Liverpool FC Forum

Typical misconception that the squad was that poor at all. We playerd some decent football at the end of last season with only the addition of Suarez in the squad!
Almost the best form in the league.

And how can you just sweep the outlay by Kenny under the rug and say we need more backing from the owners so we can insert quality to the squad.
What is it that you don't get?
We are no Chelski or Man City who can waste 100 million and then expect the owners to come to the rescue in the next window.
This is why a manager at LFC have to be shrewed in the market, look everywhere for the best bang for your buck. And he has to get them right most of the time.

And all the singings in the summer "just happened to be british"... You honestly believe that yourself???

The problem was that that rightwinger and natural goal scorer should have been bought for the money that Kenny had at his disposal before.
Instead he bought Carroll, Downing, Henderson and Adam for all the money. Not only did he buy it on poor players, it wasn't even in the position we really needed.
So instead of keeping Meireles/Aqua and go for those positions he had to go for Adam and Henderson instead. Talk about error of judgement right there.
Kenny has to lie in the bed he had made and hope to god his buys willl reward him soon becuase of you expect him to be bankrolled each summer you are mistaken.

How is it a misconception that the squad was poor with Poulsen, Konchesky and Jovanovich in it ? Everybody on here agreed it needed a major rebuild.

30 odd million after 3 years of decline is not much compared to the teams at the top of the EPL, we need to 1 or 2 quality players every year if we want to compete at the top.

I think if a decent foreign player with EPL experience was available we would have considered him although they seemed to want to go for a British core to the team - and I'm not defending that.

I agree that the balance of the signings wasn't right, we seemed to sign too many CM's and we still need a good right winger and natural goal scorer. I liked Aquilani and wanted him to be a success but he wanted to go back to Italy and didn't Meireles want to work with AVB.

All managers make some bad signings but what I'm saying is that the players being criticised now might look a lot better when the squad is further improved in the areas we all know we are short in.

It would be great if we could pick up bargain players that turn out to be world beaters but that doesn't happen too much nowadays, if it did any of the teams could win the league.

NESV bought us for a bargain price and want us to become successfull, to achieve that we need stability and regular money spent on quality players, we don't need to spend like Man City but we need more money than we've had for the last few years.

I was a big fan of Rafa and thought he did a great job in increasingly difficult circumstances. I didn't want Kenny to get the job because I didn't want his reputation damaged but now he's here I think he deserves the time to see what he can do.

Penguins wrote:Typical misconception that the squad was that poor at all. We playerd some decent football at the end of last season with only the addition of Suarez in the squad!
Almost the best form in the league.

And how can you just sweep the outlay by Kenny under the rug and say we need more backing from the owners so we can insert quality to the squad.
What is it that you don't get?
We are no Chelski or Man City who can waste 100 million and then expect the owners to come to the rescue in the next window.
This is why a manager at LFC have to be shrewed in the market, look everywhere for the best bang for your buck. And he has to get them right most of the time.

And all the singings in the summer "just happened to be british"... You honestly believe that yourself???

The problem was that that rightwinger and natural goal scorer should have been bought for the money that Kenny had at his disposal before.
Instead he bought Carroll, Downing, Henderson and Adam for all the money. Not only did he buy it on poor players, it wasn't even in the position we really needed.
So instead of keeping Meireles/Aqua and go for those positions he had to go for Adam and Henderson instead. Talk about error of judgement right there.
Kenny has to lie in the bed he had made and hope to god his buys willl reward him soon becuase of you expect him to be bankrolled each summer you are mistaken.

of course the squad was poor, before dalglish took over the reigns they had won the grand total of 2 away games in a calender year (1 under benitez and 1 under hodgson), were you stranded on a desert island or something back then? cant you remember us getting played off the park by the likes of reading at anfield in the f.a cup when our season hinged on the game? i wouldnt mind but at the time reading were a division below us and fighting relegation after accumilating 2 wins in their previous 23 games. what about the portsmouth game where a team made up of players they couldnt sell because no one else wanted them and a team made up of players who hadnt been paid in 3 months played us off the park?
some of the performances and results in the latter part of benitez`s reign and throughout hodgsons reign were dreadful, at the end of rafa`s tenure we had almost gone full circle and returned to what we were when houllier left, we were practically a long ball team with carragher aimlessly wellying the ball up the field for the isolated (and judging by the faces on the pair of them - p1s$ed off as well) torres and gerrard to try and create something out of nothing.
i think people are forgetting how poor and disjointed we were in the 18 months before kenny took over.
the fact that kenny somehow managed to do what rafa and hodgson couldnt do i.e get them performing well shouldnt be held against dalglish.
and i dont like the way fans are trying to pin the transfers solely on dalglish either, it`s obvious the owners had their own thoughts on player recruitment, thats why they took the trouble to go and speak to that billy `moneyball` beane fella and thats why they took what he said onboard and appointed damien comoli who he recommended. do they sound like people who would give a manager a load of money and say to him buy who you want? over half of this £100m kenny is said to have wasted was spent on 2 players (carroll and suarez) when kenny had only been at the club a matter of days and that was in the position of a interim manager, back then there was no indication what so ever that kenny was going to be the long term manager, infact even when he went on a great run of results the owners were in no rush to give him the job full time and wanted to keep their options open and assess the situation at the end of the season.
do you honestly think they gave kenny the torres money when he had been in the job days and was temporary manager and said to him buy who you want?

When we play these bitter tw@ts tomorrow see how much their team cost in comparison to ours. And watch how they play as a team rather than individuals.
Maybe we should go bargain basement and find some rough diamonds rather than looking for expensive foreign imports?

