Early thoughts on Rodgers

[fin-bat]

Reina will be sold on january. I just woke up to tell you what I saw.

[Code]

Maybe, but what good is that to us now?

 

Well it kicks the feet away from the argument Rodgers had such a poor selection fo players to chose from.

 

The truth is he took over a squad who would have finished in the top 4 with a striker with an average goals to shot ratio and a squad who have reached two demestic final winning one of them.

 

I'd say Rodgers platform was as good as anything any manager the last 20 years have inherited, probably the best one to be honest and now he is telling us it would be a good achievement to finish 7th.

 

Sometimes I wonder if I'm asleep and everthing isn just a bad dream where those around me have totally lost perspective about what actually is important in football and how you win games.

 

Rodgers came in and ruined the great foundations put in place and now we are paying for it.

 

Thank God Suarez is actually getting close to his potewntial this season, if not we would be royally fucked and the only reason for that would be Brandan Rodgers.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Yeah, the best squad for 20 for an incoming manager. Fucking hell.

[Code]

Yeah, the best squad for 20 for an incoming manager. Fucking hell.

 

No doubt about it actually.

[Lario]

Are you really putting Suarez not playing well last season as a defence for Kenny? Fuck me you're not half clutching at straws there.

Where would we be this season if Reina hadn't been fucking around for the first half dozen games?

Or if Suarez had gotten half the penalty decisions he should've?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

No doubt about it actually.

 

Utterly hysterical, code. It's beyond ridicule.

[J-V]

Rodgers came in and ruined the great foundations put in place and now we are paying for it.

 

:D nothing like a foundation built on shit expensive players.

[Code]

:D nothing like a foundation built on shit expensive players.

 

It gets funnier and funnier how these shite players could reach two finals last season beating Utd, City, Chelsea and Everton in the process, not losing our first game at Anfield before March, beating The Champions of Europe 3 times and being well in contention for 4th until we won our first trophy in 6 years and doing this while our strikers misfired, our players could not score from penalties and we set as record in hitting posts/crossbar in a PL season.

 

Kenny obviously worked miracles going by the look of things.

[fowler9]

surely giving game time to the likes of Sterling, Suso, Coates,Shelvey, Wisdom and all the other lads coming through in the Europa games as well as buying players like Allen is laying down better foundations than playing overpriced shit all the time

 

Kenny deserves respect of course and the first 6 months, plus the Carling Cup win were great, but last season was a complete disaster in almost every way possible aside from the Cups

 

this season, the results are still shit but we're bringing through some top young players and they can take us a long way in the future, something that would never have happened persisting with the players from last year

[boomer39]

sack Brendan now... bring in joe blogs.. give him 18 games ..no better... sack him.. bring in a .n. other.. no better ..get rid.. so in less than 2 years we will have had more managers than european cups... ffs... good job SHANKS isn't around....

[KMD7]

Sometimes the facts are boring,as are those who are unwilling, or unable, to accept or understand them.

 

You're wrong.

 

And you are an incessant bore.

[Whelan]

Middlesborough reached two finals! Got relegated. Great team, just missed too many chances to make the top 4!

 

Finals are great, they were great and a sign that the core of the team wasn't that bad on its day. But league performance indicates how that team is over the course of 50ish games, and the indications seem to be that we were 8th or thereabouts.

[J-V]

It gets funnier and funnier how these shite players could reach two finals last season beating Utd, City, Chelsea and Everton in the process, not losing our first game at Anfield before March, beating The Champions of Europe 3 times and being well in contention for 4th until we won our first trophy in 6 years and doing this while our strikers misfired, our players could not score from penalties and we set as record in hitting posts/crossbar in a PL season.

 

Kenny obviously worked miracles going by the look of things.

 

8th place finish, League Cup Win, 70mill+ spent on shit with over £100million spent in 9 months. Yes, we witnessed a miracle folks.

 

If any other manager had only won the league cup after all that money spent you'd be flapping round the forum like a headless spastic as you have been since Rodgers has come in.

[Gym Beglin]

If Suarez had been as effective infront of goal last season as he has been this season we would have been top of the league under Kenny.

 

Difference.

 

Suarez has missed his fair share of chances earlier this season, dont you worry about that.

If Kenny's £35m Geordie Shithouse wasn't such a lazy shithouse and a complete waste of 35 fucking million quid, then Kenny may also have done better.

 

So you're going to blame Suarez for getting Kenny sacked now?

 

 

Tell me, tell everyone, please explain to us, what went wrong after January? Why did Kenny start his tenure so well, but then dragged us through 5 months of utter shit with largely the same players? We're not just talking about results either, by the end of it we were playing like dog shit as well.

