Villa(H) Match Thread

[thompsonsnose]

If this match finally teaches Brendan he can't go two in the middle and that we simply can't play 4-4-2 then those 2 points dropped will be worth it long term. You learn from mistakes not successes and yesterday was a harsh lesson. Oh, and with Lucas indeed we need to pay the money for M'Vila before our season disappears up our own arse.

But Brendan has shown at times that he does NOT learn though.

That's why i started that "another season" thread.

Overall he's done well, i give him that, but shit like yesterday and Southampton really do leave people scratching their head.

I'd also add that having the best striker in Europe helps bail out any recurrent managerial fuck ups.

[fowler9]

well first half was fucking woeful and worst I've seen us for a while, Stevie was their best player and Cissokho's presence on the pitch always seems to make Mignolet and the rest of the defence look a lot more vulnerable than usual as well

 

better in the second half (or start at least), I had to live pause it whilst I went out for a while and when I paused it I felt we were going to win anyway when I started playing again Sky had fucked up and I ended up missing from the 70th to the 89th minute but it sounds like we tailed off again in that period

 

play anyone but Cissokho at left back please and never use Stevie as a sole defensive midfielder again

[fowler9]

also forgot to mention the unflushable turds that are Aston Villa strike again, won't take any points of our rivals though

 

 

just go down you stupid cunts!

[Fi!]

Would Iloris finally get a chance after Toure getting owned by Benteke. He used to be a starter before coming here, he can't be that bad.

[Plev]

Does anyone else get irrationally angry with the 60 yard Hollywood through balls with 10 minutes to go, that just run out of play on the wet surface, which then allows the keeper to kill the game wasting time on the goal kicks? Does my head in, hardly ever comes off, and plays right into the oppos hands.

 

 

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[dennis tooth]

Brendan Rodgers has from day 1 turned Gerrard to shit.

 

And its doing my head in how people are slagging Gerrard off. Its as if a new coach has gone to barca and put messi at left back and watching all the mongs scream how shit Messi is.

Or letting Paolo Maldini fix your gas central heating boiler and standing behind him mocking how shit he is.

[spider-neil]

also forgot to mention the unflushable turds that are Aston Villa strike again, won't take any points of our rivals though

 

 

just go down you stupid cunts!

 

To be fair Villa have taken points off Arsenal and City.

[Paco]

lee dixon said he didnt think lucas looked 100% when he warmed up at half time so maybe thats why he was left out.

 

I d say the plan was to play 442 but if it was always the plan to play 4 attacking midfielders together then it was a serious misjudgement by rodgers.

 

if lucas was supposed to start but then we found he couldnt then fair enough but he still should have started allen for coutinho although with hindsight sterling could have been left out too.

[Paco]

Brendan Rodgers has from day 1 turned Gerrard to shit.

 

And its doing my head in how people are slagging Gerrard off. Its as if a new coach has gone to barca and put messi at left back and watching all the mongs scream how shit Messi is.

Or letting Paolo Maldini fix your gas central heating boiler and standing behind him mocking how shit he is.

there was a game last season when he did play as the furthest midfielder forward but we had to change it because we had no one who could find him with the ball.

[RedKnight]

Lucas warmed up for about four minutes since he had to go back in for tactical instructions. 

[xerxes]

This is a proper fixture. Two of the leagues’ oldest clubs, past European Cup Champions, multiple cup and league winners albeit with Villa’s illustrious past considerably further behind them than ours. We both have emerging managers too. Superficially, Rodgers has outperformed Lambert but the latters task, recourses and raw material have been considerably inferior and Lambert has shown that in one off games he can outwit the best occasionally even if over time, gravity tells.

 

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Christian Benteke was being spoken about in the same breath as Suarez, but as Bruce once opined, “You have to prove it all night, every night” and Suarez’ class has told with every prospect beforehand of him running riot against a mercurial Villa defence. The moody on the Scotty road beforehand was that this was going to be as easy as an Australian Test victory. Even Henry had picked up the mood making a rare visit from stateside to watch the turkey shoot. Unfortunately Villa had not read the script.

 

Any cursory assessment of Villa’s strengths should have said  that, unpressed, they are good on the counter-attack. But somehow we seemed unprepared. Aly Cissokho’s pedigree at left back at Valencia, Lyon and Porto is impressive, but he has not convinced me at Anfield. Johnson continues to be a frustrating mix of stylistic grandeur and defensive absent mindedness. Throw in Gerrard’s unfamiliar defensive duties and an uneasy defensive alchemy exists which Villa were primed to exploit, and did with some aplomb, going two up after 35 minutes. But our trump card is scoring goals and a scintillating exchange of passes between an impressive Henderson and the ubiquitous SAS resulted in Sturridge halving the deficit at half time.

