Liverpool FC Forum

dawson99 wrote:This thread is brilliant.. we have possibly the worst fans in the league

(not you Ben)

I was watching the WBA game last weekend and the expert for Danish TV was Jacob Laursen. For those not familiar with his work, he’s a retired Danish international who has played in Denmark, England (Derby, Wolves) and Switzerland. Among the clubs on his Danish CV is Hodgson’s FC Copenhagen. The story is that upon Hodgson’s arrival at FCK he asked the club to sign Laursen and then made him the captain.

It was quite interesting to hear small pieces of inside information on the coaching philosophy of Hodgson throughout the game. Among other things he mentioned that Roy is happiest when he’s on the training ground. He dislikes the agents and he dislikes the transfer window. He asks for certain players, but then steps away and doesn’t deal with these things until the transfer is done.

Another interesting thing he said is how Roy is one of the most methodical managers in Europe. To quote Laursen: “When you start working with Roy it’s all very confusing. In his head he has a clear idea of what each player should do and for a while it’s all a big mess because footballers are not equipped to take on board such complicated instructions. However, once those instructions sunk in at FCK we played some of the best football ever seen in Danish football.”

This is exactly how I see Roy. People are already familiar with my admiration for his coaching abilities and one of the biggest reasons for it is that he’s a proper football coach. He has been all over the world, but one thing that always goes with him is his desire to do things his own way and to do it himself. He will not delegate anything to anybody on the training ground. Instead he’ll be there, just as much at the age of 63 as he was 30 years ago, waving his arms at people and teaching professionals half his age how to do their job.

Roy, being what he is, is why I think he’ll bring the best out of our team. In a lot of ways his working philosophy reminds me of that of Van Gaal. Highly methodical, takes a bit of time to implement his ideas, but eventually produces a strong team more often than not. Another similarity is that when their philosophy doesn’t work then it really doesn’t work (Roy at Blackburn, Van Gaal for Holland). So when criticizing Roy, either positively or negatively, remember what happened to Van Gaal last season. He was one game away from getting the boot, but he stuck to his philosophy and eventually engineered one of the best seasons at history of the club. Coincidentally Van Gaal, just like Roy Hodgson, wasn’t the most popular choice when he was first appointed and there was a lot of sceptisicism from the same people who now call him one of the best in the business. My message is, give it some time.

The real question is, what does he have to work with?

I believe our squad is strong than last season. That’s a statement right there. I believe we’ve only lost one starting 11 player (Mascherano) and bought four starting 11 players (Konchesky, Poulsen, Meireles, Cole). That in itself has to be an improvement. Looking at our squad as a whole I think out of the players we’ve let go only Mascherano and Yossi will be missed in the squad. The rest either didn’t play (Riera, Aquilani, El Zhar, Plessis) or played very poorly (Insua). That again tells me we’re better off now.

Does this mean our squad is what we want it to be? No. Absolutely not. Realistically we’re about 3 players short by lacking another central midfielder who, in terms of quality, is closer to Gerrard and Meireles than Poulsen and Lucas. We lack a winger who is good enough to start every game. We also lack another striker. The unfortunate thing, though, is that all those players cost a lot of money, are on massive wages and already play for good clubs. We saw that in our inability to convince Mario Gomez to give up being the highest paid player at the best club in Germany.

So when you don’t have the money to buy established attacking players you need to take a long shot on either a talented youngster or a player who doesn’t look up to much now, but could do so in the future. The problem with either approach is that you need to give those types of players games, and plenty of them. And again, we can’t afford this luxury at the moment. The likes of Cole and Zamora have been mentioned, but one has to ask whether those players would be as effective if they got degraded from being regular starters to squad players. What we do know is that N’Gog and Kuyt can chip in with 10 goals each deputizing for Torres. Would Cole and Zamora do better? I’m not so sure. Starting every week and being the focal points of their teams is one thing. Being a rotational player at a big club is another thing.

Having started the twitter thread I know that every signing, or even a rumor of a signing, is exciting. Had it flashed on SSN that we’ve signed Van Der Vaart we’d all be jumping up and down. Hell, we even got excited about Pavlychenko rumors. But when the dust settles you actually realize that Liverpool is still a strong enough team which cannot be improved by any decent player. Every signing has to make sense in the situation we’re in and all the excitement aside I don’t think signing any random striker or midfielder would have been the answer.

I could be in minority but, for me, the biggest issue is the midfield. Options are plenty, but quality is sparse. Out of 5 central midfielders only two are genuine class players, namely Gerrard and Meireles. Poulsen and Lucas are decent squad players and Shelvey is a talented youngster. The positive is that you don’t need all your midfielders to be top class, but then you have to rely on your best ones staying fit for most of the season.

Options for the three positions behind Torres are also of alarmingly low quality. Kuyt, Maxi, Babel, Cole, Jovanovic and Pacheco range from good to decent to unknown, but none of them is a stand out performer and this is where Liverpool has its biggest weakness. There is no player in any of those positions that you want to isolate and give the ball. There is nobody to turn to when organized football can’t give you the edge. Cole comes closest to such description, but as he nears the age of 30 he’s becoming more of a pass and move midfielder than a winger.

Criticism to one side, though, there is still plenty of quality in this Liverpool team. The best goalkeeper in England plays behind the most extravagant right back in England. Liverpool is also the only top 4 club who can take pride in having four international centrebacks, all with decent number of caps for their respective countries. There are a few top class midfielders and possibly world’s best striker. Around those players are other international players that come with impressive stats, both in England and abroad. There is plenty to work with and as long as the very good players have very good seasons the water carriers will tag along.

This transfer window was big, difficult but also very, very important. A lot of dead wood has been canned and for the first time in years we can say that there are no senior passengers in our squad, like Degen and El Zhar were. We have tried our best to add some class players in Meireles, Cole while trying to plug the holes with experienced players like Konchesky, Jovanovic and Poulsen.

The positive about the transfer window closing is that the manager can now go back to doing what he does best. Spending hours on the training ground with his team in a quest to make them play the way he wants it.

Make no mistake, this team is damaged and wounded. It’s been through hell on and off the pitch in the last 12 months and it has taken its toll even on the best of them. A manager cannot just come in, tell a joke and make them all feel happy about themselves. Each player needs to regain confidence and belief and this will not come overnight. It must come through hard work, dedication and belief and the manager.

Given a bit of time and patience, coupled with a bit of lucky injury wise, I believe we’ll slowly have more and more to smile about.

And if the eternal pessimist believes then so should you.