Does Rodgers deserve another season.

[Dr Nowt]

Can we not just go with Godwins Law and all agree he isnt up to the job, he isnt good enough for the job, and he deserves to go just as hitler did?

 

 

Sadly not many will understand what I just wrote, but hey ho.

It is a pretty highbrow reference it must be said.

[Bjornebye]

I don't know where Hitler fits in all this but i'm telling you this for free, that cunt couldn't half give a decent team talk.

[Jairzinho]

Team is crying out for a few solid Aryans.

[dennis tooth]

What fundamental changes. Set them out and we'll talk about this £50. To me. I'll whip some of it off to a charity if I fancy after it comes in.

 

 

 

How much would you like to bet that we don't finish in the bottom half next season; given we're deffo finishing there?

A large slice of my priceless reputation. This depends on rodgers being in charge the whole season.

[RoboRiise]

Tony Barrett weighing in.....

 

Not since buying Liverpool in October 2010 has Fenway Sports Group (FSG) endured such a chastening 72 hours. On Saturday, supporters at Anfield reacted with derision to the suggestion that the club are heading in the right direction. Then yesterday there was a vicious double whammy as Michel Platini confirmed that the Financial Fair Play rules which attracted John W. Henry to purchase the club are to be relaxed and Raheem Sterling’s camp made it known that the winger wishes to leave.

 

Liverpool are vulnerable right now. They are mediocre and everyone knows it. The reality is that those at the top end of the football industry have known it for some time, hence senior scouts from Manchester City and Chelsea becoming Anfield regulars this season in the knowledge that Liverpool’s best players are there for the taking in a way that they haven’t been for half a century.

 

For all the opprobrium – some of it just, some of it not – that will inevitably be showered on Sterling and his representative, Aidy Ward, following yesterday’s events, the reality is that it is Liverpool’s weakness that allows players and agents to act in the way that they are. One of the club’s first and most important responsibilities is to make it a place that players find difficult to leave and it would be absurd to claim that is the case.

 

With no Champions League football to offer, only one trophy (the League Cup) won in the past nine seasons, just three title challenges since 1991, a transfer policy that prioritises the future over the present and an inability to compete for top players, Liverpool are failing to keep their end of the bargain in terms of how a big club are supposed to behave. Expectations have been lowered, almost dumbed down, and if the supporters can recognise that so too can the players.

 

Thus far, the strongest argument that Liverpool have been able to muster in their attempts to convince Sterling to remain at the club is that it is the best place for his development at this stage of his career; not that if he remains at Anfield he can fulfil his ambitions, that success is around the corner or that they will pay him as much as others are willing to. It is an argument rooted in weakness and lacking in conviction.

 

It could also be argued that it is flawed given that Sterling, a creative player, has spent the past 12 months playing in a team without a forward. It is all well and good playing regular first-team football but doing so in a dysfunctional team that stymies your best qualities is hardly developmental.

 

The reality is that Liverpool’s problems – their failure to finish in the top four, their struggle to hold on to their best players, the lack of supporters’ faith in the club’s direction and the pressure that is building on the Anfield hierarchy – are symptoms of the same cause: a flawed transfer strategy that it is causing untold damage. Signing potential rather than proven talent is undermining everything that Liverpool are supposed to stand for. It has reached the stage where one of their better young players is not prepared to hang around to see if their inferior young players will improve.

 

For all the accusations that Sterling is going the wrong way about forcing a move (and many of these are wholly legitimate), Liverpool are at the mercy of the ambition of others because they are either unwilling or unable to match their rivals’ ambition. That situation is only likely to become more severe now that FFP is about to be watered down. As Henry himself conceded recently, without FFP it becomes “very difficult” for Liverpool to compete. The established football food chain, ordered according to owners’ wealth, leaves them exposed. Rival clubs, avaricious agents and even their own supporters know this only too well.

 

FSG’s model is failing. Whether that is because it is fundamentally flawed or poorly executed is a moot point but what is not in question is that Liverpool’s entire football operation is in need of urgent evaluation. Until the things that are going wrong are put right, then Raheem Sterling won’t be the last to believe the grass is greener elsewhere, he’ll just be one of a number in an ever lengthening line who view Liverpool Football Club as a stepping stone rather than a final destination.

