair, aCe', there were some cringeworthy comments on 'both sides of the aisle' earlier. Such is the nature of match threads during and immediately after the game, unfortunately. So, accepting that as given, I'd like to make a suggestion.

This kind of stuff...

aCe' wrote:Absolutely laughable some of the reactions on here... some apparently just coming on to have digs at anyone who has anything critical to say about our wonderful display... but anyways...

Said it before the season started, said in the game thread before the game, said it in all relevant threads... its all been said by various people, only for some to laugh it off ... well its pretty fcking obvious now...

...adds absolutely nothing to the football discussion and simply encourages the same old flame wars to kick off once more.

Whereas, this kind of stuff...

3 things im concerned about the most to be honest, and todays game did very little to assure me:

- our bench looks poor ; no decent cover for CB, no backup FW of any quality to be called on, no CMs who can actually come on and play against good players, just a poor bench overall when all is said and done. Benny was the only one, if he had started it would have been Babel, same story...

- Mascherano-Lucas in the middle... seeing as to how we were outplayed in central areas by pretty much all the sides we came up against in preseason, Rafa surely must have realized that this pairing was never going to bring the ball out from the back with any sort of conviction.. its not in Lucas, and its definitely not in Mascherano... said before the game that Gerrard is going to have to come very deep inside to collect the ball and start our play if we were to get any sort of attacking moves through the middle, and it took us 75mins or so to start doing that yesterday, prior to which, we quite simply offered nothing in terms of build-up play through the middle.. Insua and Johnson didnt do too badly but i would have expected us to push Kuyt & Babel deeper inside with the 2 fullbacks providing wide cover... very little of that happened and very late on... all in all, we need to reconsider our style of play given our personnel..

- Rafas mentality... ill leave that to a relevant thread... safe to say we went out there today to kick the tottenham boys about and stop them from playing rather than try to express our attacking talents...

Anyways... not as worried about the points dropped here as i am about our style of play and our options to try and fix that... in a perfect world we'd be going all out to buy 3 players to try and fix things a little... with our funds i dont think thats possible, still think we absolutely need atleast 2 players though.. backup CB and FW...

...adds quite a bit to the football discussion by giving people something to chew on. How thin is our squad? What game-changers can we rely on from the bench (if any)? How do we expect to move the ball effectively from back to front on the deck with Lucas and Masch in the engine room? Was Rafa reverting to the same old 'overly tactical' approach that has shown too much respect to teams in the past? Is there still time to patch up the leaks through the transfer market? etc. All big, big questions worthy of some real discussion...which will probably only happen if the prefatory gets axed. Just my two cents...

point taken...

by **Toffeehater** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:00 am

JoeTerp wrote:
Toffeehater wrote:I thought ayala was brilliant when he came on , held on defoe very well . Motm for me Johnson , only one who looked like he could so something , masch defended brilliant as well

you wouldn't have Reina as MOTM, it would have been embarrassing without him.

, oh yea forgot about reina . He was brilliant once again proves why he's top 3 of keepers in the world

by **JoeTerp** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:32 am

watched the weekly prem wrap up program that they show in the States, and they mentioned that Spurs haven't lost a league game at home since November.

by **JoeTerp** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:36 am

Madmax wrote:Its clean macha and lucas will never work

seemed to work pretty well at Old Trafford in the last campaign. (a game in which we also got no help from the left wing)

by **account deleted by request** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:37 am

bigmick wrote:To be honest I thought there was a bit of over reaction to the game (although I haven't seen it so possibly I'd change my mind if I did). I wasn't massively surprised, not because Rafa is a clown or because Torres is sh!t, but because Spurs are a pretty decent team. When Redknapp took over from the baby food bloke they had 2 points from eight matches, and he took them up into seventh or something. Now it'd take someone a bit more stat minded than me to work it out, but their form must have been at least top six standard and probably slightly better for that to happen. Then they sign some good players in the Summer, we lose Alonso with about a week to spare, its the first game of the season, away, they've got the sun on their backs, Gerrard probably wasn't 100% fit, they've got blokes with a point to prove to us and all that.

It was hardly the biggest surprise in the World, neither was the realisation that if you take Alonso out and put Lucas in you're a bit weaker. So long as we get ourselves going at Home on Wednesday, there shouldn't be too much bother. We really could do with winning that one mind.

I am not sure how many games you watched in pre-season Mick, but if you saw any of them you will get the idea of how poorly we played first half. I think it was Joe that said we didn't press them in the first half, he was spot on. We never worked as a unit, we were very disjointed and our defence played as if all their last names were Riise with the number of aimless boots up field.

Yes I think some people over reacted, but given our first half performance one can hardly blame them. Not that we played great in the second half , but at least we began to look as if the players had been introduced to each other at half time.

It certainly wasn't that spurs played exceptionally well, we just played badly, and if Keane had been more clinical we could have been 3 or 4 down by half time.

It perhaps a good job we didn't get the second penalty and a draw, or we may have been arrested for highway robbery.

Its not the end of the world losing at Spurs, but if we don't improve on that performance we will be out of the running before Aquilani even gets a game.

Things can only get better.......hopefully.

by **bigmick** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 7:14 am

s@int wrote:Its not the end of the world losing at Spurs, but if we don't improve on that performance we will be out of the running before Aquilani even gets a game.

This is the danger S@int for me, and I can't help getting a little bit nervous that we are about to "discover" something which while standing us in good stead for a future campaign, ought to be pretty obvious before it actually happens.

Last season as we drew with all and sundry the manager was comfortable with draws as he had won the title at Valencia despite drawing a stack of matches. He mentioned it a couple of times in interviews, many on here believed it too. In the cold light of day though it became painfully obvious the draws had cost us the title and there was nothing we could do about it, as the Mancs had an unassailable lead simply because they won every week.

This years voyage of discovery is coming early and on a couple of fronts. We almost nicked the title last season as we blasted out of the blocks, leaving the Mancs to feck about in Brazil and Chelsea to find a manager who had some inkling of what English football was all about. We nearly got a big enough lead, perhaps we would have if we hadn't lost our nerve a bit around the turn of the year, and along with others I've been saying for a bit now that the Mancs and Chelsea won't let it happen again. You could tell that by their pre season programmes, and I'm absolutely certain they both have geared themselves up to absolutely ping out of the traps. It really would be the epitome of bad planning if we were left adrift after 10 matches, giving it the old "well we'll know next year that we've got to be ready from game one".

Equally, this trying to recruit players once the season had actually started. I thought all that went out with "fecking Parry :angry:

" and yet here we are, trying to fill our squad up after the big kick off. Hyppia left months ago and we still haven't got a fourth centre back, Keane left at Christmas and we still haven't got credible cover for Torres or Gerrard. Again as a few said at the time, while it was heartening to win the big willy contest with Madrid, it may have been better compromising a month or six weeks ago and actually getting the players in who we needed.

Losing the first match doesn't put you out of it by any means, but it doesn't exactly put you in it either. Failure to beat Stoke would put us under absolutely all kinds of pressure, which frankly you don't need this early on.

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