Does Rodgers deserve another season.

[Dicko]

It's quite simple, while losing Suarez was massive if spending his transfer fee plus £42m later we didn't challenge for the title most would accept.

Not being in the top four after that outlay is unacceptable and everyone on the committee should pay the price.

[zigackly]

No-one knows ;-)

 

Fair point. Would you not agree we were very naive on the day though, and the same in the following game?

[xerxes]

It will be interesting to see how our final games play out, it will set the mood for the end of season autopsy.

Over recent years we have had a stream of talent and experience exiting Anfield, Gerrard, Suarez, Agger, Reina, Mascherano, Torres, Alonso, we have repeatedly downgraded I their replacement.

 

Brendan is keen to enlist recruits for his Project. Three years on it looks light on talent and stripped of experience.

 

I can take a disappointing season, but I do always want grounds for hope for the next one. At the moment that seems difficult to justify.

[Major Tom]

It's quite simple, while losing Suarez was massive if spending his transfer fee plus £42m later we didn't challenge for the title most would accept.

Not being in the top four after that outlay is unacceptable and everyone on the committee should pay the price.

 

Do you not take into account circumstances last season - and ones before - and rivals' expenditure last summer, though?

[Major Tom]

It isn't enough if you spent it all on shite. I reckon about a billion would have just about secured the four or five new first team players we needed, baring in mind our propensity to pay at least twice what a player is worth, and our general hit rate.

 

Obviously we didn't need to "bulk our squad" either. We've got 35 fucking players. Some of the players out on loan are better than those currently in our squad. 

 

So the quality of the squad players is nothing. Just as long as we have numbers in the squad, all is sweet.

 

Excellent.

[zigackly]

I agree but it's an easy observation to make in hindsight. We panicked on that day and didn't do the thing we had previously been doing for fun; creating chances.

 

If we had changed our game plan and stuck 10 men behind the ball - or become defensive in any way - and still lost - the charge against Rodgers would have been why didn't we just stick to what we had been doing?!!!

 

That's not saying I thought we shouldn't have been more pragmatic that day, we should have been. But I'm not sure if that's just me deciding that in retrospect.

 

Also a fair point but I'd say Mourinho's team did exactly what everyone should have expected of them and I would have disagreed with anyone deriding us for trying to be pragmatic. You don't win titles by winning every game, sometimes you need to be canny.

[The Golden Eel]

Do you not take into account circumstances last season and rivals' expenditure last summer, though?

 

Yeah, but our rivals have been shite, that's the problem.  City and United won't be this bad next season.  Feels like we've blown a big opportunity to kick on

[Major Tom]

Also a fair point but I'd say Mourinho's team did exactly what everyone should have expected of them and I would have disagreed with anyone deriding us for trying to be pragmatic. You don't win titles by winning every game, sometimes you need to be canny.

 

Yep. You do what is necessary.

[Major Tom]

Yeah, but our rivals have been shite, that's the problem.  City and United won't be this bad next season.  Feels like we've blown a big opportunity to kick on

 

Yep. I probably agree. And that's why I'm wavering a little on Rodgers, where I wasn't before. Because, you feel, that next year is going to be harder still.

[xerxes]

Do you not take into account circumstances last season and rivals' expenditure last summer, though?

I agree.

 

My view on last season has always been that we were offered an unique set of favourable circumstances, which Brendan did brilliantly to capitalise on. I did not see it as the new benchmark.

 

We didn't spend well, but our position down the elite pecking order means that we either have to get lucky, or be superbly placed in our knowledge of the national and worldwide transfer market, Ayre and Brendan cannot be expected to deliver the latter.

[zigackly]

It's a losers philosophy xerxes. Sportsmen win by visualising success not moaning about how their opponent has better shoes.

[Major Tom]

I agree.

 

My view on last season has always been that we were offered an unique set of favourable circumstances, which Brendan did brilliantly to capitalise on. I did not see it as the new benchmark.

 

I completely agree with that. It was an outlier when you look at our league form before and then this season.

 

We had the chance to entice players with the CL last summer - and push on - but we fell short. That hurts. This summer we have to buy without that CL carrot. Just how bad is it going to be?

[zigackly]

Anyone else remember Rafa putting Gerrard down for saying we couldn't win the champions league? That's what I want to hear from a Liverpool manager, not "fifth is about right".

 

Fucks sake.

[xerxes]

It's a losers philosophy xerxes. Sportsmen win by visualising success not moaning about how their opponent has better shoes.

I am not diminishing last season's achievement, we did that with a brilliant attitude.