 

Brutal bit of writing that from Tony but it's sadly very accurate.

 

The worst of this for me is that after fearing that we were going to get bled to death by Hicks and Gillett before managing to extricate ourselves from that situation, we now look as if we're going to be slowly starved to death instead.

 

The thing I find myself wondering is where are the football people at the club?  We have a manager, OK that's fine.  We have a head scout who was binned off by City.  The rest of the people involved with transfers are basically an American businessman and some pencil-necked twat with excel 2003 and a copy of CM2.

 

Anybody from a football background would know that this idea of buying a team full of kids and growing them into world class players only has a hope of working in the current football climate if you have enough good experienced players to form a proper spine to a team and also if you're capable of delivering some kind of incentive in the short-term to keep those players.

 

Sterling is a prime example.  OK bluntly I think he's a proper cunt for doing what he's done but on the other side of the coin, it seems the club really did just expect him to sit around for 2-3 seasons whilst we wait and see if some of Brendan's signings come good.  What player is going to do that when he sees the team deliver shambolic crap like we did against Palace, the owners willing to pay out £20m fees but not to pay the wages that players commanding those fees accept and generally to not have a prayer of challenging for a title.

 

Chuck in the fact that we shit the bed twice in Europe this season and although I'm dismayed by his lack of loyalty and think he has a very inflated sense of his own level, I can see what he's thinking - he's thinking that 10 years ago one of the best players of his generation decided to stick instead of twist and he's going to play one more game for us before he heads off to the USA with his zero Permier League medals.  To a player like Sterling who doesn't have Stevie's inbuilt loyalty to the club, what are the owners showing him and the rest of our players that would encourage them to stay?

 

Who's next, Coutinho?  I will be amazed if the summer ends without someone chucking a serious bid in for him.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

I don't know where Hitler fits in all this but i'm telling you this for free, that cunt couldn't half give a decent team talk.

 

He might struggle to cope with a multi-ball system though.

[Gym Beglin]

Also his record in the cups and Europe show that tactically he really has very little to crow about.

 

He's not a winner, simple as that. I don't see it changing ever. It doesn't mean he's a fraud or any of the other stupid things people say about him. He just doesn't have what it takes to win things and he's not magically going to start doing it next year.

 

Rodgers is too trapped in his own situation now.

 

We won't see a return to swashbuckling football next season because he'll be too concerned about what a run of losses will lead to for him personally. We're going to have another half-way house of defending deep and trying to break on the counter, and we'll see exactly the same results as this year unless he brings in a couple of players akin to Suarez, capable of beating a back line of 8 players on the edge of their box, and also brings in two good defensive midfielders who can slow the opposition down and stop them from running through us on the counter.

 

Rodgers cannot do simple things, he needs to feel like he's reinvented something. That's how we ended up with bullshit like young wingers playing full back and striker, and a young central midfielder in a back 3.

 

The way he dealt with Mignolet was also fucking appalling. Mignolet sorted himself out and saved our season from utter catastrophe. It was utter fluke Jones getting an injury and was probably the difference between us finishing 5th and 12th.

 

 

We've conceded 135 league goals in 3 seasons under Rodgers.

We conceded 142 league goals in Rafa's last 5 seasons.

 

In 2004/05 we ended the season with 52 goals scored and 41 against. However, Rafa delivered the European Cup.

This year we've scored 51 and conceded 42. Can you imagine Rodgers taking this team to victory over two legs against Leverkeusen (6-2), Juventus (2-1), Chelsea (1-0), and then beating one of the best Milan teams in history in the final?

 

Can you really call Baros, Cisse, Morientes and Pongolle better than Borini, Lambert, Sturridge and Balotelli?

Dudek better than Mignolet?

Garcia better than Coutinho?

Kewell better than Sterling?

Smicer better than Lallana?

Josemi better than Manquillo?

Traore better than Sakho/Lovren/Toure?

Biscan better than Can?