 

Some doubt the value of Lucas, not me. When he replaced Coutinho at half time the side looked more balanced with Gerrard free to roam forwards while Lucas minded the back door. For the second week running we benefitted from a generous penalty decision, surely now all talk of conspiracy theories against us are now dead, but for me that wasn’t the story. What was, was our resilience and nerve in clawing our way back to a point where we looked like winning a game that after half an hour or so looked lost. That is the measure of what Rodgers is building. Gerrard’s equalising penalty was smote with the clinical finish of a Crocky enforcer. He always has been a man you can rely on to get the job done.

 

After our recent run, a draw at home is no disaster, and we still look well placed to snatch a CL spot which will probably hinge on the SAS continuing to score, and Van Persie and Rooney continuing to be injured for the Mancs. Rodgers probably got his selection wrong initially, but got it right with the Coutinho/Lucas substitution. It will be interesting to see what sort of team he puts out against Bournemouth before the Big One.

[RedRazor]

Sad to say but we appeared to be a better team when neither Gerrard or Sturridge were in it. We appeared much more cohesive in those games in December when both were missing.

 

Is BR running scared of the footballing equivalent of the Joe Bugner effect - the most hated LFC manager of all-time for dropping a club icon or cutting short his career when he still had something to offer? Is he hoping to save himself £15 - £20m by converting him to a top class DM? Or is BR setting him up in a role in which he knows Gerrard will fail to justify his exclusion?

 

Is playing two up front the best solution or should he make a decision to push one out wide? If so should it be Suarez. if not, will Sturridge deliver anything from wide? Or should he just drop one?

 

How long does BR persevere with a classy but massively out-of-form Johnson? Do we have any real options such as Kelly? Why was Wisdom loaned out if Kelly is - based on lack of appearances - not considered good enough/fit enough? When can we get Cissokho a one-way ticket for the next EasyJet flight from JLA back to Spain? Where is Enrique - we could have grown him a new leg in the time he has been out?

 

Why are we getting so many hamstring injuries this season? Coincidence or an issue with the training?

 

Two points dropped so niot happy.

[Kevin D]

This is a proper fixture. Two of the leagues’ oldest clubs, past European Cup Champions, multiple cup and league winners albeit with Villa’s illustrious past considerably further behind them than ours. We both have emerging managers too. Superficially, Rodgers has outperformed Lambert but the latters task, recourses and raw material have been considerably inferior and Lambert has shown that in one off games he can outwit the best occasionally even if over time, gravity tells.

 

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Christian Benteke was being spoken about in the same breath as Suarez, but as Bruce once opined, “You have to prove it all night, every night” and Suarez’ class has told with every prospect beforehand of him running riot against a mercurial Villa defence. The moody on the Scotty road beforehand was that this was going to be as easy as an Australian Test victory. Even Henry had picked up the mood making a rare visit from stateside to watch the turkey shoot. Unfortunately Villa had not read the script.

 

Any cursory assessment of Villa’s strengths should have said  that, unpressed, they are good on the counter-attack. But somehow we seemed unprepared. Aly Cissokho’s pedigree at left back at Valencia, Lyon and Porto is impressive, but he has not convinced me at Anfield. Johnson continues to be a frustrating mix of stylistic grandeur and defensive absent mindedness. Throw in Gerrard’s unfamiliar defensive duties and an uneasy defensive alchemy exists which Villa were primed to exploit, and did with some aplomb, going two up after 35 minutes. But our trump card is scoring goals and a scintillating exchange of passes between an impressive Henderson and the ubiquitous SAS resulted in Sturridge halving the deficit at half time.

 

Some doubt the value of Lucas, not me. When he replaced Coutinho at half time the side looked more balanced with Gerrard free to roam forwards while Lucas minded the back door. For the second week running we benefitted from a generous penalty decision, surely now all talk of conspiracy theories against us are now dead, but for me that wasn’t the story. What was, was our resilience and nerve in clawing our way back to a point where we looked like winning a game that after half an hour or so looked lost. That is the measure of what Rodgers is building. Gerrard’s equalising penalty was smote with the clinical finish of a Crocky enforcer. He always has been a man you can rely on to get the job done.

 

After our recent run, a draw at home is no disaster, and we still look well placed to snatch a CL spot which will probably hinge on the SAS continuing to score, and Van Persie and Rooney continuing to be injured for the Mancs. Rodgers probably got his selection wrong initially, but got it right with the Coutinho/Lucas substitution. It will be interesting to see what sort of team he puts out against Bournemouth before the Big One.