 

My point is not that we should think we can't succeed again, it is that we were wrong to think that more of the same was to come as the extraneous factors were different. I agree with your point about visualising success, but you also have to work out HOW you are going to succeed.

 

We all agree that the loss of the SAS was a crippling blow. But the pattern of play we had last season has gone too. It raises the question as to whether we were watching the Brendan Philosophy in action, or the Suarez Philosophy.

[Brownie]

but it isn't based on one bounce of the ball, that was my point.

Okay, based on one game then.

[The Golden Eel]

My view on last season has always been that we were offered an unique set of favourable circumstances, which Brendan did brilliantly to capitalise on. I did not see it as the new benchmark.

 

We didn't spend well, but our position down the elite pecking order means that we either have to get lucky, or be superbly placed in our knowledge of the national and worldwide transfer market, Ayre and Brendan cannot be expected to deliver the latter.

 

I agree with the general point you're making in that we'll struggle until we compete harder for top players financially.  However, the fact is, had we been better this season, we'd likely have finished higher in the table because the other teams have been poor.  That may or may not have led to some kind of sustained challenge to the rich clubs (probably not), but I think it's fair to say that we're in a different place now than we were this time last year (at the end of the season I mean) and that's because we've failed badly and only have ourselves to blame.  We did really well to push ourselves back into the frame but managed to fuck it up even though our rivals haven't been good.  If United, etc had spent all round them and been really good, fair enough, but that's not what happened. Then on top of that, we even manage to embarrass ourselves at Wembley against a side in the bottom 5 of the league when we're in with a chance of winning something... Last summer and this season were the times to get it right, but we got it wrong.  

[zigackly]

My point is not that we should think we can't succeed again, it is that we were wrong to think that more of the same was to come as the extraneous factors were different. I agree with your point about visualising success, but you also have to work out HOW you are going to succeed.

 

We all agree that the loss o the SAS was a crippling blow. But the pattern of play we had last season has gone too. It raises the question as to whether we were watching the Brendan Philosophy in action, or the Suarez Philosophy.

 

Can't disagree with most of that. We've been like a rabbit in the headlights ever since the end of last season. Morally and tactically bereft. It can't help but stick in the craw.

[stringvest]

Okay, based on one game then.

 

Nope.  It is based on a mounting dissatisfaction with how things have 'kicked on' since then.  Opportunity missed in much the same way a cow's arse is missed while attempting to strike it with a banjo.  

[Russ Atmosphere]

Anyone else remember Rafa putting Gerrard down for saying we couldn't win the champions league? That's what I want to hear from a Liverpool manager, not "fifth is about right".

 

Fucks sake.

Ha. He flip-flops though.

 

We're going for the title next year but par/fifth is all we can achieve this year (ignore that last year I said Spurs were failures after spending heaps).

[zigackly]

Ha. He flip-flops though.

 

We're going for the title next year but par/fifth is all we can achieve this year (ignore that last year I said Spurs were failures after spending heaps).

 

He's a politician. I hate politics.

[stringvest]

Can't disagree with most of that. We've been like a rabbit in the headlights ever since the end of last season. Morally and tactically bereft. It can't help but stick in the craw.

 

Morally?

[zigackly]

Morally?

 

Hah, my anger got the better of me there, I was thinking about morale. I need to get some of these feathers out of my teeth, excuse me.

[Brownie]

Fair point. Would you not agree we were very naive on the day though, and the same in the following game?

No I don't accept that. If we'd tried to dog out a draw against Chelsea I think we'd have come unstuck as the one thing that team couldn't do was absorb pressure.

 

The Palace game was simply down to goal difference for me and was basically a result of the Chelsea game.

 

The only way we had a chance of winning the league was by beating them about 10-0 and that team was so mad that at 3-0 they genuinely thought they could do it!

 

I don't subscribe to this assertion that we blew it. We won 12 out of our last 14 games and just missed out. The game that cost us was a defeat against the 3rd best team in the league. So I don't accept that.

 

My simple point here is that a fella is being ridiculed less than 12 months after he was being lauded.

 

For me, he deserves criticism and may lose his job (which would be completely justified). I don't think he deserves ridicule.

[Brownie]

Nope. It is based on a mounting dissatisfaction with how things have 'kicked on' since then. Opportunity missed in much the same way a cow's arse is missed while attempting to strike it with a banjo.

In that case, you've completely misinterpreted my point mate (or i've not explained it very well). Crossed wires and all that.

[Major Tom]

Bang on, Brownie.

 

No Liverpool manager should be ridiculed and abused by Liverpool fans.