 

Obviously there are 'differences'. We have no modern day equivalent to Hamann, Alonso, Hyppia, Carragher, and 2004 era Gerrard. That's not to say that the likes of Lucas, Henderson, Sturridge, Skrtel, Allen are piss poor, but those players were well-drilled and disciplined by Benitez to get results. Rodgers can't do that. There's no reason Lucas, Henderson, Sturridge, Skrtel and Allen can't be drilled to be disciplined and intelligent in order to press a team together and make life difficult for an opponent. I bet the 2004 team would have loved Sturridge, Coutinho and Sterling as attacking options.

 

My point is, can you imagine this current Liverpool team, under Rodgers, achieving something great?

I can't. We look tactically naïve, we don't run as much as the other team, and we don't have the desire to beat them physically. Where can you go from that? What's left to defend of Rodgers' team? Either he can't coach them, or the player refuse to comply. Which is it? Doesn't matter, it all points to one thing. We need a managerial quintet of the 4x400m bronze medalists of the 1992 Olympics, namely John Regis, Roger Black, Kriss Akabusi, and David Grindley.

[markcd]

Barrett is absolutely spot on.

 

For me, the really frustrating part is that the model for dragging yourself back from the brink is staring us in the face. Well, 30 miles up the M62.

 

Hire an experienced manager, and get your hand in your pocket. Not for prospects who might come good in 3 years, for players who can go straight into the first team and make a difference.

United shit themselves when they saw where Moyes was heading, and they fucked him off pdq and changed tack. Now they're back in the CL and everything's back on track.

[stringvest]

I don't know where Hitler fits in all this but i'm telling you this for free, that cunt couldn't half give a decent team talk.

 

V2 could do with an inspirational leader.

[ritchie]

Brutal bit of writing that from Tony but it's sadly very accurate.

 

The worst of this for me is that after fearing that we were going to get bled to death by Hicks and Gillett before managing to extricate ourselves from that situation, we now look as if we're going to be slowly starved to death instead.

 

The thing I find myself wondering is where are the football people at the club?  We have a manager, OK that's fine.  We have a head scout who was binned off by City.  The rest of the people involved with transfers are basically an American businessman and some pencil-necked twat with excel 2003 and a copy of CM2.

 

Anybody from a football background would know that this idea of buying a team full of kids and growing them into world class players only has a hope of working in the current football climate if you have enough good experienced players to form a proper spine to a team and also if you're capable of delivering some kind of incentive in the short-term to keep those players.

 

Sterling is a prime example.  OK bluntly I think he's a proper cunt for doing what he's done but on the other side of the coin, it seems the club really did just expect him to sit around for 2-3 seasons whilst we wait and see if some of Brendan's signings come good.  What player is going to do that when he sees the team deliver shambolic crap like we did against Palace, the owners willing to pay out £20m fees but not to pay the wages that players commanding those fees accept and generally to not have a prayer of challenging for a title.

 

Chuck in the fact that we shit the bed twice in Europe this season and although I'm dismayed by his lack of loyalty and think he has a very inflated sense of his own level, I can see what he's thinking - he's thinking that 10 years ago one of the best players of his generation decided to stick instead of twist and he's going to play one more game for us before he heads off to the USA with his zero Permier League medals.  To a player like Sterling who doesn't have Stevie's inbuilt loyalty to the club, what are the owners showing him and the rest of our players that would encourage them to stay?

 

Who's next, Coutinho?  I will be amazed if the summer ends without someone chucking a serious bid in for him.

I don't think the policy itself is the big problem, it's just the terrible execution of it. The £50m Southampton wastage was on players 25+ whereas Sturridge, Suarez, Sterling, Ibe Can and Coutinho were younger.

 

If we bought the right players for our 225 mill then we'd be in a great place now even with our young squad and we'd obviously need some experience.

But what's the point of buying experience if you're going to buy Ricky Lambert? A lower league journeyman who would be left for dead in a sprint race with Sean Dundee.

[JermainePennant]

The strategy is right, it could be executed better but apart from the fuck up with the strikers they have done ok overall.

 

The top players we have signed in the last ten years have not been wanted by other top clubs, it worked for us with players like Alonso, Torres and Mascherano but when you are getting the big teams left overs most times it doesn't.

