Liverpool FC Forum

god_bless_john_houlding wrote:redtrader, I don't like this idea of "bullying" officials. The press side doesn't bother me because they have no impact on the football pitch. The press can't decide to send you off, or come on and score a hattrick. But your point(s) about officials for me isn't going to help us any better. Chelsea do it, and what happens? Matters turn out worse for them down to the FA or in the end red cards. Ashley Cole would of been sent off by a ref with any bollox against Spurs, but I don't think Chelsea get any benifits from bullying officials as you put it. United under the leadership of Roy Keane were much worse than they are now, but again they were constantly in trouble because of this bullying tactic.

People are bemoaning the fact that Hicks is lowering the good name of Liverpool Football Club, well so would going up to a ref in a mob with steam coming out of our ears on a regular basis. I don't think there's need to bully officials. I think we could "lean" on them a little more, a bit like United do now, but I don't want to see us carry on like Chelsea. Arsenal are worse than United at it IMO and they haven't always finished above us. I think we need to sort out many things before we start looking at how we respond towards the officials.

stmichael wrote:

bigmick wrote:I did notice Taffs point Bob and actually somebody else raised it earlier, the "so you are saying the Premiership is harder to win then" and of course I am. You can't have it both ways in any argument, it's as sure as night follows day that if English teams are dominant in Europe (which they are) then the Premiership is hard to win. Trying to have it both ways in an argument is daft and it's exasperating when you come up against it. It's like saying "it's nothing to do with rotation" when we are misfiring left right and centre in the early part of the season, and then saying "it's because of a lack of rotation" when Arsenal fail by ten minutes or so to put us out of the champions league. Nothing to do with being fractionally unlucky with a couple of penalty decisons, nothing to do with one of their own blokes clearing it off the line for us, it's all down to rotation innit? I argued with people until i was blue in the face earlier in the season, many of them saying that mass rotation doesn't have any effect on fluency whatsoever, none, nada  Needless to say those same people are now all over the Arsenal example I bet Wengers gutted, he could have done it the same as us and been out of it by Christmas if he'd played his cards right, would've saved him getting his hopes up anyway.

Seriously though (and I am only jesting) on the question of the Premiership it's hard to win as there are three excellent teams in it apart from us. One of the things which grates though, is not that we haven't actually won it during rafa's reign, its that we have never, ever, not for a nanosecond even challenged for it. The other thing that grates of course is that we have absolutely no excuse whatsover to be scrapping with the likes of Everton, Villa and Portsmouth fopr fourth place. Given our superiority to those teams, we should be over the horizon and visible only with binoculars long before the run in.

Watching Premier League and Champions League games you would think that the two competitions have two completely different sets of rules at times, both are very different because the interpretation of the rules is set by different governing bodies to facilitate the brand of football being played that they believe gives them the highest ratings, it's all about product.

Given that in International competition all teams have to conform to Champions League refereeing standards and interpretations as opposed to Premiership refereeing is it really any wonder the English national side continually struggle?

The main problem for me though is that the media view and support United’s extremely direct and unique style of play as the perfect advertisement for “their product”, but for me United simply don’t play the same type of football as Liverpool are beginning to play more consistently and Arsenal have for some time. Their style of play simply doesn’t and never will translate into consistent results in European or World football. They love the old adage that “the table doesn’t lie” and results don’t lie either, a potential 2nd Champions league final in 16 seasons with the array of top class internationals they have had at their disposal tells it’s own story.

For me United don't play the possession based pass and move attacking game that too many give them credit for, they play a very direct style made up of an enormous collection of rehearesed set plays whether they are from open play, attacking set pieces or defending the oppositons set pieces, a real percentage game which they do successfully simply because they have bought some of the World's best players and drilled them thoroughly to repeat these percentage set plays with the accuracy you would expect time and time again, or in some cases just once throughout games. In games against the top sides in the league they try to disrupt the play are extremely over physical in their approach and too much is "let go" by the officials.

Sabre wrote:(Didn't mean to wind up really) I preffer the former aswell, as I preffer Babel to the constantly injured Kewell.

But I think that Aurelio's bad luck with injuries won't last forever, I don't recall him being injury prone before this (admittedly) long patch of bad luck.

That said, Arbeloa probably deserved much of the credit he got, he's really given what we can expect from him, and he's been constant and regular. But I don't see him becoming a top player, just an accomplished one that we can count and we need to count on during a long season with lots of matches. Good player for rotation, you use him after 5 games, and he's able to perform well, he's very regular

Lando_Griffin wrote:

god_bless_john_houlding wrote:Benitez has over-achieved? two major trophies in four years is over achieving? Houllier must of been the biggest over-achiever in recent years then.

I keep saying it, we've progressed here, here and here and went backwards there, there and there. Have we progressed overall? Not to any great extent no.

Shurrup lad. You're still like a broken fecking record.

This "5 is better than 3 irrespective of the quality" b*llocks is really getting on my tits.

It's not a game of numbers - it's about the quality of those numbers.

I take it you'd see the winning of the Reserve league twice as better than 1 Premiership?

Get over it FFS.