[Gym Beglin]

Middlesborough reached two finals! Got relegated. Great team, just missed too many chances to make the top 4!

 

.

 

Shhhh, don't explain it to him, just study him.

 

The top teams don't give a singular fuck about the League Cup. They barely give a fuck about the FA Cup. I know that because in the last 10 years I've seen the likes of Southampton, Millwall, West Ham, Cardiff, Portsmouth (twice), Everton, and Stoke in the FA Cup Final. It's a barometer of FUCKING NOTHING.

[Code]

Suarez:

11/12: 128 shots - 11 goals, 1 goal pr 11,63 shot, 4,1 shots pr game.

12/13: 65 shots - 8 goals, 1 goal pr 8,12 shots, 5,9 shots pr game.

 

Suarez shots pr game ration have gone up with 1,8 pr game while currently we have gone up 0,2 in our team average, we are getting more and more a 1 man team so thank God he is producing the goods.

[Code]

Shhhh, don't explain it to him, just study him.

 

The top teams don't give a singular fuck about the League Cup. They barely give a fuck about the FA Cup. I know that because in the last 10 years I've seen the likes of Southampton, Millwall, West Ham, Cardiff, Portsmouth (twice), Everton, and Stoke in the FA Cup Final. It's a barometer of FUCKING NOTHING.

 

Post the last 10 winners of the FA and League Cup please or even better post the finalists.

[xerxes]

Tell me, tell everyone, please explain to us, what went wrong after January? Why did Kenny start his tenure so well, but then dragged us through 5 months of utter shit with largely the same players? We're not just talking about results either, by the end of it we were playing like dog shit as well.

 

I think that his confidence went.

 

The euphoria of his appointment gave everyone a lift in the second half of his first season, and Carroll’s ill-conceived purchase was masked by his being unavailable. But that feel-honeymoon period never lasts.

 

The first half of the season was ok, and for the big games we raised our game because the occasion lifts you, but it was quickly apparent that he had bought badly. He then went inot denial mode which was self-defeating. If you tell the players that they are playing well and it is just bad luck, the woodwork, referees who are in the way of a fantastic season they start to believe you – and they did.

 

I think the Suarez affair knocked him too. No Robinson to steady the ship, no Smith to have a quiet word, the vacuum that Ayre/FSG I suspect left him feeling exposed, and not knowing what to do for the best.

 

Check out the buoyant, carefree interviews in the few months after he came back, with the thousand yard stare of the last few months. The “Downing is even better than I thought” quote was the words of a desperate man. When it was just a case of “the KK factor” he was fine, when he had to start buying and selling and managing again I think that the fallow previous ten years caught up with him.

 

The great shame is that after that morale boosting half season he didn’t offer to stand down in favour of a non-exec Board position, everyone would have been better off.

[Gym Beglin]

Post the last 10 winners of the FA and League Cup please or even better post the finalists.

 

Why? It's self-defeating, you're going to tell me how good United are because they beat Millwall 3-0?

 

A good run in the domestic cups is a bonus, but it can only mask overall deficiencies for so long.

 

In fact, i don't know what you're trying to argue now, are you saying that our cup win and cup final appearance was an indicator of us being on the cusp of greatness? The cup thing just emphasises our problem, in that we can get ourselves up for BIG games, but it's the bread and butter games we couldn't do it for. Celtic just beat Barcelona over two cup games, and then drew with St Johnstone last weekend. What did that prove? Are Celtic ready for greater things now?

 

Your cup ramblings are a nonsense Code, the short-term joy of seeing the cup win was dwarfed by the long-term anguish we all felt in the league. That's when you see the cup wins are a nonsense, it was a 'quick win' and a nice distraction, but that's all it is now, the real business is conducted in the league and Kenny fell way short by the end, despite us finishing the previous season brilliantly and then buying him two £15m+ midfielders last Summer, an £8m midfielder, and an £8m centre back, and bringing in Bellamy on moderately big wages.

12 months on and we're getting pretty much close to zero use out of any of them, and none of them were even injury problems.

 

Rodgers got a £11m striker who broke his foot, a £15m midfielder who pisses all over Henderson and starts every game, and got a £2.5m winger who is yet to really figure.

 

If he also had inherited proper quality then we'd be around the top four now. The gaps in quality that Downing and Henderson leave us are gaping. The usefulness of Coates is limited considering his lack of pace.

 

What do you expect?

[Code]

 

Tell me, tell everyone, please explain to us, what went wrong after January? Why did Kenny start his tenure so well, but then dragged us through 5 months of utter shit with largely the same players? We're not just talking about results either, by the end of it we were playing like dog shit as well.

 

Nothing went wrong from January.