 

Getting the best youngsters who are clearly going to make it is a good strategy, you either get a good player who will play for years and you get your money back or they can potentially be world class.

 

Experience is important to have around and I think they will know that and go for some, they have in the past but the big problem has been not getting deals done fast enough, that's something which should be looked at.

[RoboRiise]

I don't think the policy itself is the big problem, it's just the terrible execution of it. The £50m Southampton wastage was on players 25+ whereas Sturridge, Suarez, Sterling, Ibe Can and Coutinho were younger.

 

If we bought the right players for our 225 mill then we'd be in a great place now even with our young squad and we'd obviously need some experience.

But what's the point of buying experience if you're going to buy Ricky Lambert? A lower league journeyman who would be left for dead in a sprint race with Sean Dundee.

 

Fair point there.  I think the execution of it is problematic mainly because of the people charged with executing it.

 

I'm going to stop using the word executing now before I say something I regret.

[ZonkoVille77]

Rugby is suddenly starting to look like an attractive sport. Football is dead in my eyes and my beloved club are most definitely fucked.

 

We're fuckin shite

 

We're fucked

[Section_31]

Rugby is suddenly starting to look like an attractive sport. Football is dead in my eyes and my beloved club are most definitely fucked.

 

We're fuckin shite

 

We're fucked

 

The NFL seems to be en vogue these days, I suggest the packers of Green Bay.

[Anubis]

We need a managerial quintet of the 4x400m bronze medalists of the 1992 Olympics, namely John Regis, Roger Black, Kriss Akabusi, and David Grindley.

 

Awooga....

[Dr. J]

We need to put a stop to all this back and forth, lads. We've the 5th place trophy still to win.

[stringvest]

Awooga....

 

I thought that.  With that he patted Ian Ayre on the cock and left.

[Dicko]

The strategy is right, it could be executed better but apart from the fuck up with the strikers they have done ok overall.

 

The top players we have signed in the last ten years have not been wanted by other top clubs, it worked for us with players like Alonso, Torres and Mascherano but when you are getting the big teams left overs most times it doesn't.

 

Getting the best youngsters who are clearly going to make it is a good strategy, you either get a good player who will play for years and you get your money back or they can potentially be world class.

 

Experience is important to have around and I think they will know that and go for some, they have in the past but the big problem has been not getting deals done fast enough, that's something which should be looked at.

You are aware that the system that Rodgers inherited that has given him Sterling and Ibe and will give him Sinclair and Ojo has been abandoned at the behest of him and the committee.

[Captain]

Don't agree at all with Barrett that signing young potential is the problem. The problem is that the marquee, expensive signings aren't good enough.

 

That said, it doesn't help playing young players out of position in a struggling team either, but that's a different debate.

[TheHowieLama]

You are aware that the system that Rodgers inherited that has given him Sterling and Ibe and will give him Sinclair and Ojo has been abandoned at the behest of him and the committee.

 

Apparently not.

[Dicko]

Don't agree at all with Barrett that signing young potential is the problem. The problem is that the marquee, expensive signings aren't good enough.

 

That said, it doesn't help playing young players out of position in a struggling team either, but that's a different debate.

I sort of agree but it's where it becomes blurred that's the problem.

Take Markovich he has been signed for the future but we paid £20m.

So what is he? Young player for the future or marquee signing. His age suggests one thing while his fee suggests another.

 

I've no problem in signing potential just not at £20m.

[RoboRiise]

Don't agree at all with Barrett that signing young potential is the problem. The problem is that the marquee, expensive signings aren't good enough.

 

That said, it doesn't help playing young players out of position in a struggling team either, but that's a different debate.

 

I think the main thrust of his argument is that with limited funds (although not that limited last summer at least) it's an either/or proposition in the eyes of the owners.

 

The reason that the expensive signings aren't good enough is that they don't seem too concerned about fees if they think they're signing the 'right' players but they seem to have almost an obsession with wages.  The trouble in my opinion at last is that they're not grasping the fact that football is not like baseball or come to that, like many other sports at all theese days.