Are you going to the Bournemouth match?

[Paco]

Andy Hunter at Anfield

 

Liverpool will intensify efforts this week to sign Mohamed Salah, the 21-year-old Egyptian winger whom Basel rate at £12m. More ingenuity, more excitement and more depth are always welcome, though they are not necessarily the priorities for Brendan Rodgers on the evidence of another Anfield trial by Aston Villa.

 

Like Lloyd Bridges's character in Airplane!, who picked the wrong week to give up smoking, amphetamines and sniffing glue, Rodgers chose an inopportune time to promote Liverpool's title claims, Steven Gerrard's development as a deep-lying midfielder in the Andrea Pirlo class and then to rest Lucas Leiva. And the wrong opponents. "Probably across the board we were not very good," the Liverpool manager conceded. "Myself included."

 

Villa's midfield diamond and front two prospered as an imbalanced Liverpool toiled without the Brazilian midfielder's astute protection. They resembled a cohesive, potent unit for the 21 second-half minutes Lucas was on the pitch. His exit with a knee injury after an innocuous collision with Fabian Delph may have serious repercussions for Liverpool's campaign – and perhaps January's transfer business – should scans over the next 48 hours confirm the worst. "It's in God's hands," tweeted Lucas after leaving Anfield on crutches.

 

It would be wrong, however, to pin a disjointed Liverpool performance and anxiety-strewn draw on one selection decision by Rodgers. "For me, the system is irrelevant," he said. "The style will always be maintained to control and dominate games. I felt we could be aggressive and our front two would really give them a problem but we never got control of midfield and we couldn't build the game from behind."

 

For the second successive season, Paul Lambert's team defied recent form and any confidence issues to impose themselves at Anfield. The Villa manager dropped and disciplined Matt Lowton for arriving late for training on Friday. Saturday was shaping into Groundhog Day for Liverpool, with Villa on course to repeat last season's 3-1 triumphafter Andreas Weimann and the dominant Christian Benteke converted crosses from Gabriel Agbonlahor before an aghast Kop.

 

Daniel Sturridge gave Liverpool hope when he converted Jordan Henderson's exquisite flick in first-half stoppage time, before Gerrard rescued a point from the penalty spot. The captain's fourth successful spot kick of the season followed a piercing pass to the feet of Luis Suárez, two moments that redeemed a poor first-half offering and demonstrated the 33-year-old is not done in the final third yet. But that was secondary to the controversy over Jon Moss's decision to award a penalty for a slight touch by the Villa goalkeeper, Brad Guzan, on Suárez.

 

Villa, to a man, were adamant Suárez played for the penalty. Liverpool, to a man, were convinced it was a spot-kick. That showed just how unclear-cut was an incident that prompted vile abuse of Stan Collymore on Twitter for standing in the Villa camp.

 

Only one person really knows and that is Suárez. And according to Guzan, Suárez did not know. The mystery continues.

 

"I was pretty confident in myself that I hadn't touched him so I said to him: 'Did I touch you?' He said: 'I don't know.' That's the honest truth of it," said the USA international. "I thought at the time that I'd pulled my hands back and having seen it again on TV I don't think I made contact with him. Whether the referee saw that I'm not sure, I don't know where his position was, but from my point of view it was a soft penalty. I think Suárez was probably a bit surprised as well to see it given. Sometimes they go for you and sometimes they don't. Unfortunately for us it didn't."

 

In truth, the turning point had arrived earlier, in the 30th minute to be exact, when Agbonlahor tumbled over the advertising hoardings in front of the Kop, sustaining the injury that curtailed his movement and eventually his involvement early in the second half. Agbonlahor's pace and composure on the ball, allied to Benteke's touch and aerial prowess, had demolished the Liverpool defence until that point and Villa could have been three goals to the good – through Agbonlahor, the commanding Ashley Westwood and a Ciaran Clark header against the post - before Weimann struck.

 

"I don't think we get the credit at certain times, I really don't," Lambert said. "They have been knocked unfairly in certain aspects but they have been excellent for me. I don't know where we were in the league this time last year but we certainly weren't 10th. I think there is a misconception about the way we are going at the moment."

 

Man of the match Christian Benteke (Aston Villa)

[xerxes]

Are you going to the Bournemouth match?

No, I couldn't get one, which is annoying as it is one of a short list of league grounds I have not been to.

[Kevin D]

No, I couldn't get one, which is annoying [\b]as it is one of a short list of league grounds I have not been to.

Imagine how I feel. Your post match report after the Oldham game last season was one for the ages.