A proper Captain's/DM performance today

[Morning Glory]

Keep saying it but play Gerrard as Chelsea and City have played Lampard the last 2 seasons. Sparingly but where he is best suited, in the final 3rd of the pitch. Don't invent a position for him just to make him a starter. He cannot track runners and does not have a natural instinct to defend. That was left to Didi, Xabi or Mascherano.

[Etienne77]

Looking at Chelsea who are the best team in this piss poor prem they have Matic alongside Fabregas. 

We should play Gerrard alongside our Matic in the same role as Fabregas.

Fucks sake Chelseas back four is solid. It is still well protected.

Ours is a fucking car crash. Left to fend for itself.

Gerrard would be OK with a licence to push on. Why is this not happening. 

[ritchie]

Looking at Chelsea who are the best team in this piss poor prem they have Matic alongside Fabregas. 

We should play Gerrard alongside our Matic in the same role as Fabregas.

Fucks sake Chelseas back four is solid. It is still well protected.

Ours is a fucking car crash. Left to fend for itself.

Gerrard would be OK with a licence to push on. Why is this not happening. 

 

Two very solid full backs as well who get forward but know when to stay back and hold position. Ivanavic and Azpo are very good full backs. 

 

Chelsea have quietly built a great side by using the transfer market well with ins and outs. What we had was built on sand with one player. 

[Gym Beglin]

Two very solid full backs as well who get forward but know when to stay back and hold position. Ivanavic and Azpo are very good full backs.

 

Chelsea have quietly built a great side by using the transfer market well with ins and outs. What we had was built on sand with one player.

Chelsea have always been solid recently, but adding Fanregas and Costa was terrific. Without them two, no dice.

 

But let's not dwell on Chelsea, it's no excuse, there was other players out there.

 

Just replacing Gerrard would make us contenders again. Gerrard should play for the Harlem Globetrotters, not a competitive PL side. Yes the Sturridge injury is bad, but are Borini and Balotelli and Lambert worse than most? No, they're not.

[Gnasher]

Stevie was played in an advanced role against qpr, he did not play well

[ZonkoVille77]

Elephant in the room

[VladimirIlyich]

Chelsea have always been solid recently, but adding Fanregas and Costa was terrific. Without them two, no dice.

 

But let's not dwell on Chelsea, it's no excuse, there was other players out there.

 

Just replacing Gerrard would make us contenders again. Gerrard should play for the Harlem Globetrotters, not a competitive PL side. Yes the Sturridge injury is bad, but are Borini and Balotelli and Lambert worse than most? No, they're not.

Just replacing Gerrard would make us contenders again?

 

What a load of bollocks.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

 

from Mile Jedinak... 

 

I'd be seriously pleased if Gerrard never played for us again, no matter what position. He's wank as a DM, not much better going forward these days. Finished.

 

That the same goes for Johnson and Lovren is so obvious it shouldn't have to be mentioned...

Utter bollocks.  He's not the irresistible force he once was, obviously, but that doesn't mean it's time to bin him off.  He's still got more talent, class and commitment than almost everyone around him.  He really is not the problem.

[Josef Svejk]

I thought Carragher's comments were pretty pointed...

 

 

Mentally weak, no leadership on the pitch, and as a Liverpool fan, the worst thing you can ever see is them being bullied, and being weak, and that’s what we’ve seen today, and not for the first time.

 

It’s been happening all season. Liverpool aren't being beat by quality, they’re being bullied, they’re being beaten by enthusiasm. After the goal Liverpool offered no enthusiasm, no threat. They’re mentally and physically weak. There’s no leadership there. It was the same last year.

 

If you look in the team, there’s no men in the team. There’s not enough people organising in there.

 

http://www.sportsjoe.ie/football/jamie-carragher-hammers-liverpools-performance/3169

[myrlas]

Haven't read all of this thread, but for those early on who says it's the manager to blame and that Gerrard is played out of position:

 

Remember this?

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/liverpool-steven-gerrard-dismisses-talk-1264387

 

[myrlas]

“I’ll play the Scholes role when I feel it’s time, but it’s not time yet. I can play that role no problem, I played it when I was 21, so I can do it when I’m 32, 33 or 34,” he explained.

[ZonkoVille77]

The manager IS to blame and Gerrard IS played out of position.

[eeyore]

Stevie was played in an advanced role against qpr, he did not play well

It was painful watching him even try to play that position.

 

He's finished, the slip just cut the cord.

 

Such a cruel ending for our greatest ever player.

[stringvest]

The manager IS to blame and Gerrard IS played out of position.

 

ISIS?  All black uniform?  You mean he should be a referee?

[Dr. J]

I thought Carragher's comments were pretty pointed...

 

 

http://www.sportsjoe.ie/football/jamie-carragher-hammers-liverpools-performance/3169

 

I don't know how someone can read that and not think he has just shit all over Gerrard.

[Section_31]

We've been here before with Barnes. It's the tried and tested way of putting a great player out to pasture badly.

[Josef Svejk]

I don't know how someone can read that and not think he has just shit all over Gerrard.

 

Any excuse...

 

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Joe Allen played well today.

So? He's the worst player because some people don't like him, not because he's the worst player.

[TheHowieLama]

 

 

The phrase a nothing player was invented for Joe Allen.

 

I believe it was actually for Henderson.