 

I think part of the problem may be that they come from a background of US sports where salary caps are in place and because of that see the PL and European football in general as a financial wild west.  They're constantly looking for value, which in itself I have no problem with at all, it would be stupid not to - the problems seem to come when there is no value to be found, or when the right player can't be obtained at what they consider to be the right wage.  There comes a point where if he's the right player, the right thing to do is suck it up and pay the money.

 

That's ultimately what I meant when I asked where are the football people because they're the ones who can tell the statto crowd that whilst there is obviously a place in the modern game for that kind of analysis, it should be used to enhance the input of people who can look at a player, look at the team and spot a round peg for a round hole.  I think we're trying to replace that with the stats-based approach.

 

This is a brilliant example of what I mean:

 

https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/football-new-study-names-dejan-lovren-best-central-210145548--sow.html

 

Premier League - New study names Dejan Lovren as best central defender in the Premier League 

 

Liverpool fans had high hopes for Lovren when he signed from Southampton for £20million last summer, but his first season at Anfield has widely been regarded as a failure.

 

Lovren committed a number of errors, was part of a Liverpool team that has conceded just nine fewer goals than relegation-threatened Hull and went through a spell of starting one league game in three months due to his poor form.

 

But the CIES Football Observatory see things differently. Its annual study into the top five leagues in Europe concluded that the former Lyon defender is better than John Terry, Vincent Kompany and Gary Cahill.

Based on its six criterion of shooting; chance creation; take on; distribution; recovery and rigour, Lovren is the 12th best defender in Europe and top of the pile in England.

 

Paris St Germain defender Thiago Silva is rated as the best centre-back in Europe, with Jerome Boateng of Bayern Munich and Barcelona's Javier Mascherano just behind him.

 

Despite being involved in a relegation scrap, Sunderland's Patrick van Aanholt is rated as the 15th best full-back in Europe, while Gael Clichy is third and Manchester United's Antonio Valencia fourth.

 

 

See, I don't need some stats weenie to be playing numberwang and tell me that Lovren is the best defender in the PL.  He's fucking gash, or at least he has played gash this season for us and I know this because I have watched him stumble around in a fucking daze like someone caught in the aftermath of a terrorist atrocity in more games than I care to remember.  I'm 44 - I know shite when I see it.  I don't give a fuck what some blert's spreadsheet tells him, my eyes tell me he's shite.

 

I don't want us to be getting bent over every time we bid for someone, we've had a squad full of shite on silly wages not that long back and we've made efforts to prune it, trouble is we now see to be cutting back so far that we're killing the tree.

[ritchie]

You are aware that the system that Rodgers inherited that has given him Sterling and Ibe and will give him Sinclair and Ojo has been abandoned at the behest of him and the committee.

Rodgers was appointed basically as a young manager to come in and coach the team as part of a wider structure revamp at the club. The plan was a DOF who would take over from Comolli.

 

Yet what happened was this rookie manager was allowed to refuse to work with a DOF at all (which led to this big committee after Rodgers spent his first summer targeting his old Swansea players and Clint Dempsey). And he was then allowed to rip up a successful legacy with the academy, basically dismantle it and handpick his own staff to run it and manage it. We've had the situation this season where the Academy teams play whatever formation and style the first team play at the time, so basically it changes like the wind. There haven't been many people at this football club worth keeping in recent years but Borrell and Seguera were let go when they did a lot of good work and Mike Marsh and John Achterberg get promoted to work with the first team.

[Captain]

I sort of agree but it's where it becomes blurred that's the problem.

Take Markovich he has been signed for the future but we paid £20m.

So what is he? Young player for the future or marquee signing. His age suggests one thing while his fee suggests another.

 

I've no problem in signing potential just not at £20m.

 

For £20M I expect a first team player. LFC doesn't have enough cash to burn to pay £20M on someone who may or may not come good in the future.

 

As for Markovic the jury is out on him for me. I need to see him in his proper position before he gets the bullet. Why the fuck Rodgers persist on playing him out wide is beyond me.

[markcd]

For £20m, I expect someone whose eyes aren't too close together. Defo got a bit of the Aquilani's about him that fella....