Liverpool FC Forum

Bamaga man wrote:

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.

bigmick wrote: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

s@int wrote:

bigmick wrote: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.

I just did a quick tally and the post-Christmas numbers (Dec. 26th on) looked like this last season:

Man U - 42 points
Chelsea - 39 points
Arsenal - 35 points
Liverpool - 34 points

Thankfully, stats can only reflect what's happened in the past, not predict with certainty what will happen in the future.

stmichael wrote:

Scottbot wrote:3 - Defensive record - After looking shaky at times early season we are back to looking solid with Hyppia back in the groove, Carra back to top form, Arbeloa our most consistent defender this season and now Finnan playing himself back into form. Add to this the BEST goalkeeper in the league and you can see why.

this is the key point for me.

when your defence is performing well it takes some of the pressure off the attacking players in a way.

Owzat wrote:Only one of those was a worthwhile clean sheet, at Blackburn. The rest given the teams, location and season as factors were probably par for the course.

stmichael wrote:Another positive is that Pako has gone.

Personally I think he was holding us back.  

Hey thats true, poor old Pako nobodies mentioned the poor fecker for about the last three weeks. A month ago, he was master tactician, chief scout and strategist, now he's the bloke who used to put the nets up in training.

Maybe I should write to him and let him know we've got a table tennis tournament coming up on the good ship, he can come to our toga party on Friday night.