[Nolongerathletic]

from Mile Jedinak...

 

I'd be seriously pleased if Gerrard never played for us again, no matter what position. He's wank as a DM, not much better going forward these days. Finished.

 

That the same goes for Johnson and Lovren is so obvious it shouldn't have to be mentioned...

Let's hope he is reading this!

 

In other words F O Stevie, I don't care if you ever play for us again!!

 

Great thread, real incisive thinking!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rotpeter]

I believe it was actually for Henderson.

Nope, that was 'ready-salted'.

[ritchie]

I don't know how someone can read that and not think he has just shit all over Gerrard.

 

He did try to excuse Gerrard doing his usual of not tracking the runner for the second goal by blaming Sterling for not giving him a shout which was a bit odd. 

 

Hopefully Carragher's trying to liven him up a bit with those comments because Gerrard's been as bad a captain as he has a player this season and Carra has gone out of his way to try and not give him stick and have a go at the defence instead through the season. Leadership wise we'd be better off for having Toure in the side because nobody is offering any. 

[RoboRiise]

Keep saying it but play Gerrard as Chelsea and City have played Lampard the last 2 seasons. Sparingly but where he is best suited, in the final 3rd of the pitch. Don't invent a position for him just to make him a starter. He cannot track runners and does not have a natural instinct to defend. That was left to Didi, Xabi or Mascherano.

 

I agree completely.

 

When a player gets older, you have essentially two choices, either you move them into a position which is better suited to what remains in their locker, or you ask them to do the same job as they have always done but not for 90 minutes every game.

 

Stevie hasn't been moved into a position that suits what's left in his locker, in fact he's currently playing in one that exposes it.

 

This notion that as a player gets older, he gets moved back through the team doesn't acknowledge the pace that the game is played at these days in the Premier League.  Defensive midfielder is a position that sees players busier than a one-legged man in an arse kicking contest nowadays, they either need to be superb at reading the game defensively so that they are always in the right place, or they need great pace over 10-15 yards so they can recover into position.  Stevie doesn't have either of those; I mean seriously, how old was he the last time that he was regularly patrolling the midfield and snapping into tackles?  23?  He's 34 now, that shit ain't going to fly.

 

He may have played in a withdrawn midfield position last season but position and role aren't the same thing.  He wasn't screening the defence, he was there to build attacks and it worked because we had so much movement ahead of him, it was sometimes harder to find a player who was marked than one who wasn't.  That is what the entire title charge was built on, moving the ball out of defence and into attack quickly (the exact opposite of the tiki fucking taka that Brendan started off with) and it suited Stevie because he could hit those players with 30 and 40 yard balls all day long.

 

This season, partly due to personnel changes and partly due to Rodgers changing the shape of the side, we don't have those outlets and have reverted to a style (I use the term loosely) more similar to the one he started off with.  Couple that to the fact that not every other manager in the Prem is a shambling fucking idiot, some of them do actually have a basic grasp of tactics amazingly enough, and the fact that Balotelli and err... nobody aren't exactly going to inspire the fear that Suarez and Sturridge did last season and you have sides who are coming onto us quicker when we have the ball because they aren't so worried about getting their pants pulled down on the counter.

 

Opponents reducing the time we have on the ball and the tactics/players reducing the outlets for it has a pretty obvious effect; you don't need to be a fucking genius to see that.  As a wise man once said, football is a simple game complicated by idiots.

 

So yeah, sorry but in a side that has Lovren and Johnson in the back four, a dearth of creativity in midfield other than the manager's marquee £25m signing who doesn't seem to merit that many games and with the best strike pair in Europe being replaced by a man who has all the physical attributes to be a world-class striker but coordinated by the brain of an 18 month old baby, I'm sorry if I don't agree that the biggest problem is Steven fucking Gerrard.  The biggest problem is what he is being asked to do by a manager who really should have the fucking sense to take a look at what is happening on the pitch and see that it isn't working.

 

I genuinely believe that Rodgers thinks he's doing him some kind of favour by putting him in this role and asking him to play it for 90 minutes each week but what he's actually doing is fucking one of the greatest players ever to pull on our shirt right up the arse and doing the same to the team and our fucking season in the process.

 

One more thing.  You know how he's not being the leader people expect this season?  If you know that he's shite in the role he's playing and I do, you reckon Stevie does too?  I do and it's no fucking wonder his head has dropped in view of that.

 

 

Haven't read all of this thread, but for those early on who says it's the manager to blame and that Gerrard is played out of position:

 

Remember this?

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/liverpool-steven-gerrard-dismisses-talk-1264387

 

Yeah I do and that's exactly what a good manager is there for.  Every player thinks they will play at their best until they're 48; the manager's job is to give them a reality check when they need it, not abdicate responsibility in the way that Rodgers is doing by attempting some halfway house solution that just isn't working.  He can still play that role, just not for 90 minutes every game.

[RoboRiise]

People need to grow up, I'm a grown up, I can differentiate between sentiment and analysis, he's a very poor midfielder in 2014.

 

Pretty ironic that because all I'm seeing in your comments is a load of emo and fuck all analysis.

[Gym Beglin]

Pretty ironic that because all I'm seeing in your comments is a load of emo and fuck all analysis.

Pretty rich from someone with a Gerrard duvet cover.