 

Before went to play the mancs 11/02 this is how the table looked like and as you might notice our defensive record was superior, but our goalscoring not so good for reasons mentioned earlier.

 

4. Chelsea 24 12 7 5 44-29 43p

5. Newcastle 24 12 6 6 36-31 42p

6. Arsenal 24 12 4 8 46-34 40p

7. Liverpool 24 10 9 5 28-21 39p

 

So after we beat the mancs in the FA Cup at home, they now beat us in the league to even things out.

 

In our next two games we trashed Brighton 6-1 at home in the FA Cup and won the Carling Cup at Wembley.

 

After this Arsenal were up at Anfield and we lost in what even the Arsenal players described as daylight robbery themselves.

 

After this game the table looked like this

 

4. Arsenal 27 15 4 8 55 - 38 +17 49

5. Chelsea 27 13 7 7 47 - 32 +15 46

6. Newcastle 27 12 8 7 39 - 39 0 44

7. Liverpool 26 10 9 7 30 - 25 +5 39

 

Suarez said later that the players let their head drop after this one because instead of being just 4 points behind Arsenal with a game in hand we were now 10 points behind and it would be extremely difficult to get 4th.

 

We got some poor results in the league in the coming games but still we beat Stoke in the FA Cup and hammered Everton 3-0 at home in the league.

 

So basically we had a period of 7 league games where nothing really went our way apart from the Everton game but still we won the games that actually mattered in this period our two FA cup games and the League Cup final.

 

After this 7 game period which started away to the mancs and ended away to Newcastle we took the same amount of points as the team above us while we advanced to the FA Cup final and played the FA Cup final.

 

Our struggle after Christmas is a myth, remember we also beat the Champions in a two leg tie to reach the League Cup final.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

 

Johnson is great going forwards' date=' but poor defensively- he lost concentration (again), and his man, on Sunday for terrys goal.[/quote']

 

He was marking Ivanovic.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Nothing went wrong from January.

 

<snip>

 

Our struggle after Christmas is a myth

 

You're just a barrel-full of self-delusion. First you try to dismiss Rafa's tenure by playing down the European Cup and FA Cup wins, suggesting winning on penalties isn't something the manager should take much credit for, then only counting league performances to paint a picture of how poor he was. Now you're ignoring the league and focusing on the League Cup win on pens as testament of how great we were and how nothing was wrong. You're genuinely delusional. You're not a WUM, you're just mental.

 

To say nothing was wrong from January whilst we played 19, lost 11 and drew 3 is utterly bizarre. We got 18 points out of a possible 57. 'Nothing went wrong from January'. How mental can you get. Play 19. Lose 11. Nothing wrong. Put it down to whatever reason you want, blame anybody but Kenny if you like, but to say nothing went wrong is beyond delusion. To say it's a myth that we struggled after Christmas is fucking hideous.

[silverlining]

You're just a barrel-full of self-delusion. First you try to dismiss Rafa's tenure by playing down the European Cup and FA Cup wins, suggesting winning on penalties isn't something the manager should take much credit for, then only counting league performances to paint a picture of how poor he was. Now you're ignoring the league and focusing on the League Cup win on pens as testament of how great we were and how nothing was wrong. You're genuinely delusional. You're not a WUM, you're just mental.

 

To say nothing was wrong from January whilst we played 19, lost 11 and drew 3 is utterly bizarre. We got 18 points out of a possible 57. 'Nothing went wrong from January'. How mental can you get. Play 19. Lose 11. Nothing wrong. Put it down to whatever reason you want, blame anybody but Kenny if you like, but to say nothing went wrong is beyond delusion. To say it's a myth that we struggled after Christmas is fucking hideous.

 

Hahahaha!

 

Barely-supressed rage is so beautiful sometimes

 

You're right, though

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Hahahaha!

 

Barely-supressed rage is so beautiful sometimes

 

You're right, though

 

Nothing went wrong with getting 18 points from an available 57, losing 11 games from 19, but fuck me sideways if Code isn't rambling on about minimums from Rodgers' first 19 games. He said that 34pts in the 'minimum' he'd expect from Rodgers' 19 games, but sees nothing wrong with the 18 points Kenny got from his final 19. The guy is a fucking crank.

 

Of course, this has nothing to do with who Code does and doesn't like.

Edited November 13, 2012 by Numero Veinticinco

[fowler9]

okay so just to confirm, our form after January which I seem to remember was 2nd worst in the league although I stand to be corrected with a bunch of huge signings playing, was perfectly acceptable, yet now, pretty average with plenty of time still to go with a bunch of 12 year olds playing for us trying to fix the damage caused by the last few seasons is unacceptable?

 

the world of Code....