Thommo's perm wrote:Maybe we should go bargain basement and find some rough diamonds rather than looking for expensive foreign imports?

i didn't know Carroll, Downing and Henderson were imports 

maypaxvobiscum wrote:

Thommo's perm wrote:Maybe we should go bargain basement and find some rough diamonds rather than looking for expensive foreign imports?

i didn't know Carroll, Downing and Henderson were imports 

The north east is foreign to me

I don't think its tactics is the problem with Dalglish, encouraging Johnson and Enrique to get down the wings to cross is an advantage.
I think it's not just Kenny's management. The right players may not be available in transfer market. Look at the Mancs, when they sold Ronaldo and Tevez, who did they buy? nothing of the same quality. now relying on smalling, welbeck, jones, all loan players who they have had to bring back.

Maybe we are all jumping the gun, and Carroll and Henderson need a little more time to bed in, as only young.

Do we have nothing in the reserves? what's that dudes name....Toni Silva, he was always banging in goals in the reserves

is it not worth rolling the dice.and throwing a young striker up front.

i don't see how leaving carroll on the bench is going to improve his confidence. ok he didn't play well against cardiff but prior to that he was playing really well. against arsenal i could understand him being left out but sunderland i was convinced he would start.

stmichael wrote:i don't see how leaving carroll on the bench is going to improve his confidence. ok he didn't play well against cardiff but prior to that he was playing really well. against arsenal i could understand him being left out but sunderland i was convinced he would start.

cant disagree here.
carroll would have caused untold problems for arsenal and equally against sunderland but as to why he was dropped when he began to improve is beyond me.
only kenny has the answers to this and if he was asked he wouldnt give a straight answer anyway.
im not sure he quite knows what his best team is or how to get the best out of them either.

stmichael wrote:i don't see how leaving carroll on the bench is going to improve his confidence. ok he didn't play well against cardiff but prior to that he was playing really well. against arsenal i could understand him being left out but sunderland i was convinced he would start.

I agree. He looked like he was finding form and confidence. That said you don't know how these players perform in training on a daily basis. People seem to forget that often this is the primary factor to team selection by any manager. very few players can under-perform all week in training and still make the starting line-up.

red till i die!! wrote:

stmichael wrote:i don't see how leaving carroll on the bench is going to improve his confidence. ok he didn't play well against cardiff but prior to that he was playing really well. against arsenal i could understand him being left out but sunderland i was convinced he would start.

cant disagree here.
carroll would have caused untold problems for arsenal and equally against sunderland but as to why he was dropped when he began to improve is beyond me.
only kenny has the answers to this and if he was asked he wouldnt give a straight answer anyway.
im not sure he quite knows what his best team is or how to get the best out of them either.

Assuming everyone is fit, the back 6 would nearly always be the same. (Reina, Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Enrique, Lucas/Spearing).   Maybe this is why our defence has been our strong point?

Its the front 5 that Kenny can't seem to get right.  He tried Carroll and Suarez up front, then we had Maxi, Bellamy and Suarez all linking up, then Suarez got banned and Maxi fell off the face of the earth.   

kenny needs to pick a front 5 and try to stick with it.

the thing is, we don't have anyone who can play on their own upfront imo. suarez will do it but it doesn't get the best out of him as he drifts out wide too often. he's not a main striker. he wasn't for ajax and he certainly isn't for uruguay.

carroll is the best option, but only if he has midfield runners going beyond him and lets face it, we hardly get any midfield players in the penalty area, let alone running beyond the strikers.

it's very rare to find players that are capable of playing that role to such a great standard in the modern day game. that's why we were lucky to have torres in his pom who was as good as i've seen at playing the role. drogba is another great exponent. shearer before him.

Not really much benefit going over tactics and formations as by now we have tried everything with this squad.

Just like last year all we can do now is prepare for next season by ticking off who we want shut of and draw up a list of names to replace them.

stmichael wrote:the thing is, we don't have anyone who can play on their own upfront imo. suarez will do it but it doesn't get the best out of him as he drifts out wide too often. he's not a main striker. he wasn't for ajax and he certainly isn't for uruguay.

carroll is the best option, but only if he has midfield runners going beyond him and lets face it, we hardly get any midfield players in the penalty area, let alone running beyond the strikers.

it's very rare to find players that are capable of playing that role to such a great standard in the modern day game. that's why we were lucky to have torres in his pom who was as good as i've seen at playing the role. drogba is another great exponent. shearer before him.

we shouldnt be going down that `lone striker` road though mate, how many goals would john aldridge (or john toshack or dalglish himself) have scored if they had to play up front on their own and without a lot of support from midfield? dalglish the player relied on players being in support so he could put them through with a clever pass. kenny was a great player but he wouldnt look half the player he was playing in this side.
as you say we just dont get enough men forward and when we do get men forward most of them (especially midfielders) take up a position outside the opposition box waiting for the ball to be cleared, we just dont get midfielders running beyond our forwards or trying to get on the end of things, but to me the solution to that problem isnt to go out and buy a forward who is suited to play the lone frontman role, the solution is to tell our midfielders to shift their @rses and get up and support our attackers.
to be fair to maxi he is probably the only midfielder at the club who does it regularly, henderson does it occasionally too.

if our midfield havent the inteligence to get forward in support or indeed if they need to be told this then i dont hold out much hope for them.
they sit because they have no pace to cover the ground thats required to offer support,that much has been obvious all season and it still continues while kenny sits back and appears to do nothing to change it.
maxi is an example of this and will never be nothing more than a bit part player under kenny and he struggles to even get off the bench.i dont see this changing anytime soon.shelvey is worth a shot imo and deserves a chance and he will get himself into the opposition box for a chance or support from the outside.he also has a pretty good strike on him and could prove valuable for goals.